Jimmy Insolo’s Sunday at Riverside was finished. A blown engine had ended his own race after only 45 laps, and with his helmet bag in hand, he was heading for the exit when someone started hunting for him in the garage. He had no idea why. Minutes later, the reigning Winston West champion was changing clothes in a rush, half convinced a friend was setting him up, and walking toward a pit stall where the afternoon was about to unravel.

“And all of a sudden, here Richard comes down the pit road. And I went around the back of the car. And Richard fell on the ground. I almost stepped on him,” Insolo recalled on the Short Track Stories posted on X. 

Seeing Richard Petty collapse on pit road was only the beginning of a frantic race day that would put Insolo behind the wheel with 20 laps remaining.

The man doing the looking was Ralph Salvino, an STP employee who regularly traveled with Richard Petty. “I’ve been looking all over the place for you,” Salvino told him. When Insolo asked what he wanted, the answer was short: “You need to get in Richard’s car. He’s sick.”

Insolo had never seen it coming. He had not expected to drive again that day, let alone replace one of the biggest names the sport has produced, and he honestly wondered whether anyone meant it.

“I went and changed my clothes real quick in a hurry, you know, and this friend of mine was in there and goes, where are you going? I said, they tell me they want me to get in Richard’s car and finish the race for him. I said, I hope somebody’s not messing with me,” he remembered.

Once he reached pit road, Dale Inman, Petty’s cousin and longtime crew chief, took charge. Inman told him Petty was sick and that Insolo would finish the race, then added technical instructions that made a bad situation more stressful.

“He said, Richard’s sick. He said, we’re going to put you in the car. And he said, I’m telling you, he says, the battery’s dead. And this switch, you got to turn this switch on and that switch off. And I’m going, boy, I sure hope I don’t turn the wrong switch off,” Insolo recalled.

Maurice Petty, Richard’s brother, offered a far simpler plan.

“He says, get in and drive it. And he says, there are only two things that can happen. Either it’s going to finish or it’s going to blow up. He says, so don’t worry. Just treat it like it was yours.”

Jimmy Insolo turns an unexpected opportunity into a third-place finish

Getting him into the car was its own scramble.

“And Eddie was the jack man. And I get in the car, get up on the jack and get in the car. And Kyle’s almost inside the car with me trying to help me get the belts up. Everybody made a big deal about that, but the car fit pretty good,” he explained.

Richard Petty had been running fourth when Insolo took over, and the substitute went to work immediately, passing Cale Yarborough on the way to a third-place finish.

“I wound up, he was running fourth when I got in the car and I wound up passing Cale Yarborough and I finished third. I ran the last 20 laps of the race,” Insolo said.

Bobby Allison won the race, Darrell Waltrip was second, and the No. 43 took third. Because Petty started the car, the finishing position and points went to him.

That result mattered. Richard Petty went on to win his seventh Cup Series title that season, edging Waltrip by only 11 points, and the Riverside finish was part of the consistency the championship demanded.

However, Insolo’s experience was not the only time NASCAR teams had to find an unexpected replacement because of a driver’s health. A notable example came during the 1977 Talladega 500, when Donnie Allison became ill, and Darrell Waltrip was brought in to replace him with 23 laps remaining. 

Waltrip went on to take the checkered flag, turning an unexpected opportunity into a victory. The circumstances differed from Petty’s situation, but both episodes demonstrated how quickly a driver could be thrown into an unfamiliar car and asked to deliver under pressure.

Another instance came at Michigan in 1988, when Morgan Shepherd replaced Buddy Baker and finished fourth.

For Insolo, though, the lasting memory is the chaos before he ever buckled in: an urgent search, a suspicious change of clothes, a champion on the ground at his feet, and a pair of switches he dreaded flipping the wrong way. 

When his moment finally came, he delivered, helping “The King” collect a third-place finish in a championship season.