New crew chief for Petty

The #45 team welcomes new crew chief Stewart Cooper on board this week. Cooper comes to Petty Enterprises from the #38 NASCAR Nationwide Series team. Billy Wilburn, former crew chief for the #45, is now heading up the test team for Petty. Wells Fargo will adorn the hood and sides of the #45 this weekend for the fourth time this season.

Quotes from Kyle Petty: “Stewart Cooper is going to take over as my crew chief on the #45 Wells Fargo Dodge this weekend. Stewart is that new breed of crew chief that couples a mechanical engineering education with a lot of practical at track experience. With the success he has had as a crew chief in the Nationwide Series, I know Robbie (Loomis) has been trying to get him in the organization for some time. The 45 team is a talented race team and we’ll benefit from having a guy like Stewart at the helm.

"Something that should not be lost in the crew chief change is the fact that Billy Wilburn will remain with Petty Enterprises. Billy’s going to take over as crew chief of our test team and he will be a huge part of improving the product that we take to the race track. With the addition of Derrick Finley in the off season as our technical director, and the addition of several other talented people in our engineering department, we really have a lot of great information coming out of this group. Billy’s experience will help validate new ideas at the track and give our crew chiefs more options for the races. To really learn this new car you need to be on-track as much as possible and we have devoted more resources to track testing this year. It is great to have somebody of Billy’s experience level to lead this team."

Quotes from Stewart Cooper: “It’s an honor to come on board a race team like Petty Enterprises. Everyone here is committed to making this #45 Wells Fargo Dodge competitive on a weekly basis. If we do that, the points thing will take care of itself. Petty Enterprises has the pieces and they are all in place, we just have to put the pieces to work. Our first priority is to qualify Kyle into the show this weekend and then perform well on Saturday evening. Kyle, Billy and the team participated in the test at Phoenix last month so we have a nice book of notes to help us accomplish that. Billy Wilburn and Robbie (Loomis) have assembled a good team here and I’m looking forward to working with these guys." MCG Sports/Petty Racing PR