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Petty Enterprises, the company that sprang from the red soil and backroads of Randolph County to dominate stock-car racing, is close to a merger with another team, a move that could close the doors for good on the racing family out of Randleman.

The stunning news trickling out of Charlotte and the racing community there is that the company will announce a merger with Gillett Evernham Motorsports in the coming days, and that after 60 years the sport will no longer feature a team bearing the name Petty Enterprises.

Many of NASCAR’s top drivers, in New York this week for their season-ending banquet, expressed utter shock upon hearing the news that stock-car racing will somehow go on without the Pettys. They also said it is a sign that hard times are about to come to the sport.

Kyle Petty, the son of Richard and the grandson of team founder Lee Petty, said Friday he knew about as much as what’s leaked out about the transaction and said he hadn’t been involved with the team since it brought in an investor in June to take majority control of the organization’s finances.

“I know as much as you do,” he said by phone Friday. “I don’t have a clue what’s going on. To tell you the truth, I don’t work for them anymore and I haven’t since they told me back in the summer I probably wouldn’t be in their cars next year.”

Richard Petty is out of town and could not be reached for comment, but sources said an announcement could come any day that he will take a minor role in the new company. The merger with Gillett will be the second merger in just a couple of weeks that has rocked the sport. Dale Earnhardt Inc., the company founded by the legendary driver from Kannapolis, announced in November it would merge with Ganassi Racing for the 2009 season.

David Zucker, the CEO of Petty Enterprises, told The Associated Press he would not comment on the rumors. A team spokesman said Richard Petty would still be at the tracks next season.

The 2009 season will likely not have Kyle Petty driving for the first time since 1979, which would be the first time in the history of the sport that a Petty will not be a prominent part of NASCAR. Kyle said the sadness for him came long before the news of this merger leaked in recent weeks.

“Personally, the sad part was when we left Level Cross,” he said. “When we closed the doors on the shop in Level Cross, we weren’t Petty Enterprises anymore. We became just a business.”

He said the move before the 2008 season of the team’s legendary shop off Branson Mill Road changed everything. The subsequent downturn in the economy forced the Pettys to first find investors to help with dwindling cash flow in an expensive sport and ultimately to find a partner within the sport to survive.

The company, which took on investor Boston Ventures in June, was in negotiations with rivals DEI and Ganassi Racing before they merged and has been in contact with every team in the sport to assess its future.

“And that goes for everybody else, too,” Kyle Petty said. “It’s the same all over the sport. Everybody’s talking to everybody.”

He said he hasn’t ruled out driving again next season, and would be in Daytona in February to race in the Florida track’s 24-hour sports car event for a sixth time. But he won’t be in a car owned by his family, and his family might not have a car in the Daytona 500 for the first time since 1965, when Richard Petty and the Chrysler-Plymouth factory teams boycotted the season.

Bobby Labonte, the team’s other veteran driver, could yet race in the 500 with the famous No. 43 on the car’s doors, but Kyle said he will go to Daytona only to race in the sports car event.

“When we get through with that and they get ready to run the Twins, we’ll come home,” he said of the Twin 125 qualifying races for the Daytona 500. “I won’t rule anything out, and if there are opportunities for me to get back in a car, I will. I haven’t ruled out racing again. If an opportunity comes up, I’ll take it.”

Reports that Kyle would bring Wells Fargo sponsorship to a deal with the newly formed race team owned by driver Tony Stewart are baseless, he said.

Wells Fargo, believed to be the only sponsor the Pettys had lined up for 2009, bought ailing Wachovia Bank last month in a massive buyout that cost the company a reported $15 billion. Petty said his dad is out looking for sponsors now.

“The King’s not even in town right now,” he said. “And he’s been gone all week. He went from Florida to New York to L.A. to home and then back out again looking for sponsors.”

Drivers in New York took time away from the season-ending awards banquet to talk about the news Friday, and every one of them called it a wake-up call.

It was more than that. This was the big one.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com