CONCORD, N.C. - Richard Petty recognized that times were changing and that NASCAR teams just couldn't be run the way they once were. He felt the need to merge with another organization, to find a way to return his Petty group to prominence.

But he had one key restriction.

Petty considered many variables before deciding to join ranks with Gillett Evernham Motorsports. Chief among those was keeping his family's legacy alive. The seven-time NASCAR Cup champion's team had been part of the sport since NASCAR's first stock-car race, in 1949. Petty didn't want that family history to get lost in the shuffle.

Although Petty came up with a list of things he wanted as part of any potential merger, there was one key element - keeping the Petty name in the new team. That led to the creation of Richard Petty Motorsports, the now four-car Cup team that runs out of the former GEM shop in Statesville, N.C.

The organization will field full-time entries for Kasey Kahne, Elliott Sadler and Reed Sorenson and will enter AJ Allmendinger in at least five Cup races in a fourth car this season.

And it carries Petty’s name and will include his trademark No. 43 car.

"That was one of the first stipulations, I guess, before we talked about monies or percentages," Petty said. "That was at the top of my list. I told you I had eight or 10 things that I said, 'Ok if you agree to this, we'll talk a little further,' and that was at the top of the list. And [team majority owner George Gillett] had no qualms at all. He'd bought a couple of different - he bought the hockey team and bought the soccer team and didn't change any of that because those people already had continuity and he's not been here with Evernham Gillett long enough to get continuity …  so then he takes a company that's been here 60 years and then he plays off of that."

Petty admits that without that, the planned  merger might not have happened.

"We wouldn't have gotten to the second sentence," Petty says, flashing his trademark grin.

Robbie Loomis, director of racing operations for the new team and a longtime Petty employee, sees it simply.

"If you go out there in America, especially [among] people that don't know racing, the one thing they do know is Richard Petty," he says. "So that's what I feel is neat about this name.”

More than just a continuation of a name, Petty hungers to return to the top tier of the sport. After years on top of the game, he's watched his team fall onto hard times. Petty Enterprises last won with John Andretti in 1999. It has earned one top-five finish in the last three seasons. The sport was passing Petty by - and he wanted to put an end to that.

Midway through 2008, he sold controlling interest in his team to Boston Ventures, an equity investment firm. He has no regrets about that move, but says he learned things through it that helped when he joined with that group and GEM.

"The way it worked out, it was a lot of confusion, but it made mine and George's deal that much better when we did do them together," he says. "They had a little more elbow grease involved in the thing. I learned a lot by working with Boston Ventures, so then when we go to George, we don't make the same mistakes."

Then, late last year, Petty began talking with the GEM group. He'd talked with them in 2007, but this time things were different. This merger came on the heels of one involving another high-profile team, Dale Earnhardt Inc., which merged with Chip Ganassi Racing. Such partnerships have been common in the sport in recent years. Richard Childress Racing took on an investor several years ago, Jack Roush teamed his organization with the Fenway Sports Group and Ray Evernham had already been through one merger, with Gillett.

Petty says all of that is just a sign of the times.

"I just think that the sport has grown, you've got to look at the Petty deal you've got to look at the Earnhardt deal, you look at the Petty deal, we did a lot of stuff from the inside," Petty said. "Now you've got companies from outside, businesses from the outside, coming in looking at it from the financial end. All these two teams ever did was try to get up enough money just to go racing. They didn't look that far into the future, just getting up enough money to go racing.

"Big companies don't do that, they've got long-term situations and big enough deals that if one falls off they've got some money to cover it. We never had any insurance for what we did, we just done it, and companies don't work that way. As big as NASCAR's got, we couldn't operate that way."

With his history, Petty was a natural for the Gillett group. Foster Gillett, the son of team owner George Gillett, oversees motorsports for the GEM team. He says he sees a lot of value in the addition of the Petty team - value that goes beyond pure finances and engineering. The group already worked together in technical areas, so merging their teams should go smoothly.

"We’ve worked together for so long now, that it made sense," Foster Gillett says. "They’ve been driving our engines and we’ve been helping them tune them and so forth. Through that process, our staff touched regularly with their staff. It made a lot of sense on the track.

"We didn’t combine with Richard so we could go and sell more sponsorship. The Gilletts, in one year, you can see the sponsorship that we have added to this team. ∑ It‚s much more about a partnership with Richard himself and having him help us. We‚re new in this sport, we‚re new owners and we have a tremendous amount to learn. Richard is probably the best to learn from. I hope he is excited to help us do better."

Petty seems to be just that. He's been working to rebuild his group, moving the shop closer to the Charlotte, N.C., area last year, hiring past championship winners Loomis and driver Bobby Labonte (who left in the offseason) and then working with Boston Ventures.

Now, though, he thinks he's made a move that will net results. And that was what he wanted when he started talking about a potential merger.

"When they all first started coming in, we were at the top of the heap," he says of all the teams in the garage now. "They were chasing us. Then we got to running even and the first thing we know, we fall off the hill and they take over.

"I think by joining with George and stuff here, I think this puts us back where they've got four or five real top teams, I think we're sixth now." - scenedaily.com