Brian Scott scores Sprint Cup ride with Petty – Nascar

RELATED: Learn which drivers, crew chiefs are on the move for 2016

MOORESVILLE, N.C. — Brian Scott entered last month’s NASCAR season finale without a clear sense of where he’d be driving in 2016. Richard Petty Motorsports faced likewise uncertainty surrounding the seat of its No. 9 Ford, with Sam Hornish Jr. designated for departure after one year with the team.
 
The two sides found each other this week, announcing a deal Friday for Scott to pilot the RPM No. 9 next year in his first full-time season in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. The deal, which rapidly fell into place, provides much-needed security for both driver and organization, which also fields Petty’s famed No. 43 for team mainstay Aric Almirola.
 
“I won’t lie. I went into the offseason really having no clue what the future held and giving some serious thought or thinking that there’s a real possibility that something might not come together and I might not be doing anything next year,” Scott said. “And honestly, this whole deal came together Monday of this week. It literally just all materialized. Everything lined up right and we had a really good meeting and everyone got pumped up and I think that we saw the potential in that room on Monday that led us to pull the trigger and come out of the gates and hit the ground running.”
 
Though team owner Richard Petty posed for pictures Friday with his new driver beside a No. 9 Fusion in Twisted Tea livery, Scott said that “sponsorship pieces are all still getting put in place” with hopes of announcing partners in the coming weeks.
 
Scott, 27, has competed full-time in the NASCAR XFINITY Series for six seasons, the last three for Richard Childress Racing. After closing out the 2015 campaign last month at Homestead-Miami Speedway, both Scott and Childress indicated they were working on moving forward, all while acknowledging that the future was a murky one.
 
“I really enjoyed my time at Richard Childress Racing,” Scott said, calling their parting bittersweet. “They’ve got amazing employees and I love the relationships and stuff that I’ve built up there. Of course, that was something that we really wanted to pursue. We wanted to look to continue that relationship, but we just seemed to hit some road blocks and some struggles that we couldn’t really overcome to put the right deal together or the deal that we wanted to have for 2016 and beyond with them.”
 
For Scott, the chance to compete full-time in NASCAR’s premier division was worth making the jump for. He’s already dipped his toe into Sprint Cup waters, with 17 starts in his career and a Coors Light Pole Award at Talladega Superspeedway in May 2014.
 
Besides the financial plusses of Scott’s existing business partnerships as potential sponsors, Petty said the benefit of big-league experience was an enticing factor in reaching an agreement with their newest driver.
 
“We’re real comfortable with the situation of him being able to already be in a bunch of the Cup races, and we’ve noticed that he does pretty dang good in the equipment he’s got,” Petty said. “So the big deal is putting him in a team where all he drives is just Cup stuff. He doesn’t jump back and forth, even though he might run a few of the races, it won’t be the deal. He’ll be able to run for a championship or rookie of the year.
 
“Before, he’s been a few races here, a few races there, so he’s just been bounced from place to place. Now he’s got a home, so I think that’ll settle him down a little.”
 
The move makes teammates out of former rivals. Scott and Almirola have had pointed words for each other in the past, trading barbs after on-track run-ins in both the XFINITY and Sprint Cup series in recent years. The most recent altercation came in the spring of 2014 at Auto Club Speedway, with Almirola questioning Scott’s racing pedigree in televised interviews after an early race crash.
 
Both drivers trained at the same gym, leading to chance encounters in the weeks after their most recent flare-up. Finally, Scott said the two had a “defining conversation” to put their differences behind them.
 
“It was the week before the July Daytona race last year that we just pulled each other aside in the corner of the workout room and we just kind of hashed it out,” Scott said. “We said, ‘how are we going to deal with this and what are we going to do going forward?’ The next week, he went on to win Daytona, so I felt like that really affirmed that we were being mature, and I firmly believe in karma and good things happening. …
 
“We’ve already had conversations. We’re excited to be teammates, we’re excited to work together and learn from each other. You know, sometimes you have the biggest issues with the people you’re most similar to, and I think Aric and I are going to have a lot more similarities that we maybe have seen in the past.”
 
There won’t be much of a breaking-in period for RPM’s newest driver. Friday’s photo ops will quickly become Monday’s track time, with Scott chosen to participate in next week’s Goodyear tire test at Homestead.
 
“I’m going to put him right to work right away,” Sammy Johns, RPM Vice President of Competition and Operations, said with a chuckle. “With the testing policy that NASCAR’s put in place, which I’m fully supportive of, there’s not any other testing that we’re going to get to do before the Daytona 500. So a chance to get Brian in a race car before that is excellent.
 
“When we were able to get this done and get it done before the Homestead tire test, Brian was automatically the first choice to go do that so we could get some time in the race car with him, start to get a feel for what he’s looking for in a race car, that’s going to be invaluable.”