Royal pain: Hall-bound King really a racer, not a brand

Richard Petty, still fit at 72, maneuvered his lanky frame up 13 steps on two ladders to the top of his No. 43 hauler for a bird's-eye view of Dover International Speedway.

Wearing his signature feathered suede cowboy hat, jeans and alligator boots, Petty closely watched from behind dark sunglasses as Kasey Kahne took some practice laps last week in preparation for the second race in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.

Kahne would finish eighth and remained 12th — and last — in the Chase that will resume on Sunday with the Price Chopper 400 at Kansas Speedway.

But that's not the point. The fact that Kahne has won two races this season and qualified for the Chase for Richard Petty Motorsports has far greater significance for the world of NASCAR.

It means The King is back.

The man who won a record 200 races and seven championships as a driver had fallen into the abyss of NASCAR as his family-owned Petty Enterprises struggled for more than a decade.

As the megapowers of Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, Joe Gibbs Racing and Richard Childress Racing competed in an arms race of cutting-edge technology and boasted marquee drivers, Petty's mom-and-pop, family owned Petty Enterprises, formed in 1949, became a non-factor.

And it hurt.

"It's been tough from the standpoint you always felt you should do better, you could do better," Petty said. "We kept rolling with the punches. ... It was OK, when everybody else was our size. Then all of a sudden, we just stayed the same, and the world changed around us.

"Ours was a family deal, and as long as we made a good living out of it and could keep trucking along, that's what we looked at. I look at the way the good Lord has things set up, and it's not good for any one person all the time. You have to take the lumps.

"He had given me such good luck, and it was time to even it out."

Now, in its first season partnered with sports entrepreneur George Gillett Jr., Richard Petty Motorsports has four cars in the top 30 of Sprint Cup racing, led by Kahne.

Though Petty's role is said to be more ceremonial than financial-based, Gillett — who has been talking to a Saudi prince about investing in the team — was emphatic Saturday at Kansas Speedway about how important Petty is to the organization.

"Richard Petty ... this man will always be the leader," Gillett said. "His reputation, his energy, his passion, his interest, that is the culture of our organization."

Petty took the plunge into the corporate world in June 2008 with the announcement that Boston Ventures, a private equity firm, would partner with Petty Enterprises, the first time an outside firm invested in the 50-year-old race team formed by Petty's father, Lee.

But that didn't go well either, and last February, Petty Enterprises merged with Gillett-Evernham Motorsports, taking on the new name, Richard Petty Motorsports. The new team would have four drivers — Kahne and Elliott Sadler from Gillett-Evernham and Reed Sorensen and A.J. Allmendinger from Petty Enterprises.

Richard Petty's son, Kyle, who had raced for him since 1979, was out of a job. So were about 100 other longtime employees of Petty Enterprises.

"We always kept it a family deal," Richard Petty said. "Once these guys sitting in Boston and Chicago put numbers to numbers, they said this ain't working. We downsized a little bit initially, and it didn't leave room for Kyle. That was a big disappointment.

"But our biggest disappointment was closing down Petty Enterprises from the standpoint, all the people who worked for us all those years. We had people work for us 30, 40 years, never had another job, they came out of school and go to work for us.

"That was harder to take than losing Kyle, because Kyle has the talent to do something else. But some of these other boys didn't know anything but working on a Petty car."

Richard Petty closed down his shop in Level Cross, N.C., transforming it into Petty's Garage, a facility that now works on rebuilding cars. The new Richard Petty Motorsports relocated into Evernham's multibuilding fortress closer to the center of NASCAR's universe, though another move is likely.

Richard Petty Motorsports is on the verge of partnering with Yates Racing and will convert from a Dodge team to Fords with the better engines Yates is known for building.

"Dodge was really behind us," Petty said. "They went bankrupt, they drew back a very big portion of money. We were lucky to get anything. It's hard enough to compete when you have factory help, but if you haven't got any factory help, it's almost impossible.

"Our best alternative was Ford, and hopefully it will work out. I drove Fords before. I've won races in every kind of car, Buick, Pontiac, Olds, Plymouth, Dodge ... I missed the Kaiser-Frazer."

One of Richard Pettty Motorsports' first actions was to hire Robbie Loomis as vice-president/director of competition. Loomis was a Petty Enterprises crew chief for 11 years before leaving in 2000 for Hendrick Motorsports as Jeff Gordon's crew chief.

When Loomis, who helped direct Gordon's 2001 Sprint Cup championship, returned, he saw how far his old boss had fallen.

"For Richard being a successful driver, he always paid attention to what mattered most, and that was getting the performance out of the car on the weekends," Loomis said. "When he got out of the car and became the owner and had to make a lot of decisions, the business decisions outgrew us at a faster pace.

"When we teamed with Gillett over the winter, we saw a big commitment from them to get the team back to winning. "

When Kahne broke through and won at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif., it was the first Petty car to win a Sprint Cup race since John Andretti won in Martinsville in 1999, a streak of 363 races and 12 different drivers.

"Not throwing it on our (previous) drivers," Richard Petty said, "they've done a good job, but to have an Earnhardt or a Gordon ... we didn't have the facilities, we didn't have the record that we could attract those kind of drivers."

Kahne won again in Atlanta and clinched Petty's first spot in the Chase with a 12th-place finish at Richmond.

"Seeing the smile on Richard Petty's face in the winner's circle at those two races ... there's nothing that makes you happier," Gillett said

It's no accident that Gillett — who owned the most-storied franchise in the National Hockey League, the Montreal Canadiens, and is co-owner of English Premier League soccer team Liverpool FC — christened the new racing team Richard Petty Motorsports, after the most storied name in racing.

"That's one of the attractions for the Gilletts," Loomis said. "They understand brands, and that's one thing they work hard on, putting Richard Petty out there in a lot of different places."

Petty is as big a draw as any of the drivers. It was Petty who first took the sport to the fans, making appearances, signing autographs and posing for pictures from the moment he arrived at the track.

Even Kings from other countries want to meet the King of NASCAR.

"He's so popular with NASCAR, if they have a dignitary ... a King Hussein has been to the race, if the president comes – the (presidential) candidates last year came – you know who they want to show them around ... Richard Petty," said Dale Inman, who was Petty's crew chief and still serves as a consultant.

Petty's next big moment will come in two weeks when the inaugural, five-person class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame will be announced in Charlotte, though he's in no hurry to be inducted.

"If the people like Bill France, my dad, a bunch of older guys, if they hadn't done their deal, there wouldn't have been no Richard Petty, so there wouldn't have been any Richard Petty in the Hall of Fame," he said.

"I feel like they ought to go back and put the people in who started the business, who made the business work initially. There's plenty of time to put all the rest of us if they want to."

In the meantime, Petty, even at this stage of his life, counsels the drivers and visits with the crew chiefs in pursuit of another trip to Victory Lane. And maybe another championship.

"I've been doing this since I was 11 years old," he said. "It's all I've ever done. It is my life. Like a preacher always being a preacher, a farmer always being a farmer, I've always been a racer."

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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