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CUP: Wednesday Media Tour Notebook
Ned Jarrett will be inducted in the 2011 NASCAR Hall of Fame...
Mike Hembree  |  Posted January 26, 2011   Charlotte, NC
Ned Jarrett is expected to take part in this weeks Sprint Media Tour. (Photo: Getty Images)
With the NASCAR Media Tour starting today in Concord, N.C., SPEED.com will keep an updated notebook of news items for each of the four days of the event. Check back for frequent updates.

Jarrett Recovering From Heart Procedure – Retired NASCAR champion and 2011 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee Ned Jarrett is on the rebound after undergoing a heart procedure last month.

Jarrett, scheduled to be inducted as part of the hall’s second class in May, experienced chest pains and had a pair of stents inserted to open blockages in a procedure Dec. 28, Jarrett said Wednesday.

He underwent a similar procedure and had four stents inserted several years ago.

Jarrett said Wednesday he is on the way to returning to normal after several weeks of recovering from the procedure and adjusting to medications.

Jarrett, Bobby Allison, David Pearson, Bud Moore and the late Lee Petty are scheduled to be inducted into the hall as this year’s class.

Jarrett, Allison and Moore attended a Ford Racing event Wednesday on the Sprint Media Tour.

Petty Investor Seeking Other Teams, Drivers – Andrew Murstein, leading investor in the agreement that saved Richard Petty Motorsports late last year, isn’t finished fishing in NASCAR.

Murstein, chairman of the New York-based Medallion Financial Corp., said Wednesday during the Charlotte Motor Speedway Sprint Media Tour that he wants to expand the Petty team by buying other NASCAR operations and by signing additional drivers. And he mentioned Richard Childress Racing driver Clint Bowyer and Indycar/NASCAR driver Danica Patrick as possible targets.

“Not that any of these guys are available, but two names that come to my mind are probably Clint Bowyer, who [contract-wise] I think is coming up next year, and Danica Patrick, who would be very interesting, also. I think she’d be a real interesting fit for us. I think she deserves to be the star of a team. I don’t think she’ll ever get that chance if she goes to some of these four-team operations. She would with us.”

Murstein said he hopes to have a third RPM team on-line possibly by next season.

“I’d like to buy another team and grow RPM that way,” he said. “We’ve bought 20 companies in the past five years or so. There are several teams that are not doing well, and I think you probably could buy them. I’m going to start looking at that as early as Daytona.”

Medallion was a key player in the multi-group acquisition of RPM from former owner George Gillett last year. The team was on the verge of closing before the investment group stepped in.

“I told Richard I would only invest in this if he was putting his own money into it,” Murstein said. “He did – millions of his own money. And I told him I wouldn’t do it unless he got back in the sport and got active. He got kind of pushed out of the sport by old investors. I’m the opposite. I can’t come close to his expertise and knowledge about the sport.”

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
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