Veteran ready for return to Sprint Cup Series, working with Almirola
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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — With its first Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup appearance behind it, a new, decorated driver in tow and the dust settling on a massive race shop relocation, it’s obvious that Richard Petty Motorsports is in the midst of a progressive transformation.
The team, which saw Aric Almirola pick up his first career premier series victory last July at Daytona International Speedway to vault the No. 43 Ford into the sport’s playoffs, recently moved its headquarters to an 80,000 square foot building in Mooresville, North Carolina, completely redesigning how it proceeds with day-to-day operations to really hammer the focus on a “one-team approach” — with a two-car race shop and 35 new employees.
Gone are the separate offices and garages of old. Crew chiefs, car chiefs and engineers now all interact openly with each other at their desks, while shop employees work side-by-side, knowing a set of shared goals is in place for the 2015 season.
It’s a new way of doing things that runs all the way up to the drivers themselves, Almirola and the incoming former Indianapolis 500 winner, Sam Hornish Jr.
“I think Sam brings a lot of versatility,” said team owner and seven-time Cup champion Richard Petty. “Marcos (Ambrose) was super on road courses and stuff, but he never got the hang of being ready. He could have good races and bad races and good times in the races, but I think Sam will be much more consistent with it.
“In our testing, (Hornish and Almirola) both felt the same thing in the car. Whether they’d change the air pressure or they’d change the springs and both of them feel the same thing. With Marcos, he was one way and Aric was the other way and so it was hard to compare them. Now we’ve got two cars that we can sit down and say, ‘OK, you try this and I’ll try that and if it works, we’ll put it on the other car.’ That should be an advantage for all of us.”
Hornish Jr., the 2013 XFINITY Series runner-up, has three full-time Sprint Cup Series seasons and 131 starts under his belt and will replace Ambrose in the No. 9 car. He comes to RPM after racing part-time for Joe Gibbs Racing in 2014 in an effort to position himself for a competitive Sprint Cup ride in 2015 — which appears to be exactly what he’s done.
It was announced Wednesday during the Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour presented by Technocom that, despite having sold sponsorship for just 10 of the schedule’s 36 races thus far, Hornish will be running a full slate, starting with the season opening Daytona 500. With less than a month to go before the Great American Race, the lack of sponsorship is daunting but offers a view into what the King and Co. think of Hornish’s talent behind the wheel. Performance on the track comes first, sponsorship later.
For an organization and owner that have long been at the helm of motorsports innovation, the investments that RPM is making to grow and build for the future is clear. Its current focus is on testing new ideas and implementing them into the cars, something that they haven’t necessarily beem able to do in recent years.
With the tools and space that the new shop allows it to explore and take advantage of, combined with two drivers that are very much on the same page to start the season — something that Petty alluded to not being the case with Almirola and Ambrose — it should give RPM the flexibility to continue its growth from last season to expand its goals and increase performance in the coming years.
“Aric came to all three of the tests and we got the opportunity to jump back and forth out of the car to see what each of us liked as far as driving goes and I feel like that’s one of the main benefits right now,” said Hornish, who led the eighth-most XFINITY Series laps in 2014 despite running just eight of the schedule’s 33 races.
“It seems like we both want similar things out of the race car. … When we get to the race track, hopefully we’ll be able to cover twice as much ground as far as finding what’s going to be a direction to head and make our cars better each weekend.”
Hornish’s last full-time Cup season was in 2010 — in a Dodge, no less — so there’s certainly going to be some adjusting to do in the early going, especially considering he hasn’t competed full-time at all since 2013. He knows there’s going to be bumps in the road, but he’s willing to put in the work necessary to make his mark on this avenue of motorsports before the 35-year-old starts to think about wrapping up his racing career.
“Going back to the Cup Series full-time, it’s a lot different than when I did it last time. I feel like we’ve got a lot of things to look forward to,” Hornish said.
“I want to be a part of building something. … I feel like the best thing that I can do in the situation that I’m in right now is to try to be a good leader and keep people excited about what’s going on and to move the program forward because I know that I’m not going to be racing forever. If I can get to the point where I leave it better than when I found it, I feel like that’s my main goal.”