ShareThisIn the end, he had the name.
The name was Richard Petty, and the name was golden.
His father, Lee Petty, started racing before NASCAR began and won three championships. Richard joined the family business at 11, a smiling prince with short hair and long teeth. He became "The King."
He won 200 races, the last with President Reagan looking down over the Daytona finish line, and seven championships. He probably has signed more autographs and spent more hours happily promoting his game than any American sportsman.
After "The King" quit driving in 1992, the smiles became more and more ceremonial. Petty Enterprises managed only three more victories -- the last by John Andretti at Martinsville in 1999 -- before sad realities engulfed the family business.
Son Kyle Petty, an eight-time winner elsewhere, came home and kept the seat warm for his son. Adam Petty had the eyes, the instincts, the touch and the single-mindedness of his grandfather. But the line of succession ended tragically, on May 12, 2000, in New Hampshire, where Adam crashed during practice and died. He was only 19.
The racing dynasty ended right there. The family business continued, but not well. Kyle reduced his driving role in 2008, and King Richard sold control of Petty Enterprises to a private equity firm, Boston Ventures, which had previously bought big stakes in National Enquirer magazine and Motown Records.
The shop moved to Mooresville, and Kyle rarely drove up there. This was "The King's" company and his deal. The deal went sour. Petty blamed the economy, which has forced out some sponsors and recently generated similar team mergers.
"Boston Ventures said if this thing's going downhill and we can't get sponsors and stuff, we can't put the money in a hole that's got no bottom," Petty said Monday. He asked two questions: How can we save what we've got? How can we save these 60 years?
The questions led Petty to George Gillett, a billionaire businessman who owns ski resorts, the Montreal Canadiens hockey team, the Liverpool FC soccer team and a NASCAR team that Ray Evernham started (and recently relinquished). Petty and Gillett had talked two years earlier.
This time, Petty arrived with a list of particulars. The Petty name was at the top, along with roles for Petty and three associates. Gillett brought his list. They negotiated the merger (with Boston Ventures holding a minor share, according to Petty).
That's how Gillett's Dodge team became Richard Petty Motorsports (RPM). Gillett wanted to keep the brand name, just as he did in Montreal and Liverpool. His son, Foster Gillett, who will serve as the family overseer, explained bluntly: "Our name means nothing in this sport."
Petty doesn't know how many sponsors Gillett has for the famed No. 43, but he says that partial sponsorships somehow will keep the car running all season, with 22-year-old Reed Sorenson replacing Bobby Labonte behind the wheel. During those McDonald's weeks, for instance, the car will have mostly red paint with yellow numbers and a yellow "M" on the hood.
Gillett will paint another Petty number, 44, on his former No. 10, the part-time car driven by AJ Allmendinger. Elliott Sadler will drive No. 19. The foremost ride, Kasey Kahne's No. 9, will remain Budweiser red. Petty had always avoided alcohol sponsors, honoring his mother's prohibition.
"We bring in the 43 and the 44," Petty said. "You'll see no Budweiser decals or any beer deals on those particular cars because my mother would come back and haunt us all if she'd seen it on our car."
Kyle Petty doesn't have a ride, except in Daytona's 24-hour race, because his potential sponsors retreated as team uncertainty increased and the recession squeezed harder. He will announce a few races on TV.
"Really," Richard Petty said, "right now I don't think he knows where he's at, and I know we don't know where he's at, so he's cutting his own trail right now, basically."
Kyle said all along that everything changed when his father's company changed hands and moved away from Level Cross. He works on the Victory Junction Gang Camp and does other good deeds. The soap-opera crowd wonders if sad business news caused father-son friction.
"The King" smiles mischievously. "Not that I know of," he said. "You'll have to ask his mother. No, no, no. Basically we're just going in different directions. I'm 72 years old -- right at 72 -- and I'm looking at the world one way. He's still 48 years old, a young man. He's looking at it a different way, which he's always done. But we've always made it work, so we're doing the same thing now."
"The King" portrays the Gillett deal as a leap forward, making the hopeless Petty operation part of the sport's No. 6 conglomerate rather than No. 15. He dealt with breaking up Petty Enterprises last summer, except for the wrenching final acts of dismissing the few remaining veteran employees around Christmas.
"I don't mind letting people go that don't do the job," he said. "But it's hard to walk in when somebody's been working for you 40 years and done the job perfect, but I ain't got no job for you. It had to be done, but that is really tough. It's kind of hard to sleep for a couple of weeks after something like that. That's the emotional part of it."
Petty will tutor the Gillett drivers, if they respond to that sort of thing. He will entertain sponsors, make personal appearances and promote NASCAR with his personal touch at the racetrack. "Just doing the Richard Petty thing," he said.
People sometimes wonder why he doesn't retire. "Retire from what?" he answers. People sometimes wonder why he tolerates occasionally draining weeks just to maintain a routine.
"If I'm off on Sunday," he said, "I'm OK as long as there's a football game. Next Sunday there ain't a football game. I'm going to go stark raving mad because there ain't a race, you know? There's nothing for me to be doing. I've got to have something to do. Every morning I've got to get up, I've got to have something I'm responsible for."
That's his deal. What's in this deal for George Gillett?
"A job for his kids," Petty said. "Really. One of his boys runs a ski resort in Wyoming. This one here is going to take care of the racing part of it. He's got another one of his sons taking care of the hockey team."
(Contact Lenox Rawlings at lrawlings@wsjournal.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
columnMust credit Winston-Salem Journal
