Richard Petty Motorsports Looks To Build On 2014 Momentum

Driver Dakoda Armstrong speaks as teammates Aric Almirola and Sam Hornish Jr. look on during day 3 of the Charlotte Motor Speedway NASCAR Media Tour.  [Credit: Jared C. Tilton/NASCAR via Getty Images]

Charlotte, NC— Upon the completion of its most successful season, the Richard Petty Motorsports team looks to build upon the momentum gained from 2014 as it enters the 2015 season representatives from the organization told media members at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour presented by Technocom.  

The largest change for Richard Petty Motorsports in 2015 is the completion of a move to a new race shop in Mooresville, NC where the team will compete on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series with Aric Almirola driving the #43 Ford and new addition Sam Hornish Jr. behind the wheel of the #9 Ford. Dakota Armstrong will pilot the #43 Ford on the NASCAR Xfinity Series in 2015.

The move to a new facility has enabled the team to add 35 new employees and while RPM will still receive engineering support from Roush-Fenway Racing, many other projects will be able to be completed in-house at the new race shop.

“I think we surprised some people and we want to grow from that and I think 2015 is going to be a big breakout year for us,” Aric Almirola stated as he reflected on last season and provided expectations for 2015, “Anytime you get the 43 car to victory lane is really special and to do it after 15 years of not being able to do that I think really shows the progress of our race time and the direction Richard Petty Motorsports is headed. “

We’ve got a lot of good people at our shop and we’ve really changed direction of the way we go about setting our race cars up and the process of getting to the racetrack has been a lot different and it has been for the better,” Almirola continued, “ We are going to continue to do those things now with doubling the size of our shop and taking a lot of the control into our own hands and being able to put our own bodies on our cars at the shop. If we look at something and do not like it we don’t have to send it back across the street and hope that it gets fixed the way we want it to. Now we can go back to the fab shop and tell them what we are looking for and work on it right there. We can see the progression of our race cars every day right there in our shop. It will be fun to see how that makes us a better race team.”

“We are also restructuring the shop in making the 9 and 43 cars as one team so the guys building the race cars are going to be one team and build the cars the same so I think it’s just going to make us better and better,” Almirola said in explaining the new team philosophy for 2015, “We have just continued to get better and better as a race team and our performance has gotten better with winning a race last year and running the Chase. We weren’t just in the Chase, we actually performed and even though it was a little bit inconsistent there were many times we performed at a very high level.”

Returning to the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series full time after a few years absence, Sam Hornish Jr. said similarities between himself and teammate Almirola should help the team continue to improve in 2015.

“One of the main benefactors so far is both Aric (Almirola) and I seem to want the same things out of the race cars and we have a unified direction,” Hornish stated, “With both cars being done the same way hopefully when we get to the race track we can cover twice as much ground. I had an opportunity to go the shop a couple times to see what it takes to move a race shop. It’s pretty substantial and it was almost seamless the way things worked out. It’s nice to see how excited people are about being there and it seems like people are really pumped up about it. Going to the Cup series full time is a lot different now than when I did it the last time and I feel like we’ve got a lot of things to look forward to.”

Dan Margetta

Related Posts

• 
  Sebring 2024
• 
  Giuseppe Victorious
• 
  Car or Driver