Pettys ponder moving from shop of 49 years

LEVEL CROSS, N.C. -- The collection of low-slung white buildings might be mistaken for a chicken farm if not for the big red race transporter parked out front. Petty Enterprises looks like no Nextel Cup shop you've ever seen -- at least in the past 20 years. The big house where Richard Petty grew up is still there, surrounded by green grass and a white picket fence. The office is identified by letters burned into a shingle hanging above the door.

For nearly six decades, the most successful team in NASCAR history has been headquartered in this modest facility outside Greensboro. Cars that won 10 Cup championships and 268 races were built inside structures that haven't changed in decades. The initials of team patriarch Lee Petty are still visible, scrawled into the concrete floor of the original A-frame building erected in 1949.

"This place, to me," says Petty executive vice president Robbie Loomis, "is like Lambeau Field."

Which is why, despite all the charm and history and significance you feel as you walk through the garage bay doors, Petty Enterprises needs to move. Bobby Labonte finishing 21st in points last season was cause for celebration for an organization that hasn't won a race since 1999. The next step toward a return to respectability is a shift south, toward Charlotte and all the engineers, fabricators and crewmen who might be interested in working for Petty if not for the 90-minute commute.

"If I could, I would race from right here," Loomis said Tuesday during the Lowe's Motor Speedway preseason media tour. "I love the area. I love the people. This has been home for me. But it's a situation where you're always looking at how to strengthen an organization, and you have people knock on your door to come to work, and you hear time and time again, 'Man, if you were here. If you were here.' You only have to hear it so many times, and it's like, 'OK, we have to do something.' "

They don't like the idea of leaving the old farmhouse, their peaceful little outpost in Level Cross, and the only home the Pettys have ever known. But deep down, they know they have to.

"We've not made the move yet. We've made the decision to look at moving," Richard cautioned. But the inevitable is out there. Change, the only constant in NASCAR, is something the Pettys have put off for too long.

"What we've run into as time progressed, it's kind of passed us by here. This is history. So we've got to look a little more ahead to the future and not look back so much. When you come through here, you come through the history deal, but we're not looking that far forward. So for us to look forward, we're going to have to get in a better location."

The precursor to this came two years ago when the Wood Brothers, another legendary NASCAR outfit fallen on tough times, left its ancestral home in Stuart, Va., and moved into a building around the corner from Lowe's Motor Speedway. Now the Pettys are looking just down Interstate 77 to Salisbury, and maybe a move within 12 to 18 months if the right facility can be found

"I think for us to assemble a better-structured team, I think it would be better to be in the nucleus of where people can have a better quality of life and not spend an hour and a half on the road," added Bill Wilburn, Kyle Petty's crew chief, who commutes 72 miles each way. "Schools play a part, travel, gas prices, it all plays into it. It would definitely be easier personnel-wise for us to be located closer to where the talent pool is located."

It would be a bittersweet parting. A trip to Level Cross is like a step back in time, to what NASCAR must have been like decades ago when all the top teams fielded cars out of austere facilities like the ones the Pettys still use. In more ways than one, it's very far from the behemoths that house the sport's elite, mammoth structures in Mooresville and Concord that look they're used to assemble airliners, not racecars.

There's the two-year-old building on the Hendrick Motorsports campus, a glass and steel edifice where the cars of Kyle Busch and Casey Mears are built. There's the burgeoning complex at Richard Childress Racing, soon to include a new 93,000-square-foot addition and 1,400-seat auditorium. There's the 200,000-square foot headquarters of Chip Ganassi Racing, so white and sparkling it would make a hospital blush.

And there's the 424,000-square foot granddaddy that's now home to the NASCAR, open-wheel, and sports-car entries of Penske Racing, a place so big there's serious talk of building a test track on the grounds. It's reached the point where even Dale Earnhardt Inc. -- remember when they used to call that place the "Garage Mahal"? -- feels cramped by comparison.

"You just have a lot of car owners who feel the need to build monuments to themselves," said Ganassi, only half-kidding.

The thing is, there's no correlation between shop size and success. Between them, Ganassi and Penske have more than 600,000 square feet, and all of two race wins over the last two years. Felix Sabates, minority owner of the Ganassi operation, said the megashops look good when trying to woo potential sponsors. But they don't help you get to Victory Lane.

"I won fall Rockingham out of a 6,000-square-foot building, with nine mechanics," he said, reflecting back on his old Sabco team that Ganassi bought the controlling interest in. "We had nine guys. The rest were part-time. I went from 6,000 to 20,000 to 100,000 to this 200,000-square-foot building. And we're going to add some more to this one."

Wilburn worked in one of the megashops when he was Rusty Wallace's crew chief at Penske. He'll take the friendlier confines of Petty Enterprises any day.

"You can get lost in one of those big places. I worked there, I know," he said. "It's easy to get lost on a parts run, and not even be able to find what you're looking for. Time-wise, they're not as efficient. Some of the bigger companies, obviously, the more they're capable of producing. But sometimes it's harder for them to turn on a dime if there's a recall on something."

But for the Pettys, who despite seven winless seasons have rarely had problems attracting or retaining sponsors, the issue isn't space. Including the fab shop 20 miles away in Thomasville, they have about 120,000 square feet to work with. The Pettys' new home would likely be smaller than the one they have now, somewhere in the neighborhood of 80,000 to 100,000 square feet.

"This facility is great," Loomis said. "It's just the location."

So now they look south, for a new facility they hope will help them sustain the little bit of momentum they were able to build through Labonte's strong stretch run last year. But there will always be a Petty presence in Level Cross, beyond the home where Richard grew up. Loomis foresees a satellite shop to build cars for the road-racing Kyle and Labonte both like to dabble in, a place where the employees who don't want to move to the Charlotte area can work.

"It will always be a race shop," Loomis said. "It will always be something that Richard comes back to."

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.