Question: Bobby Labonte has said that the performacne seems to be much improved over the last several races; can you talk about your recent success?
Robbie Loomis: Jeff Meendering (#43 crew chief) and Bobby Labonte have been doing a great job – everyone on the 43 car and at Petty Enterprises have been testing a lot. With the start of this season, we were behind the eight ball because we didn’t spend the money doing the necessary stuff to come out of the box like we needed to at the beginning of the year. Unfortunately, our drivers – Bobby and Kyle – had to pay the price when we hadn’t done that. The last few weeks, we’ve kind of settled down a bit on our front-end stuff. We had a great practice in Richmond. We felt the race was fair. When we went to Loudon, we felt like we had the best weekend for all of our practices. We were in the top-five in all the practices and really good in the rankings in the average of lap times. We felt good about the progress that we made (in Loudon). Thirteenth (place finish) isn’t what we want. We’re not going to quit until we find Victory Lane.
Question: What plans do you have in place for the second Petty car for next year?
Robbie Loomis: There’s no secret that we’ve been working our way through it since we took on our new partners with Boston Ventures and David Zucker – the new CEO. We’re still navigating our way through our direction. It’s obvious that we want to bring in a young guy with Bobby Labonte’s experience and try to build from there. We’re excited about this past weekend. We’re working a lot with Chad McCumbee and will probably take some looks at Chad this season for sure in another five races. We’re excited about where we’re going in the future with that…also excited about having the experience of Bobby Labonte on our side.
Question: Will Kyle (Petty) be in the car next year?
Robbie Loomis: Oh yeah. Kyle’s going to be back in (the 45 car) this weekend in Dover and some other races lined up for him during the end of the year. We’ll see Kyle and I’m sure you’ll see Kyle out there next year. As everyone knows, with all the sponsorship dependent on how you put all these programs together, we’re trying to work our way through it right now.
Question: All the chase drivers come from three- or four-car opeartions. Can Petty Enterprises continue to race alone? Does it make sense to create a four-car operation? what do you have to do to move up to the chase-level team?
Robbie Loomis: I think when NASCAR said a few years ago that four teams was the limit, that pretty much drew a line in the sand that said, “You better get there (to a four-car team) quick.” I know David Zucker – our CEO – is definitely looking at a lot of different avenues on the quickest way for growth. Right now, I’m not going to go out here and promise that we’re going to be any more than two teams because that’s what we are focused on right now. But I do think that we have to look at every avenue out there with these race teams and figure out how do we get stronger? Especially with our own manufacturers – with Dodge – that might make sense – for someone to work a lot closer and have that alliance. We’ve been fortunate because we lean on our support from our engine supplier – Gillett Evernham – so that’s helped us a lot. But at the same time, it’s not the full benefit of having four cars in the shop and four crew-chiefs sitting in a meeting and four drivers to draw from every week.
Question: Is one option next year for Petty Enterprises three cars, one with a limited schedule with Kyle driving it?
Robbie Loomis: It definitely is. We’ve had a lot of discussion on that in staff meetings each week. Dave Zucker – our CEO – is trying to put a lot of things together on the sponsorship front and that’s one of the avenues that we’ve talked about. If we could run a third car on a limited schedule – even if it is a minimum of five to seven races – it does help us prepare and get a little bit of information in our circle and also prepare an easier transition when we go to three cars in 2010 when everyone gets this economy rolling again.
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