Kyle Petty isn’t quite ready to hang up his driving suit. Petty on Monday denied a published report that he would step out of the #45 Georgia-Pacific Dodge and into retirement at some point this season. “I don’t know where that (rumor) came from; I don’t have a clue,” Petty said during a break in testing at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. If I was going to retire, I wouldn’t have come out here and run in the half-marathon and then got up this morning at 6 o’clock to come to the track.” Petty said that “there is no plan at all” for him to turn over the driving duties of the Petty Enterprises car to Shane Hmiel, as was rumored. Hmiel currently is serving an indefinite suspension by NASCAR for violating its substance-abuse policy. Although both Petty Enterprise’s cars struggled last season, Petty said the addition of veteran driver Jeff Green in the #43 car already is paying dividends. Both Green and Petty finished in the top 20 during testing earlier this month at Daytona International Speedway. “Realistically, Jeff brings a lot to the table,” Petty said. “He drove for DEI and he drove for Childress, so he came in and looked at our stuff and he said, ‘look, you guys are not a 40th-place team; we’ve got to get this thing straight.’ Jeff has done a lot to get us turned in the right direction.”(Las Vegas Sun), see the past news/rumors on this at my #45 Team News and Links page.(1-28-2004)
