I Know How Petty’s Employees Feel

Editor’s Note: Congratulations to our own Patrick Reynolds. His first published article appears in Speedway Illustrated in their September issue. Don’t forget us little people when you get rich and famous Patrick. Good on ya.

Losing your job is not a bummer. Not choosing the winning lottery numbers is a bummer. Losing your job can be absolutely devastating to some families. The possible forthcoming job losses resulting from the Petty/Yates merger are an ugly vision.

Petty Enterprise once fielded three full-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series entries. Evernham Motorsports once fielded three full-time efforts. Yates racing at its highest peak also fielded three full-time cars. After all the mergers during the past few years those nine teams will be scaled down to four as the 2010 season begins.

What gets overlooked is that the five missing teams once supported a few hundred American households. Many lives have been, and will be, negatively affected by the upheaval. This is more than a lack of entries or car counts as fans turn on their television for their weekly race fix. These are human beings being put out of a job. They are United States citizens that will join the large number of the already unemployed.

Managing Director of Competition at Richard Petty Motorsports Mark McArdle is no longer with the organization after a heated verbal exchange with team owner George Gillett at the recent Richmond race. The engine shop at RPM is anticipating layoffs since the new merger will likely utilize powerplants from the Roush-Yates engine shop. Roughly sixty employees do not feel so comfortable right now.

Now Kasey Kahne’s engine blows very early in the New Hampshire race this past weekend. RPM’s only Chase entry has an engine failure while the other cars do not. That situation is enough to make the conspiracy lovers raise their eyebrows at the very least.

I personally can count four race teams that I was let go from during a massive layoff resulting from lack of sponsorship. In all four cases, the uneasy feeling was there ahead of time. In two instances I was told, eye to eye, my job was safe. In any case I had an attitude I hope would be common at RPM’s engine shop: as long as I was working and accepting a paycheck from a race team, I owed them the best effort I could bring to the table every single day.

I always worked as if every piece I built had my name on it and every person in the garage area, from my own teammates, to other crew chiefs, to all the NASCAR inspectors and staff, would examine it. With every bit of work I did, I felt my reputation was on the line. I never knew who would look at a suspension piece I built and installed on a racecar, but I imagined that anyone and everyone would. I wanted to hold my head up high and be confident that my work looked good, it would last the race distance, and was capable of winning. I never, under any circumstances wanted any kind of a negative reputation, especially wanting a long career in racing.

I have to believe that RPM’s employees feel the same way. Their future may be influenced during this transition where there are far more questions than answers about the road that lies ahead.

But I also understand about animosity. I had that too. As I stated, twice in my NASCAR career, a purposeful meeting was called when shop rumors began to snowball. With fear in the atmosphere about lack of future backing, team owners and managers stated emphatically that our jobs were safe. On both occasions large layoffs followed in the months ahead. In that type of instance, anger is easily instilled.

Not because of the layoff, but because of the untrue reassurance of job security. Team principals would have earned more mutual respect if honesty were used instead of empty promises. I do not have a factual account if RPM had a similar meeting or not.

My own integrity kept my head and work ethic high. Instead of taking my frustration on the turn of events out on my soon to be ex-employer, I looked at the occasion as an opportunity to shine. I viewed my job as an audition for a future one. Like I imagined with my suspension pieces, you never know who will be watching. My work from that point on may have been some of the best I had completed.

But a team shutting down is more than just a car not racing. There are a lot of people that are effected. There are mortgages that need to be paid, spouses that act as a team and supply only one-half of a house’s income, vehicles that have a monthly payment, household utilities that need to be supplied, and children that need clothes and food. People make the racecars go around the track, not the other way around.

Unfortunately nearly every job on a race team, in the long run, is a temporary job at best. Richard Petty Motorsports has an uncertain future judging by Kahne’s answers to questions during the first Chase race. He did not provide many specifics and it sounded like he honestly did not know.

From my childhood, I have been a huge Richard Petty fan. With his name on the front sign, I am not raking his name through the mud, but writing in factual terms. There are team leaders and managers at work here who are not named Richard Petty.

Business decisions are made that are necessary for a company. Sometimes those result in something harmful to individuals.

In a related topic Jack Daniel’s is not continuing their sponsorship with Richard Childress Racing. In case you haven’t guessed, there are good people working there too. I hope that statement can continue to be true.

I can draw from my own experience with the situation and offer this to Petty’s current staff. Keep you attitude and your chin up, and don’t give up. But the reality is I have faced unemployment struggles for over ten months and so have most racing people I know. I want the future of this sport we all love, to look brighter. At the moment it appears some more tough times are still ahead.