Richard Petty wants more consistency from all four RPM teams
Of the four drivers that compete for Richard Petty Motorsports in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, only Kasey Kahne is near the top 12 in the series standings. // David Griffin, NASCAR Scene
MOORESVILLE, N.C. – Four months into the life of Richard Petty Motorsports, the man whose name is on the door would like to see more consistency.
Eleven races into the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season, Kasey Kahne is 16th in points, while Reed Sorenson is 23rd followed by AJ Allmendinger in 25th and Elliott Sadler in 26th. In 44 combined races, the RPM drivers have three top-five finishes and six top-10s.
“It’s been up and down,” Richard Petty said Tuesday prior to a fundraiser for Paralyzed Veterans of America. “We get one car [to] run good one day and the next car [to] run good another day, but none of them are running good enough.”
Richard Petty Motorsports was born from the merger of Gillett Evernham Motorsports and Petty Enterprises during the offseason. Last year, Petty Enterprises fielded two full-time teams with only one in the top 35, and GEM fielded three with only two in the top 35.
“They really were a two-car team, and we brought two cars in and kind of got us behind, I think, on some of the stuff,” Petty said. “Hopefully, we’re going to get it together. If it don’t [come together], we’ll keep working until we do.”
One of the areas the team is working on is the engine. The RPM teams have been using the old Dodge engine this year, while Penske Racing has used the new version. RPM will put the new engine in Kahne’s car at Dover next week and should have it in more cars soon.
“That’s one of the things that we don’t know about,” Petty said. “The reason we haven’t run the engine [is] we don’t know how trustworthy [they are for us]. Penske has been running them. They had a lot of trouble with them at the latter part of last year.
“They went ahead and jumped in and done it quicker than we did because they were more established. We were busy trying to get the cars there as much as we were the motor. We brought in two extra cars, and that made a lot of extra stuff they needed to work on. So we just got behind. We’re going to try it at Dover, and we’ll throw them out there and see what happens.”
Of course, there’s the question about the status of Dodge overall as it goes through bankruptcy and a sale of the majority of its assets to Fiat SpA.
“All I know is every time I see them, they say they’re still in business,” Petty said of Dodge officials. “They don’t think all the jumping around and doing what they’re doing will affect what they’ve got set up, especially for this year.
“They don’t feel like [President] Obama is going to come in and cut their budget on the racing right now. I hope that’s not just wishful thinking on their side. I hope it works out.”
Petty said the team still is expecting payments from Dodge.
“Chrysler, sometimes they would pay on the quarter [of the year], sometimes they would just pay the thing up [at the start],” Petty said. “I think our deal this year was more pay as a quarter. We’re hoping they stay in [the racing] business throughout the year.”
As far as the financial stability of the team – RPM still needs to fill sponsorship to complete the season for Allmendinger – Petty said it depends on the economy.
“You never feel really, really good about it. Right now, I feel like the country is starting to start to settle down, and when they do, then we’re going to be in good shape,” Petty said. “We’ve still got everything lined up for this year and probably half to two-thirds lined up for next year. We’re not that far behind the curve.
“We’ve still got to dig along and all that. Our main focus is more on our consistency. We run 20th one week, run 10th one week and run 30th the next week. We’ve just got to get our mechanical part better.”
