Team owner Richard Petty (R) looks on as AJ Allmendinger (L), driver of the #44 Valvoline Dodge prepares to practice for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Daytona 500.
(Photo: Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)
As NASCAR drama goes, you couldn’t make up half of what’s happened to Richard Petty Motorsports in just the last 90 days or so.
But here’s a brief recap of some facts that may just be stranger than reality:
• Petty Enterprises, a team that dates back to the founding of NASCAR in 1947, closes its doors late in 2008, firing all but a handful of top managers.
• Gillett Evernham Motorsports decides to replace Elliott Sadler with AJ Allmendinger for 2009. Sadler threatens to sue and gets his job back, leaving Allmendinger the odd man out.
• NASCAR icon Richard Petty agrees to “merge” with GEM on two key conditions: The new team is named Richard Petty Motorsports, and Petty himself has absolutely no operational responsibilities with the organization.
• Reed Sorenson is named driver of the No. 43 RPM Dodge Charger, the 43 being one of the most famous numbers in history.
• Allmendinger is signed to a new contract to the drive the team’s No. 44 Dodge, with sponsorship from Valvoline for only eight races, with no promise that there would be enough money to run the full season.
• NASCAR allows a couple of other merger deals to go through, resulting in Allmendinger being knocked out of the top 35 in owner points and being forced to qualify for the Daytona 500, something he tried to do twice before and failed.
• Richard Petty’s son, Kyle, who was not part of the RPM deal blasts the new team in a local Florida newspaper, saying that when he found out RPM was running a car with his old number — 44 — and paint scheme, “I was crushed. I was hurt and I'm not going to get over it for a while,” Kyle said.
Put simply, it was perhaps the biggest NASCAR soap opera in a winter full of them.
After all that, it somehow seemed fitting that in Sunday’s Daytona 500, its very first race as a team, RPM nearly won it, with Allmendinger scoring a career-best third-place finish, Sadler coming home fifth and Sorenson ninth. And it was almost even better than that, as Sadler, Sorenson and Allmendinger at one point were running first, second and fourth, shortly before Matt Kenseth passed Sadler and drove on to victory in a race shortened by rain to 152 laps.
“It's a great result,” said Allmendinger. “I kind of wish we could have been able to finish. I think the car was fast. Would have loved to have had a chance to win the race. To be top three with everything we went through in the off season, hopefully get some more sponsors on the racecar, keep this thing going after race eight.”
