Full Throttle

Petty Enterprises and Gillett Evernham Motorsports have come to a merger and will field a four-car Dodge team that will include the famed No. 43 team.

(With apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

“How do I love many own thee? Let me count the ways.”

Stay with me, this gets ugly.

The new merged 4-car team is co-owned by Richard Petty and Petty Holdings (Petty Enterprises is toast), who in turn are owned in part by majority shareholder Boston Ventures and Gillett Evernham Motorsports.

Did I miss anyone?

Oh yeah, the originator of what has turned out to be an ownership Hodge-Podge Ray Evernham still has his tiny slice of the team he birthed in 1999. (A partridge-in-a-Peartree made a bid but couldn’t get financing.)

Other details remain to be announced but here’s what we know at this point:

• The No. 43 car will be among the four cars with this team.
• No driver for the No. 43 car has been announced.
• A fourth car is scheduled to run in eight races, including the upcoming Budweiser Shootout with additional races contingent upon sponsorship.
• Ray Evernham retains a minority ownership in the team.
• Petty employees Robbie Loomis, Dale Inman and Brian Moffitt also will have active roles with the new team.
• The team will use GEM’s Statesville, N.C., race shop and its Concord, N.C., engine shop.

There’s a lot of unanswered questions that list brings up, but one thing stands out in my mind.

Petty Ent. left it’s traditional base in Level Cross - joining DEI as a museum piece - for space leased from Yates Racing in Mooresville, N.C 13 months ago, what happens to that facility?

Presumably that shop remains a Yates possession but you have to think someone will move into it. Like Tommy Baldwin who’s looking to start a new team on the cheap.

“This was a big decision for us but it’s something we really wanted to do,” Richard Petty said in a statement. “We hope everyone in the sport embraces what George [Gillett] and I are doing. Nothing is going to change for me. I’m going to be at the track every weekend, and really involved with the teams and drivers back at the shop.”

One can hope that, but to be honest what I call the modern day fan - say post 1990 - seem to be less tolerant of these type of changes. More often than not they use them as a way to bash NASCAR and in particular Brian France.

Not that he doesn’t deserve some of it but the “haters” pile-on way too much.