May 11, 2009
By Matthew Pizzolato
Matthew Pizzolato
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At the end of last season when Richard Petty announced that he was looking to merge his team because of the difficult economic times, the news turned the NASCAR world upside down.
The thought of the legendary Petty name no longer being connected to NASCAR seemed like a sacrilege to many fans. Petty Enterprises, NASCAR’s most successful team, merged with Gillett Evernham Motorsports and a new team rose from the ashes to become Richard Petty Motorsports.
The famous Petty Enterprises had fallen off in the past decades and it seems the new organization has continued its skid. All four of its drivers, Kasey Kahne, A.J. Allmendinger, Elliott Sadler, and Reed Sorenson are outside of the 12th place cutoff position to make the Chase with Kahne being the closest in 16th position after the Darlington race.
The only news worthy event that occurred for the new team was when Richard Petty announced a joint venture with Dreyer & Reinbold Racing team to field the No. 43 Indy Car for driver John Andretti -- that will compete in the Indianapolis 500. Andretti, nephew of legendary open-wheel racer Mario Andretti, drove in NASCAR for Petty Enterprises at one time and holds the last win for the organization, which came in 1999.
“This year will mark my tenth Indy 500, and, with support of Window World and Dreyer & Reinbold Racing,” John Andretti was quoted as saying in an article on the team’s website. “I am really excited about being a part of Richard’s first entry into open-wheel racing.”
In their Cup operation, Richard Petty Motorsports has been using last year’s Dodge engine, the R5P7 and is hoping to make the transition over to the new engine in time for the Dover race on May 31st.
However, according to vice president of racing operations for RPM, Robbie Loomis, only one driver will be using the new R6P8 Dodge motor. A decision will be made in the next few weeks as to which of the four drivers that will be, but most likely Kasey Kahne will be given the new engine if the team believes it will give him a better chance of making the Chase.
Penske Racing has been using the new Dodge engine all season with positive results; driver Kurt Busch is currently third in the points. The motor has also proved reliable as there have been no failures for Penske so far this year. Penske began using the new engine part time toward the end of last season, so is quite a bit ahead of RPM.
The reason that RPM has not changed over is because they had 110 R5P6 motors already built and could not afford to build the new engines.
“We talked about using it for the All-Star race or maybe the [Coca-Cola 600],” Loomis said in a David Newton article for espn.com. “It's just risk versus reward. We were not comfortable bringing it out in the 600.”
Not comfortable bring it out? What are they waiting for?
Hopefully, they will debut the new motor soon because they certainly have drivers capable of winning, but even the best drivers can’t be expected to win with inferior equipment.
The new organization will probably never see the success experienced by the old Petty Enterprises in the glory days when “The King” Richard Petty was behind the wheel, but at least they could be competitive and win a few races, if they would just start using up to date equipment.
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