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Auto Racing
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Robbie Loomis ponders the next steps in the Petty Enterprises comeback story
Kyle Petty waits to drive at Fontana (Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)
By Mike Mulhern
FONTANA, Calif.
Kyle Petty, looking like he’s just in from Sturgis, strides through the crowd and bounces up onto the SPEED stage for his weekly Friday night ‘Tradin’ Paint’ debate with another piece of cannon fodder for his sometimes relentless verbal attacks.
It’s nearing the end of summer, and Petty has taken virtually the entire summer off from actually racing, rather working TV, while Robbie Loomis, the one-time Rick Hendrick man who now runs Petty Enterprises for Richard Petty and the legendary NASCAR company’s new financial investment partners, keeps the home fires burning.
Kyle Petty is a TV natural, and pairs particularly well with former racer Wally Dallenbach.
But out on the track, well, that’s been the great debate.
Petty’s 48. He ran his first Cup race in 1979. He’s won eight times since then, most recently Dover, 1995. And then Petty Enterprises’ last win was in 1999; the company, NASCAR’s winningest operation since its 1949 debut, has only three tour wins since 1984.
So after a mediocre start this season – 34th, 38th, 32nd, 41st, 28th, and a DNQ at Martinsville, the Pettys’ ‘hometown’ track – Petty decided, reluctantly, to sit out Texas and let someone else take a turn at the wheel. “I don’t think I’m the problem,” Petty said that weekend.
Robbie Loomis (C, smiling). As general manager for Richard Petty (cowboy hat), Loomis has been the game plan man for Bobby Labonte (L) and brother Terry Labonte (R) this summer (Photo by Geoff Burke/Getty Images for NASCAR)
Well, let’s check the scorecard since:
—Chad McCumbee, the 23-year-old Tarheel, from down on the coast, got the call but failed to make the field at Texas, and he got the call again a few weeks later and again failed to make the field, at Dover.
— Petty himself failed to qualify at Phoenix in April, and the rest of his spring was equally so-so: 32nd, 27th, 41st, and 36th at Charlotte.
— After McCumbee was shuffled out of the picture, the Pettys’ brought in warhorse Terry Labonte, older brother to Bobby, who has just signed on for another three-year stint in Richard’s own 43. But two-time champ Terry didn’t turn things around either: Kyle Petty was 38th in the points when he dropped off the tour in June; when he returned to the car last week at Bristol, the team was 39th in the points.
It would seem that—whether or not Kyle Petty is the solution—he certainly doesn’t appear to be the problem.
And if Bobby Labonte is the baseline: His best runs have been a 10th at Loudon, 11ths at Charlotte, Pocono and Daytona, and 12ths at Atlanta and Phoenix. He’s 22nd in the standings.
Dodge racing boss Mike Accavitti (R), with Juan Pablo Montoya. So does Dodge need better engines, more wind tunnel work, more engineering, more money, or better drivers and better teams? Why is Dodge in last place in NASCAR Cup, Nationwide and Truck? This is where the buck stops. (Photo by Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)
Cue Robbie Loomis, the man choreographing things for the Pettys.
What’s going on at Petty Enterprises? What’s the game plan now?
“Well, we’re certainly not saving money, just ask Richard,” Loomis says with a laugh. “We’ve been spending a lot of money on testing.
“We’re new with our new partners, Boston Ventures. David Zucker, our new CEO, is doing a great job. He’s peddling 900 mph trying to get hold of everything.
“It’s a new process. While we might not have a lot of presence yet with the cars or race shop part, I definitely feel a lot of presence on the business side, up in the front office. Things are really buttoned up, and the decisions being made are really business decisions…with racing at the center. David is doing a good job at that; it’s not always the most comfortable decisions, but the ones being made are probably in the best interests of the company.
“What we’ve been missing are a lot of the business decisions that need to be made, and a lot of the business connections we need.
“Our guys are being very strategic in how we do it; I have to make a good case for what I think we need to buy….and that makes me feel good, because I told them before this transaction went down that it’s not going to happen overnight.
“And if it does happen overnight it won’t last. Like Bobby Ginn last year.
“So we want to build it slowly and steadily.
“As far as driver lineup for next year, we are very aggressive on moving forward…but we are facing the fact that, based on where our cars are running right now, we won’t be able to get that A-level driver as a teammate with Bobby Labonte. So we have to create that player: like Brett Favre at Green Bay.
“We’re still working on those plans. Kyle will run some races next year. And Bobby will have a teammate that we hope can grow into that B-level or A-level player.”
After 50-plus years of this, you’d think the King would get a little tired of watching grown men running in circles (Photo:Todd Warshaw/Getty Images for NASCAR)
Here’s the big picture: In NASCAR’s manufacturers’ standings, Dodge is in last place on the Cup tour, last place on the Nationwide tour, and last place on the Truck tour.
So a key issue appears to be Chrysler’s Dodge division itself.
On top of that, Dodge has had a newly designed engine for Cup this year, but Dodge and its teams have yet to put it in a car in a tour race, for still unclear reasons.
But, yes, Kurt Busch did ‘win’ that NASCAR chassis dyno test at Michigan, with an amazing 839 horsepower peak in Roger Penske’s Dodge…though that edge didn’t show up when NASCAR took those motors for further detailed inspection at its Concord shop.
Mike Accavitti, the Dodge racing boss, has been a hard man to find for answers to all the questions.
Loomis agrees there are questions at the Dodge level, but he adds “If you look at Dodge teams as a whole….and I don’t feel comfortable saying this, but we are the weaker teams.
“I was on the other side when I was with Rick Hendrick, and I saw what Rick put into it, how committed he was, and how involved he was in making sure he got the right people in the right places.
“I could get going on a tirade about car owners….they like to sit in the big meetings and complain about how the manufacturers aren’t committed…but the real commitment starts here at the top.”
Times are tough throughout the Dodge camp: car owner Chip Ganassi (L) and Dario Franchitti. Ganassi had to shut down the Franchitti team in July for lack of sponsorship (Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images for NASCAR)
The Pettys aren’t the only struggling cost-conscious people in the garage.
Steve Hmiel, the former Jack Roush and DEI competition man now working with Dodge’s Chip Ganassi, says it’s not the ‘stuff’ in racing that’s so costly, it’s the people that it takes to make it all work: “People are the most expensive thing you pay for.”
And Hmiel broadly hints that a number of NASCAR teams may be laying crewmen off before next season. Ganassi himself released 71 men in July, and he’s expected to cut back on his in-house engine operation next and start getting customer engines from Evernham-Gillett.
Is there anything NASCAR can do to help teams cut costs?
“I don’t know how you would legislate frugality,” Hmiel says. “But we’ve got to use the money we’ve got wisely.
“Everyone is a little up in arms over these test dates for next year. We’ll get 24 (NASCAR-approved) testing days (at NASCAR tour tracks). But our team has already tested 30 times this year (at non-NASCAR Cup tracks like Kentucky, under the old rules).”
So will even more testing be in the cards for 2009?
“It’s hard to control costs from the NASCAR trailer,” Hmiel says. “They do a nice job of getting us on national television, so we can get big sponsors. So we just have to use our head-count as effectively as possible, and get the most out of your folks.”
But, as Hmiel and Loomis both well know, the more people on a team’s roster, the more stuff that can get done, and the faster the car goes. This sport may well be driven by the sheer volume of people a car owner can throw at his competition. And mega-owners Jack Roush and Rick Hendrick have rosters of some 500 men apiece, quite an army.
“And the question now has to be how long will Rick and Jack and those guys maintain those head-counts,” Hmiel says. “It’s getting expensive.
“I think there have probably been conversations among Rick and Jack and Chip and Felix Sabates and the others….
“People who haven’t been watching their head-counts will have to start watching their head-counts. Because the people are very expensive.”
Maybe that will help smaller operations like the Pettys.
Roger Penske (R), with veteran Penske racing boss Don Miller. Penske’s NASCAR operation began going downhill when Miller retired. Maybe the Captain needs to bring him back (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
Still, what is going on at Dodge? And GM and Ford, for that matter, as far as motorsports is concerned? There is much gnashing of teeth in the media about possible Detroit cuts, though whatever does in fact happen likely won’t happen until the end of the season. And the heart of NASCAR racing isn’t expected to be affected much at all, though peripheral spending on things like ‘track rights’ for PR events and pace car programs are clearly on the chopping block. (If most of the changes talked about do go through, Toyota will likely have an even more visible presence in NASCAR in 2009, with pace cars everywhere and a monopoly on most at-track PR events, forcing corporate rivals to walk across the street for any press conferences.)
Will Dodge be around in NASCAR next year?
“Oh, yes,” Loomis says. “When you look at the manufacturers, their support is great, but when you look at a team’s budget, the manufacturer’s part is the smallest piece of the pie.
“From where we sit, Dodge has done everything they’d said they’d do. And they’re always offering to do more, whether it’s more seven-post (computer) time or more wind tunnel time.”
Of course Dodge teams may just have to take whatever they can get, because the other manufacturers probably aren’t flush with money or desire to add anyone to their current NASCAR rosters. Roger Penske’s team may be the only attractive option (and Penske is the country’s biggest Toyota dealer).
So teamwork, Loomis says, may be important. “For all manufacturers, the way this sport is today, the way the economy is globally, we have to look at ways to work together and work smarter, with Evernham-Gillett, with Penske, with Ganassi. And the manufacturers may have to do that too,” Loomis says.
“You’ve seen this little world over the years – some years this sport looks invincible, and other years we’ve got to tighten our belts.”
Time for answers from Dodge? Bob Nardelli, the Chrysler CEO, gives the command, “gentleman start your engines” at Dover (Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)
But, hey, what about that new Dodge engine? It has to be a better engine than what Dodge has today. Why are teams dragging their feet? Why isn’t Dodge-corporate pushing that new motor?
Next season there may be only two Dodge engine programs in NASCAR, one run by Ray Evernham/George Gillett, the other run by Roger Penske. The Pettys get their motors from Evernham; and Ganassi is close to deciding to go that way too. Is it time for Accavitti, or whoever is running Chrysler’s Dodge racing operation, to make the call for a single NASCAR engine program, as Ford has done?
“That is one area we all feel we’ve been dragging our feet, on the development of that engine,” Loomis said.
“Bob Nardelli (the ex-Home Depot boss who now runs Chrysler) has been very supportive of us…but he can’t just come in here and save our program. We’ve got to look in the mirror. That goes for every Dodge team.”
The baseline Dodge operation should be Roger Penske’s. But that Penske angle is indeed strange. The man is a legend in racing, but his NASCAR operation has been going nowhere for several years now, and Ryan Newman, just months after winning the Daytona 500 (Penske’s first), has been so dissatisfied he’s jumped over to Chevrolet.
“From the financial side, you look at Roger Penske, and he is in a position to be every bit as strong as Joe Gibbs or Rick Hendrick,” Loomis says.
“And I know Roger cares, because he’s been to more stock car races than you can imagine.
“But at the same it starts at the top, and it’s about getting the people in the right place and letting the organization work.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen with Ryan’s team now (David Stremme, who has been on the sidelines for nearly a year now, will likely get that ride). And that could be another example of something’s missing.”
But what’s really going to be missing in the coming weeks is Dodge itself: Kasey Kahne, Dodge’s top driver at the moment, is a precarious 14th in the Sprint Cup standings and in danger of missing the 10-race championship chase. He has to crack the top-12 in runs here and next weekend at Richmond, or Dodge will be completely shut out of the playoffs.
Is Richard Petty really going to get things turned around with the family racing business? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
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Giddy-up, Go: Kyle Petty (L) and Richard Petty (R), with (L-R) Vince DiMartino, Paul Teutul Jr. Paul Teutul Sr. and Mikey Teutul of Orange County Choppers (Photo by Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images for NASCAR)
