After 35 years in which the #43 made famous by Richard Petty had season-long sponsorship continuity with either STP (1973-2000) or General Mills (2000-2008), a scorecard might be necessary to keep track of the car’s paint schemes in 2009. Petty Enterprises chief marketing officer Mike Bartelli says five or six companies will share primary sponsorship and space has been sold for more than half of the 36-race season. Bartelli says though sponsor opportunities remain available on the car, the team (shored up financially from its acquisition by private equity firm Boston Ventures) will field the #43 for the full season regardless. “Here you have the most iconic number in the sport’s history, and it’s not that we’re losing deals to others,” says Bartelli, who added Petty is substantially far away from cobbling together the millions needed to run its #45 Dodge [supposedly will be the #44 with McCumbee] full time in 2009. “It’s that deals aren’t there. We had a deal done two weeks ago, and the CEO reversed the decision after blessing it and indicated the company was going to make hundreds of millions in cuts.”(USA Today)(11-17-2008)
