RPM to Toyota?

dpkimmel2001

dpkimmel2001

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It's now being reported that Petty is in talks with Toyota.

From FOX Sports

Could there be a Toyota in the King’s court?

Multiple sources have confirmed to FOXSports.com that Richard Petty met with principals from Toyota and Michael Waltrip Racing at Martinsville on Sunday and the meetings continued through Monday in Charlotte.

In the past week, Petty has scrambled to salvage what is left of his brand and the No. 43. This latest development, however, doesn’t appear to involve Petty’s current partner George Gillett, the majority owner of Richard Petty Motorsports.

Gillett is still recuperating from the financial hit taken from the sale of Liverpool Football Club to New England Sport Ventures on Oct. 15.

And on Tuesday, the Tahoe Daily Tribune reported Gillett’s Booth Creek Resort Properties sold Northstar-at-Tahoe to Vail Resorts for $63 million.

Currently, RPM fields four Fords in the Sprint Cup Series. Gillett is named as the owner of record on the Nos. 9, 19 and 98. Petty’s name is on the No. 43. John Andretti drove the No. 43 to its last win in 1999 at Martinsville when it was a Pontiac fielded by Petty Enterprises.

The only sponsor signed for RPM in 2011 is Stanley Tools, a deal rumored to be worth $10 million and expected to be aligned with driver Marcos Ambrose.

Budweiser, which currently sponsors the No. 9, leaves at the end of the year to become the primary sponsor on the No. 29 Chevrolet with Kevin Harvick. Paul Menard will retain his family’s backing as he moves to Richard Childress Racing. While Best Buy currently supports AJ Allmendinger and the No. 43 Ford, the sponsorship has yet to be renewed.

Gillett and Petty turned to Toyota once before in the summer of 2009, but the automaker could not match the eight-figure financial support that RPM had previously received as a factory-backed Dodge organization. RPM began the transition to Ford with select races at the end of the 2009 season.
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i thought richard was just a figurehead now with gillette the owner?
 
SlowNeasy said:
i thought richard was just a figurehead now with gillette the owner?
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That's what i thought too, this doesn't sound good. First they switch to Fords this year , now Toyota next year? Petty should just take out his shared interest and retire from being an owner before this farce gets any worse.
 
Maybe I read it wrong, but sounds like Richard is trying to get the team back and go to Toyota with AJ and Marcos. I think Richard could make it work with those 2 drivers and no Gillett.
 
JustMe said:
Maybe I read it wrong, but sounds like Richard is trying to get the team back and go to Toyota with AJ and Marcos. I think Richard could make it work with those 2 drivers and no Gillett.
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Are you kidding me...Richard is a horrible car owner...Always has
 
Richard Petty owns 4% of RPM (source:Jayski) so he would need a lot of resources to pull this off. The whole idea of Ambrose moving to RPM was because of his previous relationships with Ford in his home country. It will be interesting to see how this will all play out.
 
dpkimmel2001 said:
Doesn't he have 7 championships as a car owner? :confused:
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Not really. His car was owned by Petty Enterprises, and at that time Lee was the leader. Richard was basically just the driver. When Richard won those seven championship Petty Enterprises was one of the, if not the strongest and best financed team in NASCAR. He also won every one of those championship with Dale Inman as CC, who was also one of the best.

In effect, if Richard manages to make a split with Gillette, he will basically be starting from scratch and, historically, he's never been too hot at doing that. He took on running the team when he finally retired and one of his first moves was to hire Wreck Wilson as a driver. I've heard it said that Richard is notoriously cheap and is hesitant to pay people what they're worth?

Besides, can he take back his name without a court fight. Doesn't Gillett own the rights to the Petty name?

Don't get me wrong. I hope Richard does make the break and becomes successful. I'd like to see all these speculators (Gillette, Henry, Kaufman, etc., etc.) out of the sport. Basically they come in, throw obscene amounts of money around, raise the cost of racing, pollute the waters, then when they don't see a big profit, or when their real financial empire starts to have problems, they walk away, leaving their little piece of NA__AR is chaos and shambles. (Can anyone say: "Bobby Ginn?")

Colour me old fashioned but even though I love big business and success in the corporate world, I don't want to see it in stock car racing. Let's leave it a sport and not just another business enterprise. Let's keep it a pastime for the enthusiast and NOT the speculator!
 
carsntunes said:
Richard Petty owns 4% of RPM (source:Jayski) so he would need a lot of resources to pull this off. The whole idea of Ambrose moving to RPM was because of his previous relationships with Ford in his home country. It will be interesting to see how this will all play out.
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That is true about Ambrose.

Imagine him ending up back with Toyota.

Don't think Toyota would be that understanding.
 
John Galt said:
Don't get me wrong. I hope Richard does make the break and becomes successful. I'd like to see all these speculators (Gillette, Henry, Kaufman, etc., etc.) out of the sport. Basically they come in, throw obscene amounts of money around, raise the cost of racing, pollute the waters, then when they don't see a big profit, or when their real financial empire starts to have problems, they walk away, leaving their little piece of NA__AR is chaos and shambles. (Can anyone say: "Bobby Ginn?")

Colour me old fashioned but even though I love big business and success in the corporate world, I don't want to see it in stock car racing. Let's leave it a sport and not just another business enterprise. Let's keep it a pastime for the enthusiast and NOT the speculator!
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Amen to that, brother!
 
John Galt said:
Not really. His car was owned by Petty Enterprises, and at that time Lee was the leader. Richard was basically just the driver. When Richard won those seven championship Petty Enterprises was one of the, if not the strongest and best financed team in NASCAR. He also won every one of those championship with Dale Inman as CC, who was also one of the best.
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And here I thought the whole time back when Richard was wining those championships that it was a family business and not exclusive to Lee. Guess not.
 
John Galt said:
Not really. His car was owned by Petty Enterprises, and at that time Lee was the leader. Richard was basically just the driver. When Richard won those seven championship Petty Enterprises was one of the, if not the strongest and best financed team in NASCAR. He also won every one of those championship with Dale Inman as CC, who was also one of the best.

In effect, if Richard manages to make a split with Gillette, he will basically be starting from scratch and, historically, he's never been too hot at doing that. He took on running the team when he finally retired and one of his first moves was to hire Wreck Wilson as a driver. I've heard it said that Richard is notoriously cheap and is hesitant to pay people what they're worth?

Besides, can he take back his name without a court fight. Doesn't Gillett own the rights to the Petty name?

Don't get me wrong. I hope Richard does make the break and becomes successful. I'd like to see all these speculators (Gillette, Henry, Kaufman, etc., etc.) out of the sport. Basically they come in, throw obscene amounts of money around, raise the cost of racing, pollute the waters, then when they don't see a big profit, or when their real financial empire starts to have problems, they walk away, leaving their little piece of NA__AR is chaos and shambles. (Can anyone say: "Bobby Ginn?")

Colour me old fashioned but even though I love big business and success in the corporate world, I don't want to see it in stock car racing. Let's leave it a sport and not just another business enterprise. Let's keep it a pastime for the enthusiast and NOT the speculator!
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While I agree with almost everything you just said, it will never be a pastime for purists again. Once you go big like Nascar has there is no turning back.
 
What this possible move tells me is Roush has informed them they will no longer provide them with cars in 2011 because of debt. With Roush being the only major Ford organization, RPM has to look somewhere else. Since Richard and Mikey Waltrip have been friends for a long time, this is probably a case of Mikey trying to help out to keep Richard in the sport.
 
Mopardh9 said:
While I agree with almost everything you just said, it will never be a pastime for purists again. Once you go big like Nascar has there is no turning back.
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Even getting into the lowest street stock level at a local track is fast becoming cost prohibitive.
 
dpkimmel2001 said:
And here I thought the whole time back when Richard was wining those championships that it was a family business and not exclusive to Lee. Guess not.
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You specified ownership, and Lee was the power behind Petty Enterprises. Richard was the driver, part owner and face of the operation (If you can remember, Lee always had kind of a caustic personality, just the opposite of Richard's). As Lee's and Maurice's involvement declined (When Lee finally found more fun in hitting golf balls than hanging around the garage) and Richard became more involved in the operation of things, the success of Petty Enterprises started to decline. There obviously were a lot of other factors involved but basically the record will show this.

I think a lot of it was from a failure to change to more modern methods. Where Roush and Hendrick accelerated, Petty and The Wood Bros went in the opposite direction.

Don't get me wrong. I like Richard. he's done more for the sport than any other individual I can think of, including anyone in the family France. But that doesn't make his a successful team owner. His success belongs to another era and, very unfortunately, that ship has sailed.
 
John Galt said:
Don't get me wrong. I hope Richard does make the break and becomes successful. I'd like to see all these speculators (Gillette, Henry, Kaufman, etc., etc.) out of the sport. Basically they come in, throw obscene amounts of money around, raise the cost of racing, pollute the waters, then when they don't see a big profit, or when their real financial empire starts to have problems, they walk away, leaving their little piece of NA__AR is chaos and shambles. (Can anyone say: "Bobby Ginn?")

Colour me old fashioned but even though I love big business and success in the corporate world, I don't want to see it in stock car racing. Let's leave it a sport and not just another business enterprise. Let's keep it a pastime for the enthusiast and NOT the speculator!
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Well said.
 
Originally Posted by John Galt
Don't get me wrong. I hope Richard does make the break and becomes successful. I'd like to see all these speculators (Gillette, Henry, Kaufman, etc., etc.) out of the sport. Basically they come in, throw obscene amounts of money around, raise the cost of racing, pollute the waters, then when they don't see a big profit, or when their real financial empire starts to have problems, they walk away, leaving their little piece of NA__AR is chaos and shambles. (Can anyone say: "Bobby Ginn?")

Colour me old fashioned but even though I love big business and success in the corporate world, I don't want to see it in stock car racing. Let's leave it a sport and not just another business enterprise. Let's keep it a pastime for the enthusiast and NOT the speculator!
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chromehorn said:
Well said.
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I agree...Roush started to tumble after he partnered up with Fenway....

I knew it would happed. I called it right away....
 
Bucky Badger said:
I agree...Roush started to tumble after he partnered up with Fenway....

I knew it would happed. I called it right away....
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I believe it was Evernham that made the comment on Fenway partnering with Roush to the effect of that you can't run a race team like a fortune 500 company, something will always suffer.
 
SST55 said:
Even getting into the lowest street stock level at a local track is fast becoming cost prohibitive.
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Yeah i spent almost 12 grand to run last year. That's getting my first car together and maintaining it for the year fixing busted pieces. And part of it was my new car I bought at the end of the year then rolled down the front stretch the first night i ran it. I know guys that have 20 grand in their car and spent 10 to run for the year. and this is a street stock division!!!


Some of the pieces on the cup car i could sell and buy a rolling street stock.
 
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