"This has my name on the side of it": When Richard Petty pushed for a new era at his NASCAR team

About seven years ago, NASCAR legend Richard Petty spoke about his determination to bring his race team back to the top and be competitive every week with a new driver and manufacturer.

Bubba Wallace debuted in the NASCAR Cup Series in 2017 driving the iconic No. 43 Ford for Richard Petty Motorsports (RPM) and made four starts. He moved to the series full-time in 2018 and became the first full-time Black driver in NASCAR’s top series in 45 years. Petty revealed during a 2018 interview with Autoweek that he was involved in every major decision, including hiring Wallace and changing manufacturers.

"It's very important to me. This has my name on the side of it. We're working hard so that we can be competitive every week. We ran the whole season and we were only really competitive for three or four races, and that's not going to get it done," Petty said.

Wallace was part of NASCAR's efforts to diversify the field and is one of just eight Black drivers in NASCAR to race in the Cup Series. Wendell Scott was the first to win a race in 1963 and Wallace became the next Black driver to win one in 2013. He scored a Truck Series victory at Martinsville during his rookie season with Kyle Busch Motorsports.

That year, RPM also switched to Chevrolet and started using the brand-new Camaro ZL1 race cars, which were built at a different facility in North Carolina.

"I know it's going to take awhile to get back. But the way we look at it, if we can go from 20th to 14th, 15th to 10th -- then you can start to look at winning multiple races and start to work our way to where we need to be" Petty said.

However, Petty did not have to wait long for a top-five finish.

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"I wasn't going to blame him" - Richard Petty after Bubba Wallace's second-place Daytona 500 finish

Bubba Wallace finished second in the 2018 Daytona 500 and gave Richard Petty and his team its best result in years. Petty was thrilled but joked about Wallace’s wrecked car at the end of the race.

"I walked in and said, 'What was the last thing I told you?' I said, 'don’t tear up my car'...I wasn't going to blame him, that's for dang sure," Richard Petty said (via NASCAR.com).

Wallace had finished in third place during the qualifying race and earned the runner-up finish on his debut at the Daytona International Speedway.

"So we shared a good laugh and he came in and gave me a big hug after that. To see the smile on his face, I think you had to be there to experience that moment. All the liaisons in there were pretty nervous for me, too, until he cracked the joke," Wallace said.

Wallace competed in the Richard Petty Motorsports No. 43 car for two more seasons before the team was sold to GMS Racing owner Maurice J. Gallagher Jr. in 2021.