Obviously, it’s been a bit of a wild silly season. The big questions on nearly every NASCAR fan’s mind are:
- Will Richard Petty Motorsports remain as it is today, or will they merge with a new manufacturer or ownership group?
- Will Germain Racing survive?
They are solid questions, which as of the publishing of this story, we do not have concrete answers, other than both organizations have plenty of options on the table.
RPM has had rumors ranging from Bubba Wallace leaving to go drive for Chip Ganassi Racing to Wallace staying put with the team being bought out by Denny Hamlin and possibly even NBA legend Michael Jordan being in the mix.
On Friday, a Twitter account @MillNASCAR, published a rumor that Richard Petty Motorsports and Germain Racing have given their employees permission to seek employment elsewhere for the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season.
Hearing both RPM and Germain employees have been given permission to seek 2021 opportunities. Germain up for sale, while RPM looks to be getting ready to go through a Toyota restructuring…
— NASCARRumorMill (@MillNascar) September 4, 2020
Since that rumor was sparked, TobyChristie.com has confirmed with an anonymous member of the Richard Petty Motorsports team, that this particular rumor pertaining to the No. 43 team was untrue. The RPM employee tells us that not only have they not been informed to seek out other employment options for 2021, but that no plan for the 2021 season has been disclosed with them at all — including what Bubba Wallace may or may not have lined up.
As far as RPM employees go, it’s business as usual — aside from people continuing to speculate about the team’s future, of course.
As for the other half of the rumor, an anonymous member of the Germain Racing team has disclosed to TobyChristie.com that they and the other employees of the team have been told to begin looking for other employment opportunities for the 2021 season.
An attempt for a statement from the race team regarding the anonymous employee’s comments resulted in the same statement that the team has already released three day’s ago in reference to 2021, that anything is on the table.
Germain Racing on 2021 Status: ‘At This Time, Anything is on the Table’
The representative from the team did clear up one fact from the rumor, that Germain Racing employees, as with most companies, have always had the right to seek other employment opportunities. It just seems, according to our source, that the team has begun encouraging the employees to do so.
While you would expect encouraging employees to sign with other teams to signal that the team will indeed be sold off, it is important to note that until a deal is actually done and completed that anything can happen. The team, at this time, is seemingly allowing their employees to find a more stable situation while things are currently so up-in-the-air within the No. 13 team.
Germain Racing has been a fixture in the NASCAR Cup Series since a part-time schedule in 2009. The team went full-time in 2011 with Casey Mears and in 2017, Ty Dillon joined the team as the driver of the No. 13 machine.
Dillon has one top-10 finish through 26 races in 2020 and sits 27th in the championship standings.
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