Richard Petty Feels Slighted By Jimmie Johnson’s Influence At Legacy Motor Club

Richard Petty will turn 86 on July 2 and realizes he is part of NASCAR’s past as perhaps its greatest legend. He has earned the status of “The King” as a seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion and seven-time Daytona 500 winner.

But Petty admitted on Saturday morning at Daytona International Speedway that he feels slighted by new partner Jimmie Johnson at the Legacy Motor Club.

It bothers Petty that he is losing his grasp on control of the operation, but he also understands that Johnson can infuse fresh thinking into the team.

“Yes, it does,” Petty said when asked if it bothered him. “I’ve done things my way which haven’t been too good lately. As I’ve progressed and time progresses and things change for the world, it was probably time for a change.

“Jimmie is looking not just at this year; he is trying to lay a foundation for the next four or five years.

“He is still young enough he is going to be around for a long, long time.”

Johnson, who is also a seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion, has quickly shown his influence at the team formerly known as Petty GMS Racing. The third partner of the team is Maury Gallagher, the CEO and Chairman of Allegiant Airlines.

“Really, it’s been kinda confusing my standpoint,” Petty said. “Wherever we went, I had my own little crowd that pretty much ran the show. When we got with GMS, we had to blend with them.

“When Jimmie comes in, his crowd doesn’t take over the racing part, they take over the front office with sponsorships, appearances, and all that stuff. Jimmie’s crowd is controlling that.

“That is something I never had to put up with. I still do my own thing, and I do a lot for the new team.”

Petty is used to being the front man of any racing team that he has been involved with. The Petty name has also been a prominent part of the team, from the early days of Petty Motorsports, the name signified racing success.

Enter Johnson, who after two years in the NTT IndyCar Series as the driver of the No. 48 Carvana/American Legion Honda at Chip Ganassi Racing, has come back to NASCAR as a team owner, sharing the operation with Petty.

“It’s been strange to me because most of the time I run the majority of the show,” Petty said. “Jimmie brought all his people in. His way of running things and my way of running things are a little different. We probably agree on 50 percent of what comes out of it.

“Jimmie is really looking to the future from the standpoint of getting involved a little bit. He’ll wind up running the show in four or five years completely. He’ll be the majority owner of our operation in four or five years.

“They are looking at things completely different. They have been in the Indy deal and see how things have worked there. Jimmie is very observant and checks on everything. There is not a lot done in the management part – Jimmie controls everything. He has to approve everything.

“He’s a pretty busy man right now.”

Johnson has big ideas for the future. He has successfully introduced a new look and a new name to the operation.

Now, it’s Legacy Motor Club, which gives the team a European sound.

“That was one of the operations that when Jimmie came in it was going to be hard to be Petty Johnson GMS,” Petty said. “Here, again, Jimmie is thinking further ahead with his crew by thinking of a new name. We have him with seven championships, me with seven championships, Dale Inman with eight championships. It’s a pretty legendary operation from the top down.

“They wanted their own team, they wanted to do something different, that is why they came up with the new name.”

At 85, Petty is a walking, talking NASCAR history book.

Much of that history involves himself, his father Lee, and Richard’s son, Kyle.

He has also seen the nature of the sport improve dramatically.

That includes the Next Gen car that begins its second year in Sunday’s 65^th Daytona 500.

“I’ve been around racing for 74 years,” Petty said. “My dad ran with a strictly, strictly stock car. They have kept modifying it and ran out of ways to modify a stock car. They modernized the car.

“Watching all of that stuff, we in NASCAR Cup Series racing have to keep making changes because the fans wouldn’t be satisfied with seeing 15-year-old cars run, the same car. Some of these teams have 15 or 20 engineers that try to pick up a tenth of a second. They sit and look at computer screens all day and punch a bunch of buttons.

“The cars are so NASCAR oriented; you can’t change anything. If you put too much paint in one place, they have them beamers and stuff and you have to sand it off. It’s so technical now, it’s taken the ingenuity of drivers and crews away. Everything is so technical and that kind of bugs me from that standpoint.

“We have to have new ways of delivering our product and it has to be different.”

Which is one of the things Johnson is attempting to do with his forward-thinking at the Legacy Motor Club.