DALE EARNHARDT JR. WEIGHS IN ON ANDY PETREE ABRUPTLY LEAVING RCR, KYLE BUSCH: ‘SOMETHING WENT DOWN’

It’s been exactly one week since Andy Petree retired from his role of vice president of competition at Richard Childress Racing.

The timing was abrupt and came amid RCR’s most challenging season to date, with both Kyle Busch and Austin Dillon struggling to find speed on a weekly basis. And with Petree walking away at the midseason point of the Cup Series season, Dale Earnhardt Jr. wonders if something happened behind the scenes that led to Petree retiring and Keith Rodden taking his position in the interim.

“It’s abrupt,” Earnhardt said on the “Dale Jr. Download” Tuesday. “It makes me wonder why because it’s in the middle of the season. It makes me think back to when Kyle Busch was standing on his pit gate talking about how bad they were when he was arguing with [Ricky] Stenhouse and who was standing off to the side about 10 feet away? Andy Petree. Just wonder if Andy decided, I need to do something else. Or did Andy voice an opinion, a concern that the rest of the group didn’t agree on and said, ‘Hey, maybe we’re not all on the same page here.’ Something like that probably went down.

“I don’t see Andy as the kind of guy that says, ‘Hey, midseason imma go do something different.’ So, something went down. It’s kind of like that [Aric] Almirola-Bubba Wallace thing. I don’t know if we’ll all know the true details of it, but it doesn’t feel good.”

Petree first joined RCR in 1993, serving as Dale Earnhardt’s crew chief for his back-to-back championship-winning seasons in ’93 and ’94. He returned as vice president of competition in 2017 and RCR made seven Cup Series playoff appearances under his direction.

Richard Childress after recent changes at RCR: ‘We need to have more racers’

Richard Childress offered a blunt assessment this past weekend of where RCR currently stands.

“We need to change the culture,” Childress said. “We need to have more racers.”

With Petree gone, there’s an opportunity for someone to step up to the plate and perhaps change the culture, Earnhardt said.

“It presents an opportunity for the team to change. I always said this with [Steve] Letarte when we were working well together — if we lost somebody that we thought even — anytime if you have a vacancy or a hole opening up, don’t worry and debate about whether that person was great, or they sucked at their job,” Earnhardt said. “Every time you have a vacancy, it’s an opportunity to get better.

“And so, Petree’s got a legacy. Dude has accomplished a lot in this sport, appreciate what you did for RCR, it was awesome that he came back and was a part of all of that over the last several years, but here’s a chance to hit a home run. Bring in somebody with some new ideas and some new energy. And so, you gotta make sure you get that choice, and you get that pick right. That could be crucial for the future of RCR going forward.”

The post Dale Earnhardt Jr. weighs in on Andy Petree abruptly leaving RCR, Kyle Busch: ‘Something went down’ appeared first on On3.

2024-07-02T19:27:37Z dg43tfdfdgfd