Petty move a precursor to a bigger transition to come

Walk into the original A-frame building on the ancestral Petty Enterprises homestead in Level Cross, N.C., and you can still make out the initials of patriarch Lee Petty scratched into the five-decades-old concrete. Since 1949, back when it was called Lee Petty Engineering, this timeless organization has been headquartered in a timeless place. The bucolic, out-of-the-way location has become part of the team's very identity, like powder-blue racecars, STP logos, or the ostrich feathers in Richard Petty's ubiquitous hat.

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You want them to stay, to do it their way, and somehow make it work. Your heart wants to think that they can continue to roll racecars out of those white, low-slung buildings off Branson Mill Road, near the house where Richard grew up. But your head knows it can't happen. The Pettys, staunch guardians of tradition in a sport that has lost so much of it, need to be farther south. They need to be nearer to Charlotte and its broad personnel base, nearer to people who might have always worked for them if not for the distance, if they harbor any realistic hopes of winning again.

So they're moving out of Level Cross and to Mooresville, N.C., the very epicenter of the NASCAR universe, leasing a shop that used to belong to Robert Yates Racing. It will be a sad moment, turning the page on a place so steeped in NASCAR history, closing the doors on a facility that produced vehicles that went to Victory Lane 268 times. But there have been no victories -- and only five top-five finishes -- since 1999. It has to happen. The move begins in December, and is scheduled to be finished by the end of the year. They'll likely be there until they build their own shop, somewhere in the immediate area.

"When you walk through the gates at Level Cross, you walked through NASCAR history," Richard Petty said. "We were there when it started, when it went up and when it went down and all that kind of stuff. It's really, really hard to do, plus we were so much a part of the community. It's kind of hard for us and for the people around the community to accept, hey, they're not there anymore. We hate that part of it, but we feel like for us to go forward and to try to keep up with it ... NASCAR's growing, and we just felt like we had to try to look at us growing somewhere a little bit down the line, too. This is our first venture into something like this. One thing about it, we're going to be like a yo-yo. We're going to always have this home, and if we need to we can always come back."

It will be a jarring transition, watching those Petty haulers roll not out of those modest buildings in central North Carolina, but another glass and steel structure outside of Charlotte. But for Petty Enterprises, the biggest transition is yet to come. That will take place sometime in the not-so-distant future, when Kyle Petty steps out of the team's No. 45 car and into the television booth, and NASCAR will be without a Petty racing in its premier series for the first time since Harry Truman was in the White House.

On the move

Richard and Kyle Petty, in efforts to garner continued wins and titles, will move Petty Enterprises closer to NASCAR.

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It wasn't supposed to be this way, of course. Adam Petty was going to carry on the family legacy just as his father and grandfather had, introducing the most famous last name in NASCAR to a new generation. With his easy smile and good humor, he would have fit right in next to the likes of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kasey Kahne. He'd be 27 now, and in the thick of his Nextel Cup career had fate not intervened and claimed him during practice for a Busch race at New Hampshire International Speedway in May of 2000.

Kyle Petty is 47, and been debunking retirement rumors for years now. Thankfully, he's as fiery and tenacious and rambunctious as ever. He likely still has a few good seasons left in him, given the dearth of true up-and-comers in the series and the tendency of drivers to strap into racecars until somebody has to pull them out. He'll go out on his terms, choosing his own time to step out of his Dodge and behind the microphone. His charity work, his role as an ambassador for the sport, and his importance to his sponsors transcend his results on the racetrack. He'll stay as long as he likes, and no one will question him for it.

But eventually he'll have to get out, and when he does, the Petty organization is at a true crossroads. There's no question the Pettys burn to win again -- you don't hire Bobby Labonte and Robbie Loomis and move from Level Cross if you're content with running 34th. But the Petty name is a brand, as familiar to the average person as Xerox or Marriott. And when Kyle ultimately slides out of the car, some of that brand identity inevitably goes away. The team has developmental drivers like Chad McCumbee and Tim Andrews in the pipeline. But whoever succeeds Kyle in the No. 45 car won't have that magical last name. On a much smaller scale, it will be like when Richard retired 15 years ago, and people wondered how the mythical No. 43 would carry on with Rick Wilson behind the wheel. Which, as it turned out, was not very well.

No, Kyle hasn't been to Victory Lane since 1995. But he has that Petty presence, which to some sponsors and fans means just as much. Will companies still be willing to spend millions of dollars to back a Petty team with no Petty in the driver's seat? Given that Richard is still a fixture in television commercials, you would think so. But we won't truly know until it happens, until Kyle hangs up his firesuit and NASCAR braces for its first season without its most famous family on the racetrack since 1949.

That's why this move from Level Cross is so important. That's why it's so key for Labonte to develop a rapport with his new crew chief as strong as the one he now has with Doug Randolph, who is leaving next year for Dale Earnhardt Inc., and has been central to the No. 43 car's improvement. That's why Petty Enterprises is so willing to break with tradition to try and improve performance. Because they know that tradition will only carry them so far.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.