NSCS: Richard Petty Motorsports Searching for Success in New Shop

Over the course of the off-season, Richard Petty Motorsports under went a big change as they moved to a new, bigger shop, to help expand their program. The expansion allowed them to add 35 new employees, per RPM’s Director of Competition Sammy Johns. He also feels that they can win a championship through their expansion and technical alliance that they have currently with Roush Fenway Racing.

“I think this model has shown that you can win championships with it,” Jones added. “There are other organizations out there working under these type of models and they’ve been able to win championships. We got a taste of victory last year and a taste of the Chase and we’re excited to build on that and take it forward this year.”

Last season, Aric Almirola won the Coke Zero 400 in July at Daytona to qualify for the Chase for the Championship, before finishing 16th in points.

“I thought we had a really good 2014 season,” Almirola reflected. “Going into the season I felt really good about bringing Trent Owens on board and the additional support that Smithfield was giving us to be able to help grow our race team and provide more assets for our race team. I thought that was gonna be a big improvement and that proved to be right. We went out and set some pretty lofty goals for ourselves to get the 43 car back to victory lane and make the Chase and we were able to do both those things. I think we surprised some people and I think we had a really good year.”

Now with that success behind him, he wants to grow from that and have even more success, feeling that this upcoming year will be a breakout year for them.

“Bringing Sam on board and that 9 team is gonna be a big boost for our race team and I think getting the shop and everybody on the same page working together, I couldn’t be more proud of where Richard Petty Motorsports is at today compared to where it was at three years ago when I started,” Almirola added. “Even more so than just last year, I mean last off-season we were working hard but we were only working hard with the tools that we had, and now we have more tools than we’ve ever had since I’ve been there, so I’m excited about it and I think everybody at the shop is too. We’re ready to go.”

As Almirola alluded to, Sam Hornish Jr. has joined the organization to take over the seat previously vacated by Marcos Ambrose. Hornish is looking forward towards his second shot at the Sprint Cup Series, feeling that he is more prepared now with experience under his belt through the XFINITY Series with Joe Gibbs Racing.

“I’m just excited,” Hornish said. “The toughest part about this is really having the opportunity to come to Richard Petty Motorsports and then think about it for four months or so before we actually get to go out and do racing with the lack of testing we’ve been able to do. We’ve only got three tests in so far, so to have that opportunity to work with Drew (Blickensderfer), and Aric came to all three of the tests and we got an opportunity to jump back and forth out of the car to see what each of us liked as far as driving goes. I feel like that’s one of the main benefits right now.”

Hornish added that they have discovered that both he and Almirola want similar things out of the race car, as far as handling characteristics, which will allow them to cover twice as much ground in finding how to make the cars better at the track each weekend.

“I’m just excited about getting the opportunity to go there, not to mention the fact of going back to the Cup Series full-time,” he continued. “It’s a lot different than what it was when I did it the last time, and I feel like we’ve got a lot of things to look forward to. I think the only thing we’re lacking right now is we still need to sit down and set out a map of what are we gonna feel comfortable with throughout the year. What are our goals gonna be and figuring out how we’re gonna to continue evaluate ourselves to be able to move forward and to get to where we want to go.”

While he may not have sponsorship for the whole season, Richard Petty stated that he is committed to running Hornish all year in all 36 races.

“We are planning to run the full season with Sam in the car and we have Twisted Tea stepping up in a big way as our primary partner,” RPM CEO Brian Moffitt stated. “We also have some other partners that are going to be joining us and we’ll be announcing them later in the year. Blue Emu is coming aboard, R-M Automotive, as well as Medallion Bank and Petty’s Garage, so we look forward to continuing our effort to grow this sport, grow RPM and continue to put our cars in victory lane. We look forward to that.

“Another announcement that we have is Andy’s Medallion Sports Properties has actually hired Sean Downes, who was development director for NASCAR. He helped bring XFINITY into the sport, so we have him now helping us in our efforts to fill out the number 9 car through the season.”