CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- There are few smiles more famous than Richard Petty's.
The NASCAR Hall of Fame, located in the building adjacent to this week's NASCAR preseason media tour, is packed with photos of that smile, beaming its way through 200 Victory Lanes. But for too many years that smile has been forced as the legend has pushed through tragedy, both personal and professional. And it sure wasn't being flashed in any winner's circles.
That changed on July 6, 2014, at Daytona International Speedway. That's when Aric Almirola earned the first win for Petty's fabled No. 43 car in nearly a decade and a half, a victory that also clinched a spot in the NASCAR postseason.
If not for an ill-timed blown engine, they would have moved on to the Chase's second round and perhaps beyond.
Now The King's smile comes naturally again. And it has plenty of company.
"The worry is gone," Almirola said during the Richard Petty Motorsports portion of Wednesday's media tour schedule. "When I first drove for this team, you walked into the shop and it had a great family feel, but it was always just full of worry.
"They were losing drivers and sponsors. Everyone was working so hard, but honestly, they didn't know if they were going to get to race every weekend or not."
That was in 2010, when Almirola was brought in to fill in for just-bolted Kasey Kahne.
The team was owned only partially by Petty, who had been forced to fold his family's legendary Petty Enterprises operation. The new Richard Petty Motorsports, despite being owned by billionaire George Gillett, was in such dire financial straits that the team transporters would sit in Wal-Mart parking lots near the racetrack, waiting on a call as to whether they could roll in for the weekend.
Petty, bolstered by a partnership with New York-based Medallion Financial Corporation, bought out square-peg-in-a-round-hole Gillett and was back to actually managing a race team and not just merely having his name on the door. Still, the margins were tight, the ledger was red, and the results on the racetrack were lacking.
It remained that way for the next four years, even as Almirola came on board full-time and teammate Marcos Ambrose picked up a pair of road-course wins.
"It was a mighty big hole we were sitting down in," Petty said Wednesday. "Instead of getting frustrated, we just kept working and tried to be patient. But anybody who knows me knows that patience isn't exactly my thing."
The new Richard Petty Motorsports operation was little more than a cog in the Roush Fenway Racing machine. As part of RPM's affiliation with Ford and its pecking order on that ladder, a team without the wherewithal to build its own cars was forced to wait for cars and engines to be towed across the parking lot to its little race shop that, to many on the payroll, felt more like an RFR annex than a true partnership.
Last year felt like it was going to be just another generic RPM season that would end in forced transition, as Ambrose prepared to return home to Australia and sponsor Stanley prepared to move to high-powered Joe Gibbs Racing.
Funny what a win can do.
"
It was a mighty big hole we were sitting down in. Instead of getting frustrated, we just kept working and tried to be patient. But anybody who knows me knows that patience isn't exactly my thing.
"-- Richard Petty
"But it wasn't just a win. It was a win on an oval that got us into the Chase," said Sammy Johns, RPM's director of operations. "The morale boost was so big, it was almost overnight and it was everywhere, with sponsors, with our families and all throughout every corner of the shop."
Now that shop has changed.
Over the winter, RPM moved into new Mooresville, North Carolina, headquarters that was actually its last HQ as Petty Enterprises. The partnership with Roush Fenway is still in place, but for the first time in years, the team is building its own cars, not waiting on deliveries from elsewhere.
Former Indy 500 champion Sam Hornish Jr. has replaced Ambrose, and on Wednesday morning CEO Brian Moffitt announced that a new sponsorship deal with beverage Twisted Tea will ensure that Hornish will run the entire 2015 season.
"We're already getting along great," Hornish said of new teammate Almirola. During the team's scant three offseason tests, the two drivers spent time swapping time behind the wheel and comparing notes. "There's an atmosphere of sharing that's already been established that, honestly, I don't think I've experienced before."
Johns and Petty spent Wednesday much as they have the entire winter, preaching their "one team" philosophy early and often.
With more room to work, they have crew chiefs and engineers all working in one big, open office, hoping to spark conversations and prevent secrets. On the shop floor, all cars, no matter who is driving them, are prepared side-by-side.
Same goes for the new Xfinity Series-specific shop, building cars for youngster Dakoda Armstrong.
"It's different, that's for sure," said Trent Owens, Almirola's crew chief. "But we are already bouncing ideas, good and bad, all the time. Even if it's just me talking to Drew [Blickensderfer, Hornish's crew chief] and the engineers sitting there listening, it spurs ideas."
Then he laughed. "The only problem is when I need to make a private phone call."
That all-for-one mindset is bleeding over into the conference rooms of sponsors. Like all NASCAR teams, not just those on the second tier, RPM's backing comes from a patchwork of companies. But unlike a lot of those teams, RPM has managed to get that roomful of suits to brainstorm together in order to create better results on the racetrack.
"You see Larry Pope [CEO of Smithfield Foods] here today, don't you?" Petty said with a point. "He's always getting us in touch with other companies that he works with. He's saying, 'Hey, y'all ought to think about going racing too.' And when we bring someone else new on board, like we announced today, then he immediately asks what they can do together. Big businessmen's egos don't usually work that way.
"Trust me on that, bud."
Just this week, Medallion Financial hired Sean Downes as CEO of its sports properties division, charged with the primary goal of recruiting financial backing for RPM.
Downes leaves his job as NASCAR's head of business development, most recently landing Xfinity as the title sponsor of the sanctioning body's second largest series.
Step by step, hire by hire, win by win, it's all starting to feel like a real race team again.
"We know we still have a lot of work to do," Moffitt said Wednesday. "But when I think about what we walked into five years ago and the race shop I walk into now when I go to work, it's impossible not to smile."