HAMPTON, Ga. -- Richard Petty's name might be on the stationery, but he handles little of Richard Petty Motorsports' daily business these days.
He's been involved even less since his wife, Lynda, began treatments for lymphoma. But standing inside his hauler Saturday, eating a plain hot dog out of one hand and a raw onion out of the other, he was clear on one point of RPM business: The team, principally owned by George Gillet Jr., needs to re-sign driver Kasey Kahne.
"Everybody's got to have a lead dog, and Kasey is our lead dog right now, so we need him," Petty said. "You've got to have somebody, and Kasey has been there long enough to be established where A.J. [Allmendinger] is not, [Elliott] Sadler ... And [Kahne], he's done better, so that makes him our lead."
In winning twice last season, Kahne put Petty in Victory Lane for the first time in a decade. He has more Sprint Cup wins (11) than his teammates combined. Sadler, who came with Kahne in a merger with Gillett Evernham, hasn't won since 2004 or finished better than 22nd in points since 2006. Neither Allmendinger nor Paul Menard has won in the Sprint Cup series.
Keeping Kahne is within RPM's control, Petty said.
"If we get the cars to perform, then that's all he's looking for. If we get him to win races, he hooks his self," he said. "All they want to be is competitive, and if we can't give him a competitive car, he's going to look somewhere else.
"Same with [points leader Kevin] Harvick. You couldn't pay Harvick to go somewhere else right now because he's doing so good where he's at [Richard Childress Racing]."
A fast track: Atlanta Motor Speedway is one of the few tracks on the NASCAR circuit where drivers are confronted with the humbling reality of their speed as cars constantly skirt the dicey edge between locked-in and out of control.
Kyle Busch describes the sensation: "The only thing I've ever really been able to give a close description of is pick your favorite off-ramp - the round ones - and drive it as hard as you can drive it and see if it sticks. Here at Atlanta after about 40 laps it's like doing that off-ramp while it's raining. Good luck."
A look back: Sybil Scott feels her late father's legacy living in the NASCAR Drive for Diversity program. That's truer than she knew, even as she visited AMS on Saturday as part of a commemoration of Wendell Scott's first Sprint Cup Series start there on March 4, 1961.
Scott, who died in 1991, became the only African-American to win a race at NASCAR's highest level in Jacksonville, Fla., on Dec. 1, 1963.
All the cars and trucks competing in Atlanta this weekend bore a patch celebrating Scott. In that first start, Scott finished third in a borrowed car to collect $50.
Among the DFD participants in attendance Saturday was Michael Cherry, a 20-year-old in his third year in the program.
A former child model and actor from Valrico, Fla., who had 19 top-10 finishes the past two years at Motor and Greenville-Pickens (S.C.) Speedway, Cherry has used Scott's No. 34 since meeting Wendell Scott Jr. before his first race in the program in 2008.
"I asked him if I could run his father's number, and he said it would be an honor. So we put away my personal '45,' and we've run it ever since," Cherry said. "You got to look at your past. You've got to see who's opened doors for you."
