Richard Petty addresses latest developments with team he co-owns

By Bob Pockrass - Associate Editor

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Richard Petty keeps an eye on his Richard Petty Motorsports team at Dover International Speedway last weekend.

David Griffin
NASCAR Scene

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CONCORD, N.C. – Richard Petty Motorsports co-owner Richard Petty says that negotiations on the team’s proposed merger with Yates Racing are continuing, and he still expects the deal to be completed.

RPM and Yates officials announced Sept. 10 that they planned to merge. At the time, Petty said he thought the deal would close within a few weeks.

“It’s still in negotiations, and so far they ain’t signed nothing,” Petty said Wednesday following a news conference to promote the upcoming races at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. “I feel like if it went this far, we are going to go forward with it.”

Petty said he didn’t know much about the business relationship formed between RPM majority owner George Gillett and Saudi Prince Faisal bin Fahad bin Abdullah Al Saud to explore commercial opportunities with Gillett and his soccer and motorsports properties.

“That’s one of George’s deals,” Petty said. “You’ll have to talk him on that. That’s purely his deal. He’d been meeting with these guys for a pretty good while about his [English] football team.”

But wouldn’t it seem unusual to have the Petty name linked with a Saudi prince?

“Anything that revolves around Richard Petty is weird, anyway,” said Petty, whose Petty Enterprises is on its third new merger/partnership in the last 15 months. “We’ve started a lot of firsts. This is just the first one. It will happen again. You’ll hear more about it from other people. If one guy does it, then there’s another one over there that wants to try the same thing.”

As far as the current RPM situation, Petty said he understands Kasey Kahne’s frustration. Kahne made the Chase For The Sprint Cup but has been left to answer questions about the team and its stability. In addition, he blew a motor at New Hampshire and is still 12th in the 12-driver Chase standings with eight races remaining.

“It makes it pretty tough on Kasey. He said, ‘Am I losing concentration or is my team losing concentration,’ but the basic deal is that the guys have been told that they’re OK for the rest of the year, and they probably have put in a little bit extra just trying to prove a point to themselves and to the team,” Petty said.

Kahne will be using the old R5 Dodge engine this weekend for the second consecutive race, and Petty said time will tell if he gets an R6 back in the car. Teammate Elliott Sadler will have a developmental R6 in his car.

“Until it proves its reliability, we feel like it’s already got us behind, so we don’t want to take that chance,” Petty said.