A blast from the past: Petty car in championship hunt (cont'd)

Times have changed. Although Petty does not own his current team outright -- he shares ownership with George Gillett -- he still has a stake in it, and his name is still on the organization. In Kahne, RPM has a driver who is a consistent threat to win races, something no Petty car has enjoyed since the King himself scored five victories and 23 top-five finishes way back in 1979.

“

It never gets old when you win. I've been real fortunate, won a bunch of races and stuff. It never gets old.

”

-- RICHARD PETTY

Now, Kahne has more than just race wins in his sights. A topsy-turvy inaugural night race at Atlanta shuffled the deck of potential Chase participants. Greg Biffle finished 10th, but fell three places in the standings to 11th. Ryan Newman finished ninth, and fell two positions to ninth. Kyle Busch finished 13th and fell one spot to 14th. Matt Kenseth finished 12th and gained no ground, remaining on the cut-off line, 20 points ahead of Brian Vickers.

A few drivers took advantage -- Denny Hamlin (who became the fourth Chase participant to clinch a playoff spot), Juan Montoya (who moved up to eighth with his third-place run), and Kahne, who jumped a healthy five positions to sixth thanks to the victory. Should the driver of the No. 9 car finish the job next weekend at Richmond, Petty will have an opportunity to experience something he hasn't celebrated since that 1979 season: a championship.

It's been a while, to say the least, since a Petty car was in the thick of a title hunt. No vehicle bearing the Petty name has finished in the final top 10 since 1996, when Bobby Hamilton placed ninth in points for Petty Enterprises. But the last Petty driver to be considered a genuine championship threat? Again, you'd have to go back to Richard, who placed fifth in 1983.

Given the strength of championship frontrunners Tony Stewart and Jimmie Johnson, Kahne would have to be seen as a long shot to net the King another title. But Petty doesn't mind opining on what it might take to win what for him would be championship number eight.

"You know, I guess you go into any season saying, OK, if we have a good year, we've got a chance of winning a championship," he said. "We've been up and down, bouncing around. Got off to a bad start at Daytona, and just kept plugging away, plugging away. Maybe we're like some of the other teams, or football teams or whatever. Maybe we got off to a slow start, but hopefully all the stuff that we've done, all the stuff we've learned being a crew and a team deal sort of gels at the end of the season. That's the way the situation is with the points standings now. That's the way it is. Anybody that has the last part of the season good has a chance to win a championship. That's a good start to the last part of the season. So that's the way we're looking at it."