MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- Officials from Petty Enterprises do not deny that they have held preliminary discussions about a possible future partnership of some sort with Dale Earnhardt Inc., but they strongly deny that anything is close to happening or even likely to happen.

In fact, Robbie Loomis said that DEI is not the only group with which Petty Enterprises is discussing its future. Nor is it alone in the Sprint Cup Series garage area, where Loomis insisted all teams are scrambling to find stronger footing in difficult economic times.

"I think in this time, in this sport, anybody running from one team to three teams is talking to somebody, and anybody with four teams is trying to get to eight teams," said Loomis, vice president of race operations for Petty Enterprises.

Loomis likened it to what has been taking place throughout the financial world in recent weeks. Organizations such as Petty Enterprises and DEI, which are short on sponsorship dollar commitments for next season, are trying to align themselves with larger companies that are on more solid financial ground.

This is in addition to a partnership Petty already took on in May when it sold a majority interest in its operation to Boston Ventures, an investment group.

"You know, like we saw with Wachovia and Wells Fargo and their [bank] merger -- Citigroup was looking at [Wachovia] also -- there are a lot of teams talking to a lot of people in our sport," Loomis said.

But while a Petty/DEI marriage might make sense on some fronts, on others it simply doesn't. Petty currently runs the No. 43 and No. 45 Dodge teams, and gets its engines from Gillett Evernham Motorsports, which currently fields three Dodge teams itself but has been rumored to possibly be switching to Toyotas for next season.

DEI currently fields four Chevrolet teams -- the No. 1 driven by Martin Truex Jr.; the No. 01 driven by Regan Smith; the No. 8 that next season is scheduled to be driven by Aric Almirola; and the No. 15 that is driven by Paul Menard. Three of those teams are without sponsorship for next season, with Menard already having announced that he will switch to Fords and drive for Yates Racing, taking his sponsorship with him (his father owns the Menard's home-improvement chain that is primary sponsor on his car).

"The bottom line for us is that we're committed to Dodge," Loomis said. "We like Dodge as our manufacturer; Richard Petty especially. We have three more years with them as far as solid commitments. We feel good about where we're at with them.

"More importantly, Gillett Evernham is our engine supplier. So we're keeping our ears close to the ground on that, just to make sure we're covered from the engine standpoint."

Loomis said he has heard the same rumors that everyone else has: that Ray Evernham may be selling his stake in Gillett Evernham Motorsports and that the new organization may move forward -- with or without Evernham -- by switching manufacturers from Dodge to Toyota.

"For us, we've got to keep our finger on the pulse of that because it does affect our engine situation," Loomis said.

Loomis and others who spoke off the record admitted that NASCAR's rule to limit organizations to running four teams has become somewhat a joke within the garage.

Roush Fenway Racing, for instance, currently fields five teams and has been instructed to cut to four by the end of next season. Yet Roush Fenway has now forged an alliance with Yates Racing that can be construed as, at the very least, a partnership that ultimately could consist of eight teams sharing resources and information.

Hendrick Motorsports appears to be moving in the same direction, aligning its four-team operation more closely with what will be a two-team deal with the newly formed Stewart-Haas Racing next season.

"We now have not only super teams, but super super teams," one source said. "And NASCAR can't do anything about it now because the cat is out of the bag and they need the cars entered in the races. They can't be turning away cars that want to race in this economy, no matter where they might be coming from."

Loomis said it has been frustrating, as a two-team operation, to try to compete with bigger teams that seem to be only getting bigger and stronger all the time.

"That's one thing I really praise [Petty Enterprises CEO] David Zucker and our Boston Ventures guys for," Loomis said of the investment group that bought a majority stake in Petty Enterprises last May. "When they came in, they had a vision of growing Petty Enterprises from two teams to four teams. And very quickly when they looked around at the landscape of the sport, the more they got into it, the more they saw that there were situations where there were six or seven (team organizations) already -- or the potential for other organizations to grow to that.

"They didn't mind us being a two-team deal going up against four teams. They thought we could be strong in the marketplace. But when they came around to thinking we were two teams racing against six or seven, they became very concerned about the efficiencies, the business that you lose, the strength of the teams, the strengths of the drivers. So Boston Ventures is very aggressive in being actively involved in figuring out a way to get stronger, quicker."

And that could include a merger with another organization facing similar challenges.

"It could include any one of a number of scenarios, but I would say that the No. 1 thing is that we will wind up [being with] Dodge for a long time to come," Loomis said.