Marcos Ambrose posts fifth place finish, making history with RPM

On Sunday at Martinsville Speedway, Marcos Ambrose posted a fifth place finish for his second top five of the season. More importantly, it marked the 100th top 10 finish for Richard Petty Motorsports. Ambrose says that for him, it’s honor to drive for Richard Petty Motorsports in the Sprint Cup Series.

“The Petty family is one of the most famous names, probably the most famous name in racing, definitely in North America if not the world,” Ambrose added. “I grew up 15,000 miles away and I knew who Richard Petty was when I was growing up. It is an honor to drive for them and it was a really tough week last week losing Linda. It is an honor to drive for the Petty family because of what they stand for. Their family is built around racing. It is four generations of racers in the Petty family and it is an incredible story. I am privileged to be a part of that story in the latest generation of Richard Petty Motorsports.”

Last year, Ambrose and team didn’t experience a lot of success  with no top-fives and six top-10s in the 36 races. So far this year, Ambrose has two top-fives in the first six races of the season – both on short tracks. Ambrose said the focus over the off-season at RPM was to add strength to their company and try to expand internally so they could answer questions that they had about lack of success themselves. 

“I think you see that we are very quickly reaping rewards,” Ambrose commented. “Performance has picked up and that adds a lot of confidence for me as a driver to know that I have people internally in our company behind us working hard to improve our performance. It has added to what we already had in place. I think that the sentiment inside my team, the 9 team, is a feeling of as much optimism as there has ever been. I think we have a real scope to keep improving and have only scratched the surface. I think the path we are on is looking better and better.

“The new rules package has really lined up well with the changes we have made with our company and the additions we have made within RPM. I think the two go hand-in-hand. We’ve got more strength in the engineering and innovation and the rules package now allows us to take advantage of that.”

So far things are paying off for Ambrose and company. However, they are still lacking on the intermediate tracks with a 24th at Las Vegas and a 30th at Fontana. Perhaps a change in the cards could come this weekend.