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) UPDATE 3: TNT will make a major announcement regarding its 2007 NASCAR coverage. TNT’s coverage of six Nextel Cup Series races begins June 10 with racing from Pocono followed by races at Michigan, Sonoma, New Hampshire, Daytona and Chicago.(TNT PR) AND: #45-Kyle Petty figures driving in a Nextel Cup race while he calls it on TV won’t be that big a deal. So TNT will formally announce Wednesday that Petty will be an analyst on its six Cup races this summer, and call one the June 24 Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma, Calif. as he races in it. “There’s constant communication between drivers and their spotters and crew chiefs anyway,” says Petty, 47. “Really, just pushing another button and talking to millions of people won’t be a ton different. Maybe I’ll have to clean up my language.” Petty told TNT he didn’t want to miss that race because he likes road courses. And, in planning to run all Cup races except ones he’ll call for TNT, he says it’s “still my No. 1 priority to drive cars. Or maybe I’d be begging for a seat in the (TV) booth.” Kyle kept the idea of working on TV “at arm’s length” and says he only appeared on some TNT Busch Series races this summer because TNT analyst Benny Parsons whom Kyle says he’s known “forever” needed an occasional fill-in. Parsons was diagnosed with lung cancer in July and died last month after months of treatment that seemed to have been going successfully. Kyle says he’s not a replacement: “I’ll be really clear about this: Nobody can fill Benny’s shoes. I’m not taking his place. I’m in his seat, but Benny will always be there.” As an announcer, Petty says he’ll avoid “guessing what drivers are thinking” and remember TV announcers “are just there for decoration.” And, he says, he might want to pursue future TV work because it fits with his overall goal in life: “If I can float through and say I never had a full-time job, I’ll see myself as successful.”(USA Today)(2-7-2007) UPDATE 4: Turner Network Television (TNT) announced today a multi-year contract agreement with Nextel Cup Series driver Kyle Petty to serve as an analyst for the network’s Nextel Cup Series race coverage. Petty will take a five-week hiatus as driver of the #45 Wells Fargo/Marathon/Tire Kingdom Dodge car for Petty Enterprises, marking the first time a Petty will not be behind the wheel in the Nextel Cup Series for an extended period of time since his grandfather, Lee Petty, raced in NASCAR’s Elite Series in 1949. Kyle Petty will join announcers Bill Weber (play-by-play) and Wally Dallenbach (analyst) for TNT’s six consecutive Nextel Cup Series races in 2007, beginning on Sunday, June 10 from Pocono Raceway and concluding on July 15 from the Chicagoland Speedway. On Sunday, June 24, Petty will provide analysis from behind the wheel of his #45 Dodge throughout TNT’s coverage of the Nextel Cup Series race live from Infineon Speedway in Sonoma, CA. Petty previously served as an analyst alongside Weber and Dallenbach in 2006 for five Busch Series races on TNT.(TNT PR), no driver has been named for the five races Petty will miss, have heard no rumors…yet.(2-7-2007)
