MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- Anticipating a manufacturer switch in 2010, Richard Petty Motorsports will field a Ford next weekend at Talladega Superspeedway for one of its four drivers, Elliott Sadler.

Robbie Loomis, RPM's executive vice president of motorsports operations, said Friday at Martinsville Speedway he was looking forward to his team's Ford debut in the Amp Energy 500, with an eye toward doing more races with Ford in the season's final four events.

"We're very excited because I think any time you can learn something about your competitors -- and what's been your competitors' cars for years -- for me especially having never really gotten an inside look at a Ford, is really exciting," Loomis said. "Obviously they have really good stuff on the speedways, but at the same time, we'll be at the track in the unique situation of being there with three Dodges and one Ford.

"The Dodges have been doing great for us all year and they got Kasey [Kahne] into the Chase, so we're looking to learn as much as we can before we head into next season."

Loomis said taking the organization's first Ford, a Yates Racing car with several superspeedway starts on its resume, to Talladega wasn't a difficult decision. He said the limited adjustability of NASCAR's new car and the capability of assessing a car's usefulness via technology rather than on track, plus Talladega's simplicity also were factors.

"I've never thought about Talladega as a handling race track," Loomis said with a laugh. "I think it'll just be good to go there with the different brand and try to learn as much about it as we can.

"We decided to have Elliott in the car because he's got a great speedway record and hopefully we can have some fun with him."

Kahne, who comes to Martinsville ninth in the championship after being out of the Chase the two previous years, said a week ago that he was locked into a Dodge for the rest of this season. The teams of Sadler and A.J. Allmendinger have no problem running Fords and Loomis said RPM looks forward to it.

Using Ford's new FR9 engine, the manufacturer's first purpose-built NASCAR racing engine, never was a consideration for RPM's Ford debut, Loomis said, adding he hadn't discussed it with Roush Yates Engines head Doug Yates.

"I'm sure, like us, that he's got a ton of engines he needs to use up, as he gets ready to convert to the new one," Loomis said. "I'm sure that's what opened up the window for us to do it."

Loomis said RPM would "definitely" look at running more Fords in some combination as the series completes its 2009 schedule at Texas and Homestead, 1.5-mile high-banked ovals and the one-mile Phoenix short track. The team is unsure how many cars it will field next season.

"We haven't really settled in on every decision for that," Loomis said. "But we're definitely going to run a Ford some more, for the rest of the year at some different style race tracks so we can try to learn as much as we can.

"We're trying to not put so much emphasis on what we can learn in one weekend, because when we decided to make this manufacturer move, it's a huge move for Richard Petty Motorsports. We're just trying to build another chapter in the book, that's come together over a long, long time."