Richard Petty Motorsports got a head start on joining the Ford fold by running a Blue Oval entry for Elliott Sadler in one race and one for AJ Allmendinger a couple of times before the conclusion of the 2009 season.
Because of its merger with Yates Racing for the 2010 campaign, RPM switches manufacturers from Dodge to Ford as it moves into the future.
Performance of the old Petty Enterprises had fallen off dramatically over the last several years. Business did seem to pick up, though, when the team merged with the old Evernham Motorsports team prior to the start of the 2009 season to form RPM.
The team is expected to increase performance even more with its most recent merger.
Roush Fenway Racing driver Carl Edwards expects the merger to have far greater effects -- benefitting everyone in the Ford camp.
Edwards recently had a conversation with Foster Gillett, son of RPM co-owner George Gillett.
"It ended up being a 30-minute conversation that let me in on how they run things, and how dedicated he is to it," Edwards said. "I think if you look at what they've done with the strife they've been through and all the drama, they have the potential to really give us that extra 10th of a second, and all of the teams can be winners."
Edwards' car owner, Jack Roush, makes up half of the Roush-Yates engine program that supplies engines to all the Ford teams in the NASCAR garage.
Edwards did admit, however, that his positive view of the merger had a lot to do with bringing RPM driver Kasey Kahne over to Ford.
"He is what made that place in my eyes," Edwards said of Kahne's contributions to the RPM organization. "He is the guy there."
Kahne, however, expressed strong displeasure in the management at RPM over the 2009 season, and his contract with the team runs out at the end of 2010.
"I need to do whatever I can to make sure Kasey knows that we all believe in him," Edwards said.
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