(By NASCAR Wire Service)
Posted: Friday,January 28th, 2011
CONCORD, N.C.—Before he agreed to invest in Richard Petty Motorsports, financier Andrew Murstein wanted to make sure the King of stock car racing had some skin in the game.
Make that a lot of skin.
Richard Petty anteed up, and now he’s back in control of the day-to-day operation of the organization that bears his name.
Richard Petty (Getty Images)
“You want Richard and his team to lead the way,” said Murstein, president of Medallion Financial, “so when we started looking at this, I told Richard I would only invest in it if, one, he was putting his own money into it, which he did. Nobody talks about that, but he put a substantial amount—millions of dollars of his own money—into this.
“And, two, if he got back into the sport and became active. He kind of got pushed out over the years from old investors.”
Pushed out is an understatement. In 2007, George Gillett bought majority interest in what was then Evernham Motorsports and proceeded to sap the authority of team founder Ray Evernham. After a subsequent merger with Petty Holdings, Gillett reduced Petty’s involvement to a figurehead role.
Murstein took the opposite approach after the new RPM partnership bought out Gillett.
“There is no way I could ever come close to his knowledge, expertise or passion for the sport,” Murstein said. “So for him to pull himself back into it and get motivated, that was a big part. He’s now in control of this. He’s running the day-to-day operations, and that makes me sleep better at night.”
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