Richard Petty by Matt Sullivan Getty Images

Petty confirms new partnership at the same time he's switching rides


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Two heavyweights of NASCAR racing are forming an alliance, and both will run under the bowtie.

Confirming what had long been suspected, Richard Petty announced that Richard Petty Motorsports will be a Chevy operation in 2018, ending the relationship RPM has had with Ford for the past seven years. Though no official announcement has been made, the Ford name and logo is noticeably absent from the RPM website. During an interview with kickinthetires.com, Petty acknowledged the switch.

"We're switching to something," Petty said when pressed on the impending change to Chevrolet. "Yeah, yeah, you know, it's a pretty foregone conclusion what is going on, right now."

That move had been rumored for months. Probably the bigger news is that Petty is forming an alliance with Richard Childress Racing and will move his operation to the Childress compound in Welcome, North Carolina.

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"We are in the process of moving from where we are now to closer to home, over in Lexington from Mooresville," Petty said. "We are off in the corner up at RCR. When you first come in you go by the museum and we've got the first building up there, so ... we're on the campus but we're really not on the campus. We are on the corner of the campus. I guess he (Richard Childress) done that so he could kick us out if we get to causing too much trouble up there."

The alliance between Petty and Childress joins two of the biggest names in NASCAR. And at a time when Petty is excited to launch his 2018 season with Bubba Wallace driving the #43, he is naturally upbeat about where his team is headed.

"We are just doing a lot of new stuff," he said. "New car, new driver, new place to work on it. What we have been doing in the past has been up and down and up and down, but we never really got settled on what we think we need. So, we said let's just change everything. So, from that standpoint it is going to be a new RPM operation, so it is going to be interesting from that standpoint, too."

Related: Chevy accomplishes a first in NASCAR, and it won't be proud

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