Richard Petty says team is closer to signing an investor

By Bob Pockrass - Associate Editor

Friday, March 28, 2008

David Griffin
NASCAR Scene

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MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Richard Petty says he is further along in the process of finding an investor for his Petty Enterprises organization than he was last year when he was in talks with George Gillett.

“We ain’t signed a thing," Petty said Friday at Martinsville Speedway. “But we are working on it. We’ve agreed to more things, but we’re not there yet.”

Petty indicated that his family would still have control of the "racing parts” of the team. He also said the investors have been to the
races.

An announcement likely won’t come in the next couple of months, but Petty indicated that he is comfortable with where negotiations are.

“If we decide to do it today, it’s going to take three months to get all the stuff done – it’s going to be a little while,” Petty said. “We
ain’t got down to signing it. Until it’s signed, it’s [hard to predict]. We’ve done the leg work. … I wouldn’t have gotten this far if I haven’t felt pretty confident at this point.”

Petty sees a need for change in the way his team approaches the sport.

“We’re looking for a partner that’s got more tentacles than the racing fraternity could do,” Petty said. “Glen Wood, and Richard Petty and Junior Johnson and Bud Moore, we were racers, so we operated in a small world, the race world.

“When Hendrick, Roush and them people came on, they live in a bigger world. They have more tentacles to go out to other sponsors. We got left behind a little bit. We’re hoping this will bring us back to them because these people will have outside contacts that we don’t have.’

As far as the current issues, Petty has one team running well and another that hasn’t had a strong start. Bobby Labonte is 18th in points, while Kyle Petty is 40th. There had been discussion about whether the teams should swap owners points, hoping that Labonte could use a past champions provisional, if needed, to make the field for races.

The swap in points wouldn’t have affected the driver standings but would have impacted the owner standings.

“You’ve got the 43 team with a certain amount of sponsors, you’ve got a 45 team with sponsors,” Petty said. “You’re responsible for the 43 team. You can’t take nothing away from that team and that sponsor. Even if one car is doing good and the other is not, you can’t tear down one car. … You’ve got one working, don’t mess with it.”