Petty Enterprises migrates south hoping to improve

By Jan. 2, 2008 most of the move for Petty Enterprises will be complete as the NASCAR operation moves its headquarters 74 miles south from Level Cross, N.C., to the recently vacated Robert Yates Racing buildings in Mooresville, N.C., much closer to most of the other top race shops who call North Carolina home. The red moving trucks with the Petty Enterprises logos displayed prominently on the side have been rolling out of 311 Branson Mill Rd. (a Randleman, N.C. mailing address but actually located in Level Cross) for weeks now, heading south toward the RYR complex in Mooresville. On Wednesday, the fabrication shop and machine shop personnel and their equipment were scheduled to complete their move from the old facility to the new. On Dec. 31, the finished fabrication and suspension folks and all their machinery is scheduled to arrive at their new working address. Most of the rest of the Petty operation will move into the new digs by Jan. 2, followed by the assembly and setup teams for the group's two Sprint Cup cars by Jan. 8. The #45 car driven by Kyle Petty, Richard's son, will leave for the first week of testing at Daytona out of Level Cross but will return to the new shop in Mooresville on Jan. 10. The #43 car driven by Bobby Labonte will leave for the second week of Daytona testing out of Level Cross around the same time and return to its new base of operations for good on Jan. 17. Back in Level Cross, Petty wants to make it clear that he isn't vacating the old place completely. "I'm still going to operate out of here, as far as a bunch of stuff that I do," said Richard, owner of 200 of the race wins claimed by Petty Enterprises. "My secretary will still be here and all that stuff. I'll spend a lot of time going back and forth, seeing what's going on at the race shop. But all my scheduling and all my deals will be done out of here, so I'll spend half my time here and half my time over there. I've got some of the deal done for the body shop. I've got a bunch of cars for them to work on and stuff," Richard said. "We might move the museum back up here [from its current location in Randleman]; we might run a [Nationwide Series] car out of here. We don't know yet. Our main deal now is let's leave this place in limbo, and let's go get our [Cup] racecars going down at the new place, our new main deal. Then we'll figure out what we're going to do with what we've got left." More at NASCAR.com