LEVEL CROSS, N.C. -- The winningest organization in NASCAR announces its first move since its inception in 1949. Richard and Kyle Petty, in efforts to garner continued wins and championships, have agreed to move Petty Enterprises closer to the center of NASCAR activities in the greater Charlotte, North Carolina area.

They have reached a multi-year lease agreement for shop space located in the city of Mooresville. The space was formerly occupied by Robert Yates Racing and its two-car Nextel Cup operation.

Petty Enterprises, founded by Richard's father, Lee, in 1949 as Lee Petty Engineering, is currently headquartered in Level Cross, North Carolina. At that location, the 60,000-square foot sprawling facility has become one of the most successful in motorsports' history. The organization has 268 NASCAR Nextel Cup wins, 10 NASCAR Nextel Cup titles and nine Daytona 500 trophies have been won from inside the hallowed ground.

"Level Cross will always be the home of the wins and championships that the Petty family built," said team owner Richard Petty. "It is where Petty Enterprises was founded and where the team has won and built a legacy in NASCAR. Petty Enterprises and Level Cross are the same as Lambeau Field and the Green Bay Packers, Yankee Stadium and the New York Yankees and Boston Garden and the Boston Celtics. "

"At the same time this is a very exciting time for Petty Enterprises and our partners," continued Petty. "We are going to continue the heart and soul that is in Level Cross to what now has become the center of the NASCAR world. This was a tough and emotional decision for our family. We care deeply about our roots and this community. We will always call Level Cross our home as we never forget where we came from. We are looking forward to continuing our legacy at this new location."

The move, to begin in December and completed by end of the year, includes the #43 Cheerios/Betty Crocker Dodge driven by Bobby Labonte and the #45 Marathon American Spirit Motor Oil/Wells Fargo/Tire Kingdom Dodge driven by Kyle Petty. It's another move in the forward direction since 2006 when Robbie Loomis was named Vice President of Race Operations and 2000 Nextel Cup champion Bobby Labonte was announced as driver of the famed 43 Dodge.

It has not yet been determined how the current location of Petty Enterprises will be used in 2008. - petty racing pr

MORE: Petty Enterprises officials today announced that the organization has signed a multiyear lease agreement for shop space located in the city of Mooresville, N.C.. The space was formerly occupied by Robert Yates Racing and its two-car Nextel Cup operation.

Petty Enterprises, founded by Lee Petty in 1949 as Lee Petty Engineering, is currently headquartered in Level Cross, N.C. The organization has won 268 NASCAR Cup races, 10 Cup titles and nine Daytona 500 championships from that home base.

The team currently fields Nextel Cup entries for third-generation driver Kyle Petty and Bobby Labonte.

"Level Cross will always be the home of the wins and championships that the Petty family built," said team owner Richard Petty, the son of Lee Petty and father of Kyle Petty. "It is where Petty Enterprises was founded and where the team has won and built a legacy in NASCAR. Petty Enterprises and Level Cross are the same as Lambeau Field and the Green Bay Packers, Yankee Stadium and the New York Yankees and Boston Garden and the Boston Celtics.

"At the same time this is a very exciting time for Petty Enterprises and our partners. We are going to continue the heart and soul that is in Level Cross to what now has become the center of the NASCAR world.

"This was a tough and emotional decision for our family. We care deeply about our roots and this community. We will always call Level Cross our home as we never forget where we came from. We are looking forward to continuing our legacy at this new location."

The move will be completed by the end of the year. It has not been determined how the current location of Petty Enterprises will be used next season. - scenedaily.com

MORE (decision not easy for Petty):  Richard Petty admits that making the decision to move Petty Enterprises from the Level Cross, N.C., complex it has occupied since 1949 was emotional and difficult. Yet, with the sport changing so much in recent years, Petty finally decided to relocate closer to the Charlotte area, the hub for the large majority of NASCAR teams.

On Wednesday, the team announced that Petty has signed a two-year agreement to lease the former Robert Yates Racing shop in Mooresville, N.C. The No. 43 team of Bobby Labonte and No. 45 of Kyle Petty will move into the shop, as well as all aspects of the team, including fabrication.

The shop has 85,000 square feet, with 30,000 additional square feet for fabrication. Petty currently has a fabrication shop in Thomasville, N.C., but that operation will move to Mooresville as well.

Petty Enterprises earned 268 wins and 10 championships in NASCAR's elite series from the Level Cross shop, and seven-time Cup champion Richard Petty was born in the house next door. He admits that he wasn't enthusiastic about moving the operation elsewhere when the subject first came up.

"When you walk through the gates at Level Cross, you walked through NASCAR history," he said. "We were there when it started, when it went up and when it went down and all that kind of stuff. It's really, really hard to do, plus we were so much a part of the community, it's kind of hard for us and for the people around the community to accept, 'Hey, we're not there anymore.'"

Still, Petty felt this change was needed for Petty to catch back up to the competition.

This could be a temporary move, as the team continues to look for land on which to build its own site, but it is one that the organization felt needed to be made now.

Petty says that the team clearly has room to expand where it is and that this is not a sign that the team is partnering or merging with another organization. He did not make this decision to make Petty more attractive to others. He did it to enhance the team, to build it from the inside and make it more competitive.

With a shop located where most of the crew members are, Petty can hopefully lure more personnel to the team. He points out that Mooresville, where many crew members locate when they break in to racing, is an hour-and-a-half drive from Level Cross, which is a lot to ask of a crew member.

"If this is where the core of the people are, then maybe we'll look at going to where the core is at, and it won't take us long to figure out if that's the right solution or not," Petty said. "One reason that when the Robert Yates building came up it was a really good opportunity was to go test the waters to see if this is what we really want to do on a permanent basis."

Petty says that a lot of people working at Petty already live outside of Level Cross, with only about 20 actually living there, so this won't impact the majority of the team's current personnel.

Asked why he waited so long to make the move, Petty said that he had seen others do it without as much success as one would expect, plus he had people working at the shop who had been there 20-40 years. He tried to find the happy medium.

Plus, he was just not willing to make the move. When he looked at all the gleaming new shops, he knew that his plain white group of buildings had produced as many wins and championships as anyone else. That made it difficult to accept that a move like this just might be necessary if the team is going to return to the form of previous eras.

"I guess over the years it was looking back and looking at the competition that we run against and as people came in with money and stuff like that, still being able to operate out of a place that started on a dirt floor in 1949 and still being competitive and still being able to win races and championships, and it finally caught up with us," he said of his desire to remain in Level Cross. "It just took Richard Petty, hard-headed, like 20 years to say, 'OK, we've outlived that particular segment of Petty Enterprises.'

"It always made us feel proud to be able to go look at these great big, high-buck buildings that other teams have got, and then we go over and look at our place that started in '49 and say, 'Look, there has been more wins come out of that particular building right there than eight or 10 or these other buildings.' That's just a pride deal, but pride doesn't work too good at the bank, so we're going to have to go forward with what we're doing." - scenedaily.com

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