Rarely does the Mainstream Media provide much context to major news stories, hence the disconnect between MSM coverage of stories like Iraq and the actual events inside such places. The Race-Stream Media has also been guilty of not providing context.
Recently Kyle Petty was interviewed by Benny Parsons and was asked about Toyota and if the Petty Enterprises team would switch to Toyota. Kyle's answer has gotten considerable RSM buzz but its implication that PE will run Toyotas ignores the full context of Kyle's answer.
The Petty team has always been a team of Dodge/Plymouth lifers, and they and Dodge need each other, especially with the potential that other teams in the Dodge fold will go to Toyota once their Dodge contracts are up. Switching to Toyota is unlikely to be a good fit with the Petty team and may not be what they need to regain competitive power.
Petty Enterprises problems over the last number of years are not necessarily ones that a switch to Toyota would solve. Such problems stem from a comparative lack of budget plus repeated organizational miscues. They've sometimes been accused of not spending money, an unfair charge given that the team is the family's life above any outside business and given the huge resource disparity with teams like Hendrick Motorsports and Roush Racing.
A more accurate charge is that they haven't spent money properly nor been organized properly, a charge Kyle Petty repeatedly acknowledges. Part of that has in the recent past stemmed from a set mindset on running a race team that hasn't been flexible enough to adapt. Part of it also has been the overtaxing of Kyle as team owner and driver; nowhere was the combination of overtaxed leadership and an organization not on the same page more graphically shown than in the disasterous 2001 season.
Another part of it is lack of access to outside revenue streams, a situation the Pettys may have had in mind when they invested in the now-defunct National Sprintcar League with Tony Stewart. Given the heavy involvement the Pettys have always had in commercial endorsements, one can feel that they will try and find such outside revenue streams; cetainly there is a need for them to do so.
The hiring of Robbie Loomis, Todd Parrott, Bobby Labonte, and others recently shows a willingness to adapt, and one should note that adapting is something they haven't totally resisted in the recent past. The wholesale reorganization of the entire team undertaken by Larry Rathjeb in the early 1990s got the team turned in the direction where they finally returned to victory in the second half of that decade.
Between their commitment to Dodge and the work toward getting the organization on the right page, the Pettys have reason to feel confident of race wins in 2006.
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