Kyle Petty is displeased with the way Petty Enterprises was consumed by Gillett Evernham Motorsports “ then renamed Richard Petty Motorsports “ and was “crushed” the new team co-opted a bit of his personal history. “Petty Enterprises ceased to exist when it left (ancestral home) Level Cross, N.C.,” said Petty, who does not have a Sprint Cup ride for the first time since 1979. “It further ceased to exist whenever the other group bought it, and that’s just a fact of life.” But Petty was perhaps most irked by RPM’s move to use, without consultation, a #44 Dodge for A.J. Allmendinger with the paint scheme Petty bore in winning in his first start, a 1979 ARCA race at Daytona. Petty drove the #44 at Petty Enterprises until his son Adam was killed in 2000, then he switched to his son’s #45. “I was crushed. I was hurt and I’m not going to get over it for a while,” Petty, 48, said. “And that’s a personal thing. That’s me. That’s not “¦ anything to do with anything else. That was my paint job and my car and my number and my stuff from my first win. Not for Petty Enterprises or GEM or whoever that is.”(St Petersburg Times)(2-15-2009)
