CUP: Lights Out at Petty Enterprises

Sprint Cup

CUP: Lights Out at Petty Enterprises

After 60 seasons, Petty Enterprises, the oldest and most successful Cup team in NASCAR history, will close its doors today...

Tom Jensen | Posted December 31, 2008 Harrisburg, North Carolina

Richard Petty picked up the nickname 'King' during the 1967 season in which he won 27 races - he won 10 of them in a row. (Photo by Marc Serota/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Petty Enterprises (PE), the oldest and most successful Cup team in NASCAR history, will close its doors today, laying off its remaining 40 or so employees at its Mooresville, N.C. shop and shuttering a 60-year-old operation that competed in the first NASCAR Strictly Stock race in 1949.

Founded by the late Lee Petty near Greensboro, N.C., PE has more Sprint Cup championships (10) and race victories (268) than any other team in NASCAR history. Seven-time Cup champion Richard Petty is arguably the most famous face the sport has ever had, rivaled perhaps only by the late Dale Earnhardt.

Over its storied history, PE has fielded cars for more than 45 drivers, including four generations of Pettys – Lee, Richard, Kyle and Adam. Other noteworthy drivers to pilot PE cars included Ralph Earnhardt, Jim Paschal, Tiny Lund, Pete Hamilton, Buck and Buddy Baker, Bobby Hamilton, John Andretti and Bobby Labonte. The team won all of its NASCAR championships between 1954 and 1979, with Lee claiming three Cup titles and Richard seven.

In addition, PE has been a virtual community college for NASCAR crew chiefs and crewmen over the years, employing such talents as Barry Dodson, Buddy Parrott, Robbie Loomis, Paul Andrews, Robin Pemberton and many others.

PE operated three fulltime Sprint Cup teams during the 2001-2003 seasons, as well as a NASCAR Truck Series team from 1996 to 2001.

Despite numerous personnel changes in recent years, including hiring Labonte and Loomis, Jeff Gordon’s former crew chief, PE has struggled for the last decade. Its last race victory came at Martinsville Speedway in 1999, when Andretti drove the familiar blue No. 43 to victory lane.

Prior to the start of the 2008 season, the team relocated from upstate North Carolina to Mooresville, near the epicenter of NASCAR team activity.

Team owner Richard Petty sold controlling interest in PE in June for an undisclosed sum to the investment firm Boston Ventures, which at the time said it was committed to making a major investment to return the team to the upper echelons of NASCAR racing.

When the sale went through, David Zucker, 45, a former CEO of Midway Games and Playboy Enterprises, as well as an ex-ESPN executive, was hired as the new CEO of Petty Enterprises.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Jensen

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