How NASCAR's Jimmie Johnson joined forces with Richard Petty GMS Motorsports as driver, owner

There’s a saying: “Home is where the heart is.” For seven-time Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson, that home is NASCAR.

The 47-year-old native of El Cajon, California, retired from full-time driving in NASCAR’s premier series at the end of the 2020 season after 20 years of racing. He amassed 83 victories on all types of tracks, including NASCAR’s greatest event, the Daytona 500, in 2013. Johnson is only the third driver in the sport's 74-year history to win seven Cup Series championships, along with Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt.

Over the past two years, Johnson turned his attention to fulfilling a personal dream of driving Indy Cars, a path he originally planned to take very early in his life. Off-road racing in the early 1990s included financial support from Chevrolet. That led to his entrance into NASCAR’s Xfinity Series in 1998 with team owner Tad Geschickter. His success there paved the way for an eventual entrance into the Cup Series with team owner Rick Hendrick and Hendrick Motorsports in 2000.

Petty, a longtime legend of NASCAR with 200 career wins, and successful team owner Maury Gallagher joined forces at the start of the 2022 Cup season to form Petty GMS Motorsports with drivers Erik Jones and Ty Dillon in their No. 42 and No. 43 Chevrolet Camaros. Jones logged a huge victory in the Sept. 4 Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. For 2023, Jones will be joined by Noah Gragson as his teammate for the full Cup Series schedule.

Gallagher’s fellow team owners in the venture, Petty and Johnson, have 14 Cup Series championships between them. That’s tremendous firepower when it comes to finding sponsors for their cars for the 36 races on the schedule.

“… Mr. Jimmie Johnson is going to be joining Petty GMS as an owner and competitor,” Gallagher said at a recent press conference in Phoenix. “(I‘m) pinching myself sitting up here with this kind of talent and this kind of record, and I can honestly say that while we didn’t anticipate having this kind of talent up here, it was never not a goal."

Petty was initially surprised that Johnson was interested in the opportunity to become a co-owner of Petty GMS. It seemed a bit too good to be true but a fantastic opportunity to take the organization to a higher level.

“Me and Maury talk all the time about what we can do to improve our situation, make our business bigger, and win more races,” Petty said. “He called me one day and said, ‘I’ve been talking to Jimmie Johnson.’ I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding. Jimmie Johnson wants to be involved with this? We’re going to be involved with him?'

“From that standpoint, I just sort of went off the edge and said, ‘this has got to be one of the biggest things that has happened to the Petty crowd and GMS from that standpoint. We joined cahoots last year, got a pretty good start this year, but with Jimmie adding on, with his popularity and the people he knows that we don’t know, it had to be a heck of a deal.”

Petty was looking at the present but also the big picture. It’s what he’s always done and why he’s been so successful in the sport as a driver for 32 years and a team owner and ambassador since 1992.

“From my standpoint, it’s a big, big step, not just for one year, but I’m looking farther down the road. If Jimmie comes in, does his deal, I’m 85 years old, so I’m not going to be here for another 15 or 20 years, and then Jimmie can kind of take over. That had to be a plus-plus,” Petty said.

Part of Johnson’s deal included returning to the driver’s seat for select Cup Series events. One will be NASCAR’s premier event, while others will be determined.

“As this conversation started, it’s one that I really had to pay close attention to, an offer, an opportunity that’s just a life-changing opportunity for me and one that I had to take,” Johnson said. “So I’m very excited about this. We still have a lot to work through and decisions to make, but I do want to run a limited schedule next year in the NASCAR Cup Series, and we can confirm today that we will kick that off at the Daytona 500. There are more to come. We do know that race, but again, there’s still a lot to be sorted out, and we hope to have more exciting announcements down the road.”

Team president Mike Beam worked with Petty as a crew member in the early 1980s at Petty Enterprises. Now reunited, nothing has changed. Winning is still the name of the game. It was with Petty and crew chief Dale Inman and it is now with Gallagher.

“ If we don’t win and do well, I don’t know why we’re going to do it.” Beam said. “Me and him (Gallagher) have that conversation all the time. It’s all about winning. What is that saying — ‘All I want to do is win,’ but are you going to work hard enough or make the financial commitment to do it? Maury has done that. I want to bring up, like, 14 championships between Richard and Jimmie, then we’ve got Dale (Earnhardt) that goes with us, so now he adds (seven). Well, the future definitely looks bright for us.”

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: NASCAR: How Jimmie Johnson, Richard Petty joined forces at GMS