A short time ago Dodge announced that they were withdrawing all manufacturers support to the Dodge teams in the Sprint Cup Series. The announcement directly affected Richard Petty Motorsports the most as the company, a blend of Petty Motorsports and Gillett-Evernham Racing, was essentially a new Dodge team, or at least a newly organized one.  Penske Motorsports doesn't seem to be as affected, but the hammer fell immediately at RPM with 9 layoffs announced within hours. 

What will RPM do?  Rumors have circled like vultures in the past few days, and I'm sure the manufacturers have as well, after all who wouldn't want to be associated with Richard Petty?

Well, it isn't so easy.  Richard Petty Motorsports quelled rumors Tuesday that they would be switching to Toyota any time soon.  With Kasey Kahne's win last weekend on a road course, in a Dodge, and with all the effort that has been put into developing and testing the new Dodge engine, it's clear they are getting the results desired. 

However, this morning on SIRIUS (yeah, I know you're getting sick of it) that rumor was brought to life again.  Rick Benjamin and Buddy Baker were discussing the idea, a bad one in their opinion, that RPM might do a "partial" change over almost immediately.  Now I agree with that opinion.  How can a three or four car operation gane any kind of advantage if half the operation is running Dodges while the other half is in another brand?  It makes no sense.

However, they indicated that this was just "chatter" around the NASCAR scene and there is no real constructive base to the rumor - but rumors start somewhere, so if it is being talked about on the air, it's likely being talked about elsewhere.

One thing is for certain, with the results RPM is getting with the new Dodge R06 engine, any suggested change to Kasey Kahne's cars is likely to be met with mutiny.

Kasey has always had a desire to win, and he's been successful in that desire, just not recently.  That all changed this past weekend, and I can't imagine that he would want to start again, from scratch, with a different manufacturer.

That's great for this year, but next year may be a different story.   Summer always seems to be the start of the rumor mill and this year is no different.  By the time you read this, something else will be happening..........