Times are Changing for Petty Enterprises
By: Drew Hierwarter
It happened to Junior Johnson. It happened to Bud Moore. Now it’s happening to the Wood Brothers and Petty Enterprises. What has happened to these famous old long-standing race teams? Time and technology has passed them by. The days of the small team competing on NASCAR’s top circuit are gone. No longer can a team survive on skill, ingenuity, and hard work. Oh, you still need those traits, for sure, but these days you need much more. You need engineers, you need technology, you need wind tunnels, you need seven post shaker rigs and the expertise to run all of that, and a management team that can make it all work together. And you need money. Lots of money. The kind of money that only a pool of several Fortune 500 companies can provide.
On the technical side of running a race team, the NASCAR of today is a totally different animal than the NASCAR of even ten years ago. The teams that have been around the sport from the beginning are learning that the hard way. Junior Johnson saw the writing on the wall many years ago. He closed the doors to his race shop and retired in 1995 after 132 wins and six championships as a car owner. In 2000, after 37 years, and 63 wins with two championships, Bud Moore did the same. And now it looks like the Wood Brothers and Petty Enterprises are facing a similar situation.
The Wood Brothers have been competing in NASCAR’s top series since 1955 and throughout most of the sixties and seventies, and even into the eighties they were the team to beat. They won 97 races including four Daytona 500s. But since 1993, they have visited Victory Lane only twice, the last time coming in 2001. The same can be said of Petty Enterprises, once the dominant team in NASCAR. For decades the Petty family was NASCAR’s flagship team. Lee Petty won the very first Daytona 500, and son Richard Petty went on to win that race seven times, more than anyone else in history. As a team they have 268 wins, 198 of those by Richard himself (in a Petty owned car), a record that will probably never be surpassed. But since 1983, a Petty Enterprises prepared car has entered the Winner’s Circle only three times.
This week, General Mills made the announcement that in 2009 they will be taking their sponsorship from Petty Enterprises, where they have been for the last nine seasons, and moving it over to a fourth team to be started by Richard Childress Racing. Whether driver Bobby Labonte will go to RCR also has been open to much speculation. The good news is, this is happening early enough in the year that the folks at Petty have plenty of time to go sponsor hunting. The bad news is they have a poor record of performance to sell to a new sponsor. Of their two drivers, Bobby Labonte’s average finish in 6 races is 21st. Kyle Petty’s is worse at 34th, and Kyle failed to even qualify for the most recent race at Martinsville Virginia.
On the plus side, Petty Enterprises has been taking positive steps to improve their situation. At the beginning of this year they moved their operation from the old shops in Level Cross, NC, where they have been since the fifties, and are now based in Mooresville, NC. This is where 90% of all NASCAR teams are located. It’s where the engineering talent and other resources are readily available and where NASCAR’s Technology Center is located. They are also actively seeking financial investors. People who can bring in not only much needed capital, but also the business expertise to manage it. The team is working in the right direction to turn their fortunes around.
The announcement by General Mills is a blow, for sure, and it comes at a bad time. (Not that there is ever a good time to lose a major sponsor!) But long time race fans hope that Petty Enterprises can rebound and find a way to continue in the sport. Because NASCAR without Petty would be like baseball without the Yankees, or football without the Bears. It just wouldn’t be the same.