LOUDON, N.H. -- Who's in charge at Richard Petty Motorsports? Even Kasey Kahne wants to know.

Kahne's race team announced last week that it will absorb Yates Racing and switch to Fords next season. That merger creates quite a crowded hierarchy, one that includes Yates partners Doug Yates and Max Jones, RPM co-owner George Gillett, managing partner Foster Gillett, executive operations director Robbie Loomis and Richard Petty himself. As for who will be the ultimate decision-maker out of that group -- well, not even Kahne seems to know for certain.

“

I just feel so confident and so comfortable with Kenny [Francis] and with the team that he has surrounding him and has surrounding us. If I didn't have that, I'd be a mess.

”

-- KASEY KAHNE

"That's a tough question, because I really don't know who it is, either. So, I don't know," the team's lead driver said Friday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, site of Sunday's opening Chase race.

"There are not a lot of answers out there right now. I don't know if it's because we're in the middle of a lot of things, we just don't have a person in that position. I think Robbie Loomis is supposedly going to be that guy, but I don't think that he is yet. Is it Foster? You can't get anything out of Foster. So it's hard to say who that is, and I think that's because we're in a lot of different things right now. But when you're in things, you still need to keep your team and your guys, your company behind you knowing what's going on, and we don't have that. Hopefully, we'll get it soon. The sooner we get that, the better everybody will be."

Concrete answers have been difficult to come by in the immediate aftermath of the RPM/Yates announcement; a large reason why, Petty said last week, was because the teams had just agreed to a letter of intent and not signed a formal agreement, and many details had yet to be worked out. The situation was further muddled after reports surfaced of an argument last week between George Gillett and former vice president Mark McArdle, who had been with the team since the Evernham Motorsports days, and has since left the organization.

"I think Mark's done a nice job with our company," Kahne said. "He's changed some things that I think have helped and benefitted us. He's worked really hard and put in a lot of time. They had their issues with things, and he's gone. He's been gone a week now, and I think our team can step up and do a good job and they've shown it throughout the year. The company has showed it through good times and bad. They just keep working hard for all the cars. The 9 guys go out and perform, and it's been nice to see how hard those guys work and the good job they do. A lot of the times they really don't know what's going to happen the next day. That's just a lot of hard working employees that do a nice job."

So who's going to be in charge? "I've got a pretty good idea who's going to be in charge," Petty said last weekend. "I think the guy with the most money is going to be in charge."

The assumption is that would be George Gillett, although RPM has not publicly said who owns what share of the company. For the moment it's a rather uncertain situation, not something Kahne -- who is racing for a championship as part of the 12-man Chase field -- necessarily embraces with title aspirations on the line. Right now he's leaning on crew chief Kenny Francis and the members of his No. 9 team, many of which have been with him for years.

"I just feel so confident and so comfortable with Kenny and with the team that he has surrounding him and has surrounding us. If I didn't have that, I'd be a mess. I wouldn't know what to think," he said. "But I do have that, and it's nice to be able to know each day that I can call up Kenny and we can talk about racing and what we're going to do this weekend. ... So I'm sitting pretty good and I'm happy with that. But if I didn't have those guys, I don't know what I would do."