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In Flux: Petty Enterprises is being made over
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Published: August 31, 2008
FONTANA, Calif. -- Kyle Petty, looking like he'd just come in from Sturgis, strode through the crowd and bounced up onto the SPEED stage for his weekly Friday night Tradin' Paint debate with another piece of cannon fodder for his sometimes relentless verbal attacks.
Petty took the entire summer off from actually racing, working on TV instead. Robbie Loomis, the one-time Rick Hendrick man who now runs Petty Enterprises, kept the home fires burning.
Kyle Petty is a TV natural, and pairs particularly well with former racer Wally Dallenbach.
But out on the track, well, that's been the great debate.
Petty is 48. He ran his first Cup race in 1979. He's won eight times since then, most recently in Dover, in 1995. Petty Enterprises' last win was in 1999; the company, NASCAR's winningest operation since its 1949 debut, has only three tour wins since 1984.
So after a mediocre start this season -- 34th, 38th, 32nd, 41st, 28th, and a DNQ at Martinsville -- Petty decided, reluctantly, to sit out Texas and let someone else take a turn at the wheel. "I don't think I'm the problem," Petty said that weekend.
Well, let's check the scorecard since:
❑ Chad McCumbee, a 23-year-old Tarheel, got the call but failed to make the field at Texas, and he got the call again a few weeks later and again failed to make the field, at Dover.
❑ Petty failed to qualify at Phoenix in April, and the rest of his spring was equally so-so: 32nd, 27th, 41st, and 36th at Charlotte.
❑ After McCumbee was shuffled out of the picture, the Pettys brought in warhorse Terry Labonte, who has just signed on for another three-year stint in Richard's No. 43. But Terry, a two-time champ, didn't turn things around either: Kyle Petty was 38th in the points when he dropped off the tour in June; when he returned to the car last week at Bristol, the team was 39th in the points.
It would seem that -- whether or not Kyle Petty is the solution -- he certainly doesn't appear to be the problem.
Cue Loomis, the man choreographing things for the Pettys.
What's going on at Petty Enterprises? What's the game plan now?
"Well, we're certainly not saving money, just ask Richard," Loomis said with a laugh. "We've been spending a lot of money on testing.
"We're new with our new partners, Boston Ventures. David Zucker, our new CEO, is doing a great job. He's peddling 900 mph trying to get hold of everything.
"It's a new process. While we might not have a lot of presence yet with the cars or race-shop part, I definitely feel a lot of presence on the business side, up in the front office. Things are really buttoned up, and the decisions being made are really business decisions, with racing at the center. David is doing a good job at that; it's not always the most comfortable decisions, but the ones being made are probably in the best interests of the company.
"What we've been missing are a lot of the business decisions that need to be made, and a lot of the business connections we need.
"Our guys are being very strategic in how we do it; I have to make a good case for what I think we need to buy; and that makes me feel good, because I told them before this transaction went down that it's not going to happen overnight.
"And if it does happen overnight it won't last. Like Bobby Ginn last year.
"So we want to build it slowly and steadily.
"As far as driver lineup for next year, we are very aggressive on moving forward. But we are facing the fact that, based on where our cars are running right now, we won't be able to get that A-level driver and be a teammate with Bobby Labonte. So we have to create that player: like Brett Favre at Green Bay.
"We're still working on those plans. Kyle will run some races next year. And Bobby will have a teammate that we hope can grow into that B-level or A-level player."
Dismal Dodge
Here's the big picture: In NASCAR's manufacturers' standings, Dodge is in last place on the Cup tour, last place on the Nationwide tour and last place on the Truck tour.
So a key issue appears to be Chrysler's Dodge division.
On top of that, Dodge has had a newly designed engine for Cup this year, but Dodge and its teams have yet to put it in a car in a tour race, for reasons that have never been explained.
Mike Accavitti, the Dodge racing boss, has been a hard man to find for answers to all the questions.
Loomis agrees there are questions at the Dodge level, but he added, "If you look at Dodge teams as a whole, and I don't feel comfortable saying this, but we are the weaker teams.
"I was on the other side when I was with Rick Hendrick, and I saw what Rick put into it, how committed he was, and how involved he was in making sure he got the right people in the right places.
"I could get going on a tirade about car owners; they like to sit in the big meetings and complain about how the manufacturers aren't committed. But the real commitment starts here at the top."
Soaring costs
The Pettys aren't the only struggling, cost-conscious people in the garage.
Steve Hmiel, the former Jack Roush and DEI competition man now working with Dodge's Chip Ganassi, said that it's not the "stuff" in racing that's so costly, it's the people that it takes to make it all work: "People are the most expensive thing you pay for."
And Hmiel broadly hinted that a number of NASCAR teams may be laying crewmen off before next season. Ganassi released 71 people in July, and he's expected to cut back on his in-house engine operation next and start getting customer engines from Evernham-Gillett.
Is there anything that NASCAR can do to help teams cut costs?
"I don't know how you would legislate frugality," Hmiel said. "But we've got to use the money we've got wisely.
"Everyone is a little up in arms over these test dates for next year. We'll get 24 (NASCAR-approved) testing days (at NASCAR tour tracks). But our team has already tested 30 times this year (at non-NASCAR Cup tracks like Kentucky, under the old rules)."
So will even more testing be in the cards for 2009?
"It's hard to control costs from the NASCAR trailer," Hmiel said. "They do a nice job of getting us on national television, so we can get big sponsors. So we just have to use our head count as effectively as possible, and get the most out of your folks."
But, as Hmiel and Loomis both know, the more people on a team's roster, the more stuff that can get done, and the fastest the car goes. This sport may well be driven by the sheer volume of people a car owner can throw at his competition. And mega-owners Jack Roush and Rick Hendrick have rosters of about 500 apiece, quite an army.
"And the question now has to be how long will Rick and Jack and those guys maintain those head counts," Hmiel said. "It's getting expensive.
"I think there have probably been conversations among Rick and Jack and Chip and Felix Sabates and the others.
"People who haven't been watching their head counts will have to start watching their head counts. Because the people are very expensive."
Maybe that will help smaller operations, such as the Pettys.
Still, what is going on at Dodge? And GM and Ford, for that matter? There is much gnashing of teeth in the media about possible Detroit cuts, though whatever does in fact happen likely won't happen until the end of the season. And the heart of NASCAR racing isn't expected to be affected much at all, though peripheral spending on things such as "track rights" for PR races and pace-car programs are clearly on the chopping block. (If most of the changes talked about do go through, Toyota will likely have an even more visible presence in NASCAR in 2009, with pace cars everywhere and a monopoly on most at-track PR races, forcing corporate rivals to walk across the street for any news conferences.)
A look ahead
Will Dodge be around in NASCAR next year?
"Oh, yes," Loomis said. "When you look at the manufacturers, their support is great, but when you look at a team's budget, the manufacturer's part is the smallest piece of the pie.
"From where we sit, Dodge has done everything they'd said they'd do. And they're always offering to do more, whether it's more seven-post (computer) time or more wind-tunnel time."
Next season there may be only two Dodge engine programs in NASCAR, one run by Ray Evernham/George Gillett, the other run by Roger Penske. The Pettys get their motors from Evernham; and Ganassi is close to deciding to go that way too. Is it time for Accavitti, or whoever is running Chrysler's Dodge racing operation, to make the call for a single NASCAR engine program, as Ford has done?
"That is one area we all feel we've been dragging our feet, on the development of that engine," Loomis said.
But what's really going to be missing in the coming weeks is Dodge itself: Kasey Kahne, Dodge's top driver at the moment, is a precarious 14th in the Sprint Cup standings and in danger of missing the 10-race Chase for the Championship. He has to crack the top 12 in runs here and next weekend at Richmond, or Dodge will be completely shut out of the playoffs.
■ Mike Mulhern can be reached at mmulhern@wsjournal.com.
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