hearing that Kyle Petty, driver of the #45 Petty Racing Dodge, will be part of the TNT broadcast crew that airs six Nextel Cup races in June and July of 2007 and that Petty would not drive in some or all those six races, being replaced by another driver, no idea who that driver may be. Bill Weber will return as TNT’s play-by-play announcer and Wally Dallenbach returns as a race analyst.(1-20-2007) UPDATE: from a Clear!Blue/Dodge PR, Kyle Petty quotes during the Nextel Media Tour, day 2: DO YOU HAVE PLANS TO QUIT DRIVING? “No. All that stuff is back like it was last year. Wells Fargo has come back. We have a multi-year deal with Wells Fargo, with Marathon, with Tire Kingdom, with Coca-Cola. We had a huge promotion around the Nextel All-Star race last year with Coca-Cola. There is so much going on right now. I’m like one of those guys if you ever thought about cutting back, it just keeps getting busier with camp with Victory Junction with everything we do there. With everything that’s going on at Petty Enterprises, that’s good. I’m glad that’s story keeps moving because last year about this same time this was a hot story.” DO YOU HAVE OPTIONS TO WORK IN TV? “I’ve talked to the TNT people about numerous options. I did four or five races for them last year in the Busch Series. We had talked a month or so ago and obviously with Benny’s passing and with the way things have gone there hasn’t been a lot of communication lately. If I have an opportunity to do some stuff with them I would more than welcome the opportunity to do something at some point in time. If that’s this year, great. If it’s in two years or 10 years, that’s great, too. I just want to keep that option open. I could possibly do anything. There’s a couple of years there I sat out 10 or 15 just because I wasn’t fast enough. I can sit out any amount.”(Clear!Blue/Dodge PR)(1-24-2007) UPDATE 2: Kyle Petty said he’s intrigued by the idea of becoming a broadcaster and might make the change, on a part-time basis, as early as this summer. Petty said he has talked to Turner Sports officials about a position. “They’ve got six or seven races right in the middle of the season; they’ve got NBA stuff; they’ve got golf stuff,” Petty said. “If I wanted to go do something different and keep Kyle Petty’s face in the public, what better place to do it than a place like that?” Jeff Pomeroy, senior director of public relations for Turner Sports, said there have been preliminary discussions with Petty, who has broadcast for the company in the past, but no final determination has been made.(Atlanta Journal-Constitution)(1-25-2007)
