We have seen this problem throughout the world of sports. You have a fantastic athlete that makes a name for himself and then retires to become an owner. How many times in sports have we seen this happen and end in failure? Sadly, Richard Petty has fallen under the curse as well. The seven-time NASCAR champion is struggling to keep his Richard Petty Motorsports racing team afloat after going from a four car operation down to two and the stunning news of Petty putting together an investment team to take control. Petty will became the chairman of the new ownership group and will oversee RPM’s day to day operations.
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[/media-credit]Richard Petty won 200 races as a professional NASCAR driver, but after taking over as an owner he has only won four races and three if you count the days from Petty Enterprises. Bobby Hamilton won at Rockingham in 1996 and 1997, but waited another two years until John Andretti found victory lane at Martinsville in 1999. Also, remember that before Hamilton’s victory in 1996 that Petty Enterprises hadn’t won a race since 1983 at Phoenix. The team was bought out in 2008 and became Gillett-Evernham Motorsports before Evernham left the team and Richard Petty Motorsports came to be. They have won 1 race and it was in 2009 with Kasey Kahne at Sonoma and Petty’s first win as an owner in 10 years.
What am I trying to get to here? Look at Wayne Gretzky. He scored 894 times in his NHL career and holds probably every single record in the NHL and tried being an owner/coach of the Phoenix Coyotes. Heck, he did so bad the team never made the playoffs and went bankrupt, which led to Gretzky resigning as Head Coach and now just a spectator. His wife Janet has been accused of betting on games and that has led many to believe that the money won could have been used to help the Coyotes, but that accusation never went to court.
Also, a lot of the greatest owners of all time were actually playing in their sport at one time and weren’t that good. Joe Torre wasn’t the greatest player on the field, but he led the Yankees to 4 World Series rings in 5 years. Freddie Roach was a boxer in his time, never won a world title, and even lost 13 times. Look at what he has done with Manny Pacquiao. Pacquiao is an eight-division world champion. That is a true athlete. Now, I may be dead wrong on this whole thing with Richard Petty, but I just don’t see them having any success this year. The team is struggling in the money column and that is terrible for any team.
Richard admitted that PE fell behind and by bringing Loomis in and handing ops to him, he basically conceded that. Kyle often spoke that the focused future of PE was Adam. Not only did they lose their rising star, Kyle lost his son and Richard his grandson, or as Kyle described him, the person most like Richard. Most would have packed it in. Even more would have taken the BV money and packed it in. Yet, RP keeps coming back, investing his talent, time and energy into a team that this year had five poles, and three more starting second, and finished the last race 4th and 5th, not too shabby for a team that some questioned if they would even be there. Look for the 9 and the 43 in VL next year, and one of the cars in the chase. Long live the King!
The Petty’s were always known for paying the lowest on the circuit so the best people went elswhere
The history of Nascar is full of people, some of them the “legends”of the sport, who rather than reinvest the money into the business, chose to do otherwise.
Non of their teams survive today, at least not in the original ownership.
The real interesting question of RPM is if the team owed 100 million. How did everybody get paid, yet the new team has no debt?
Interesting.
Correction: Kasey Kahn won 2 races in 2009 under the RPM banner.
FYI, he writer: IowaGuy is correct in that Kyle was the managing force for awhile upon his return to PE. Then, sponsor world became tenuous and Boston Ventures came in and, well, no need to proceed down that path.
More importantly,PE organization was just unable to overcome fallout after Adam’s accident. He was the future of the enterprise. We can only imagine (dream, if you will) of what could have been. Cold reality is, we have current situation. Let’s see how it goes.
If I’m not mistaken, Kyle took over “managing” Petty Enterprises and Richard never was a “manager” at RPM. I, for one, am willing to wait and see.
Torre lead the National League in hitting in 1971 with a .363(!) batting average.
By the way, Joe Torre was a lifetime .297 hitter. I’d say that’s pretty good.
Tell us something we DON’T know.