Jerry Markland / Stringer
The king wants to make it clear: He has not sold his charter!
Charters are basically the membership card doled out by NASCAR that guarantees teams holding them a spot in every race during a given season. Petty, who holds two charters, was rumored to have sold the charter to the iconic #43. He tells kickinthetires.com that’s wrong.
“We’re leasing it,” Petty said. “We leased one last year and you can’t lease it for two years in a row, so we just changed it.”
NASCAR rules allow charter holders to lease their charters to other teams for one year. RPM leased the charter to the #44 car in 2017, but the rules say you can’t lease the same charter two years in a row, so RPM decided to lease the #43 charter to Rick Ware Racing. Does that mean the #43 can’t run next season?
“The #44 (charter) was leased last year and the #43 will be leased this year,” said Petty. “We will run the #43 car under the #44 charter. It’s all screwed up, politics I guess.”
Confused yet? It’s basically shuffling licenses so that the #43 will still be on the track. Bottom line, RPM hasn’t sold anything, and will line up come February in Daytona.
