Petty Enterprises struggled throughout 2001, missing races and running at the back of the pack, and that is, perhaps, a sign of the times in NASCAR more than anything else. We’ve seen it happen before: A struggling former champion, beset by the youthful vigor and deep talent that has come to define his particular sport, hits rock bottom and attempts to climb back to the top.
Richard Petty stopped driving in 1992 and even then he was a decade past being consistently competitive. A younger driver would step in, benefit from the King’s wisdom and guiding hand, win a race or two, and put Petty Enterprises back at the top. The King might be down as a driver, but Richard Petty, team owner, would be right back on his throne, once and forever the King of NASCAR. It seemed so simple.
We know now, nearly a decade since Petty retired as a driver, that it’s not so cut and dried. Petty Enterprises has shown but glimpses of its former self in the nine seasons since the King retired as driver.
Among the miserable statistics: the failure to crack the Top 10 in Winston Cup points since a ninth-place finish in 1996; three wins in the nine seasons since Richard retired as driver; and the abysmal performances, week after week, that defined the 2001 season.
The story of Petty Enterprises is a complex one. It’s the story of a business trying to operate in the shadow of the sport’s first true icon. But try as it may, Petty Enterprises will never live up to its namesake. Yes, it’s a strange little paradox: The King’s very own business, the one he led to greatness, will never live up to the King himself.
At the very core of the matter, however, Richard Petty is a former champion whose business is facing tough times, and he knows it. And, significantly, he’s doing something about it.
Setbacks
To appreciate where Petty Enterprises is going—“If you walk through and talk to people and see things, it’s just a completely different place,” says Richard—we must look at where it’s been recently.
Petty Enterprises agreed early to become part of Dodge’s re-entry into NASCAR for the 2001 season, becoming the first organization to join the automaker. Instead of a shot in the arm for the Petty organization, the move proved to be a setback. Other factors coincided with the switch from Pontiacs to Dodges, and contributed to the struggles: Robbie Loomis, one of the sport’s bright, young crew chiefs, left Petty Enterprises at the end of 1999 to become crew chief for Jeff Gordon; the Pettys added a third team in 2001, with Buckshot Jones running out of the Pettys’ Randleman, North Carolina shops; and Kyle Petty’s son Adam, who was expected to help re-position the organization, died in a crash at New Hampshire International Speedway in the spring of 2000.
Then, that same year, the first season after Loomis’ departure, John Andretti’s performance in Petty’s No. 43 slipped from 17th in points the previous season, with one win, 10 Top 10s and three Top 5s, to 23rd in points, with no wins, no Top 5s, and just two Top 10s. Part of that performance, of course, can be attributed to Adam’s death, which cast a pall over the organization.
The struggles in 2001, meanwhile, were often monumental. Andretti was the top performer among the organization’s three drivers, but Andretti finished 31st in points, besting Buckshot Jones’ 41st and Kyle’s 43rd. Andretti managed the only two Top-10 finishes for Petty Enterprises in 2001 and had two the previous season. Over the last two seasons, in fact, Petty drivers had a grand total of five Top-10 finishes.
It doesn’t end there, however. Merely getting into races last season was a challenge. Kyle, in the No. 45, failed to make 12 of the tour’s 36 events, while Andretti missed one race, and Jones failed to make five of the 35 races he attempted to run in Petty’s No. 44. The average starting position for each driver further enhanced Petty Enterprises’ role as back marker: Andretti’s average start was 22.5; Kyle’s was 27.4; and Jones’ was 31.6. Although Andretti started in the Top 10 seven times and Kyle twice, the three, in their combined 89 starts, started 25th or worse a total of 51 times.
“It was frustrating because we felt like we had the people and the equipment and should have done better,” says Richard. “Not making all those races, I guess, was the biggest disappointment. In the race, we weren’t that good, but we weren’t near as bad as what our qualifying effort was.”
The Changes
One of the most significant steps toward improving qualifying was Petty Enterprises’ alignment late last year with engine builder Mike Ege, whose company will provide all engines to the three cars. It was a move without precedent, as the Pettys had never gone outside their own organization for engines. “We had to think long and hard about that,” says Richard. “That’s a big, big deal.”
Other changes involve the management side of Petty Enterprises. When Kyle came back to Petty Enterprises in 1997, after 12 years driving for other teams, he gradually began assuming leadership from Richard. Today, in his role as CEO, Kyle “pretty much runs the show, with help from a lot of people,” according to Richard. “He’s getting into a lot of new territory that he’s never been in. I mean, the business part of it, the engineering part of it, the R&D part of it; he’s been on the outskirts. Now he’s having to get in there and get his feet wet and do budgets and the whole cotton picking thing from there down.”
Help has arrived, though. Robin Pemberton, longtime crew chief for Rusty Wallace, has joined the team as vice president and general manager. Pemberton’s role, according to Richard, is to coordinate the three cars, so that the three work together rather than as three separate units. During the off-season, the teams were placed under one roof. All testing, all research and development, and all related programs will be under Pemberton’s watch.
“Before, we just had the crew chiefs and sort of managed from there,” says Richard. “Now we’ve said, ‘OK, we need to coordinate all these three groups so the left hand knows what the right hand is doing,’ basically.”
In January of 2001, mere weeks before the start of a new season, the Petty shops contained just two complete race cars. All of the Pontiac equipment had been moved out and new Dodge equipment was gradually taking its place. The shop was abuzz with change, but the work had only just started.
“Even though the chassis and stuff are the same, the bodies are different,” says Richard. “We had to go through what the body needed as far as chassis parts, suspension and stuff like that, which we didn’t know. We had to learn. Everywhere we went, we learned. Hopefully what we learned last year we can start putting it together and getting the benefit out of it this year.”
The move to Dodge and the addition of the Jones car prior to the 2001 season put Petty Enterprises into a state of flux few teams could have handled with success. Of the Dodge teams, only the Ganassi Racing entry of Sterling Marlin had an outstanding year, winning two races and finishing third in points.
Developing consistency will be key to finding similar success at Petty Enterprises. Andretti, for example, followed finishes of sixth and second with finishes of 31st, 35th, and 37th last season. An 11th-place starting spot was followed by a 39th-starting spot. A 42nd followed by a sixth, and so on.
“What we’re trying to do is just get consistent,” says Richard. “If we’re consistently bad, we at least know what direction to go in. Right now we’re not consistent, because we run good one week and run terrible the next five weeks. That’s not consistency. If you run good then that’s your benchmark and what everybody has got to shoot for.”
Richard is an optimist at heart but he’s also a realist. Building Petty Enterprises to the prominence it once held in motorsports didn’t happen overnight, nor will turning it around occur suddenly. Getting his cars to run consistently in the Top 20, up from the back of the pack, is a reasonable goal for the immediate future, he says. “If you can move from there up to the middle of the field, then that’s a pretty big jump at one time, I think.”