PPI Motorsports was a race team which competed in CART, NASCAR and various off-road racing circuits. The team had one of the few remaining single car operations in NASCAR.
PPI stood for Precision Preparation, Inc., a company founded by team owner Cal Wells in 1979. The company provided parts for off-road racing teams. Over time, PPI eventually began its own off-road team, with help with Toyota Motorsports. PPI fielded off-road trucks for Mickey Thompson's SCORE series and then later fielded trucks which competed in outdoor events such as the Baja 1000. Notable drivers for PPI include Ivan "Ironman" Stewart and a young Robby Gordon (who also drove in CART for the team in 1998).
CART years
The car from PPI's winning CART effort
PPI's relationship with Toyota expanded into the open-wheel ranks in 1995, when Wells formed a CART team with good friend Frank Arciero. Their initial driver was Hiro Matsushita. Known as Arciero-Wells, the CART team lasted for 5 years but only a managed a best finish of 4th in 1999 with rookie Cristiano da Matta. In 1996, they began the CART season with Jeff Krosnoff driving, but he died in a tragic accident during the Toronto street race. All PPI cars subsequently carried a decal commemorating Krosnoff's memory.
After Arciero left in 2000, the team was rebranded as PPI Motorsports, and da Matta gave the team its first (and only) career victory in CART. During this time, the team also ran a program in the Toyota Atlantic series, and had success in 2000 with rookie of the year Dan Wheldon. Following the 2000 season, however, PPI shut down its open-wheel and off-road programs, ended its relationship with Toyota, and shifted its focus exclusively on NASCAR.
PPI Motorsports was notable in being the first NASCAR team to require pit crew members to wear helmets before the series mandated wearing helmets starting with the 2002 season.
Car No. 32 history
The No. 32 Tide-sponsored car in 2005
PPI Motorsports started its first Cup team during the 2000 season with open-wheel and Trans Am standout Scott Pruett behind the wheel of the No.32 Tide-sponsored Ford. The team was hardly a success in its first year, finishing in 37th place and failing to qualify for six races. Pruett was released at the end of the season and returned to Trans-Am.
With the team focusing exclusively on NASCAR in 2001, PPI fielded a two-car Winston Cup effort, with Ricky Craven taking over in the 32. Craven had a number of strong races, which he capped giving the team its first career victory at Martinsville in October. He finished 21st in the points standings that year.
Craven ran strong in 2002 and, although he failed to win a race for the team, he managed to improve his point championship standing and finishing 15th overall. This was the team's last season in a Ford, as they switched to Pontiac the next season.
Craven started 2003 the same way, with a strong Top 5 at Rockingham and a famous victory at Darlington, in which he beat Kurt Busch to the finish by just 0.002 seconds, which still stands today as one of the smallest margins of victory in NASCAR Cup Series history. It also turned out to be Pontiac's last win in the Winston Cup Series. However, a series of DNF's dropped Craven to 27th in points.
PPI showed clear signs of struggling in 2004 as Craven was unable to give the team a single Top 10 finish through the first 24 races. Wells and Craven parted ways due to lack of results and Busch Series driver Bobby Hamilton Jr. took Craven's place. Hamilton Jr. drove the car for the entire 2005 season. However, he failed to score a Top 10 during the year, and eventually finished 36th. Wells did have some success after replacing Hamilton with road course ringerRon Fellows at Infineon, with Fellows giving the team an eighth-place finish. Hamilton was replaced by Travis Kvapil, who drove the car for the 2006 season, only to have five DNQ's. Ron Fellows competed in the two road course races at Sonoma and Watkins Glen. After originally finishing 10th at the Glen, Fellows was penalised for skipping a portion of the track and dropped to 32nd.
At the end of the 2006 season, Tide left NASCAR as a full-time sponsor. Unable to find a new sponsor, Wells shut down the team before the 2007 season and sold his owner points to Michael Waltrip Racing.
Car No. 96 history
Later in 2000, PPI started a second Cup Series team with backing from Ronald McDonald House Charities. Truck Series driver Andy Houston was to drive the #96 Ford for five races toward the end of the 2000 season, with the intent being for the team to run the full 2001 schedule.
Houston finished no better than 26th in his five starts, but the team still entered the 2001 season having picked up sponsorship from McDonald's, which had been sponsoring Bill Elliott for the previous several years in his owner-driver venture.
The #96 struggled to find its footing. After qualifying ninth for the Daytona 500, Houston fell two laps down before being collected in a massive wreck on lap 175. He then failed to qualify for the next two races at Rockingham and Las Vegas.
Houston would record his best finish at Martinsville in April, where he finished 17th and was the last car running on the lead lap. Two races later he recorded his second top twenty finish, a 19th place run at California Speedway.
After that, Houston's performance declined significantly. He failed to qualify for the races at Michigan, Pocono, and Sears Point in June, and the #96 was entered in neither the July New Hampshire or Pocono races nor the road course event at Watkins Glen. Houston also missed the Southern 500 at Darlington, having failed to qualify for either event there, and the fall race at Richmond.
In the races he did manage to qualify for, Houston also struggled to perform. Although he qualified well again at Daytona in July, he was again collected in a crash. He qualified in the top 15 at both Chicagoland and Indianapolis, but Houston's engine blew three laps into the former event and he crashed on the opening lap in the latter. In all three of these races, Houston finished 43rd and last. In fact, after his top 20 run at California, Houston finished 40th or worse seven times.
McDonald's eventually cooled to the idea of continuing to sponsor Houston because of his poor performances and during the week leading up to the race at Indianapolis, they announced that they would be dropping their full-time sponsorship of the #96 after the inaugural race at Kansas in the fall. Houston finished eighteenth in that race, failing to finish on the lead lap. He was released following the event as no sponsor signed on to replace McDonald's, resulting in the team being shut down.
Cristiano Monteiro da Matta is a Brazilian former professional racing driver. He won the CART Championship in 2002, and drove in Formula One with the Toyota team from 2003 to 2004.
Fabrizio Barbazza is an Italian former Formula One driver who raced for the AGS and Minardi teams and was the 1987 Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year.
Massimiliano "Max" Papis is an Italian professional motorsport driver who has competed in several top-level motorsports events such as Le Mans 24 Hours, Formula One and Champ Car. He has three Champ Car victories. He is the son-in-law of Emerson Fittipaldi. Papis also currently drives in the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series.
Scott Allan Wimmer is an American former professional stock car racing driver. He has a total of six wins in the Xfinity Series. His brother Chris Wimmer competed in the Busch Series. Wimmer co-owns State Park Speedway in Wausau, Wisconsin.
Casey James Mears is an American professional off-road and stock car racing driver. He has raced in IndyCar, NASCAR's three national series including 15 seasons in the Cup Series, SCORE International, and the Stadium Super Trucks. A former winner of the Coca-Cola 600, Mears is a member of the Mears racing family as the nephew of four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Rick Mears and the son of IndyCar and off-road veteran Roger Mears. He also works as a NASCAR analyst for Fox Sports 1.
Adrián Fernández Mier is a Mexican former professional race car driver and co-owner of the Fernandez Racing team.
Richard Allen Craven is an American stock car racing analyst and former driver. Prior to his broadcasting duties, he was a NASCAR driver who won in four different series—the ARCA Menards Series, and the three national series.
Scott Donald Pruett is an American retired racing driver who has competed in numerous disciplines of the sport. In the 1980s, Pruett established himself as a top sports car racer, winning two IMSA GTO, and three Trans-Am championships. Later in his career, he won five Grand-Am championships. In the 1990s, Pruett competed in CART Championship cars. After a brief stint in NASCAR, he returned to sports cars.
Robby Gordon Motorsports is a motorsports constructor owned by Robby Gordon. The company was formed in 2005 as a race team for Gordon's NASCAR career. RGM spent the years from 2005 to 2012 competing in the NASCAR Cup Series, and had part-time stints in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. While in NASCAR, the team recorded one win and 30 top-ten finishes. After 2012, Gordon shut down the team's NASCAR operations. RGM became the constructor of vehicles for Stadium Super Trucks, a new racing series owned by Gordon.
Shigeaki "Shige" Hattori is a Japanese professional race car driver and team owner based in the United States. As a driver, he competed in the CART and IndyCar Series, and the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. He is not related to Naoki Hattori, whom he briefly raced against in CART.
Alex Joseph Barron is an American former race car driver. He began racing CART FedEx World Series Championship cars in 1998 and made his first Indy Racing League Northern Lights Series start in 2001.
Patrick Carpentier is a retired Canadian professional auto racing driver. In the Champ Car World Series and the IndyCar Series, he achieved five wins and 24 podiums, as well as two third place championship finishes in 2002 and 2004. The long-time Champ Car driver switched to the IndyCar Series in 2005, and moved on to Grand Am Road Racing in 2007. After a few NASCAR races in 2007, he moved full-time into the series in 2008. Since 2009, he has only had part-time drives, so became a contractor and renovator in Montreal, trading in real estate in Las Vegas, as well as being a color commentator for television coverage of various racing series. He last competed part-time in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, driving the No. 32 Ford Fusion for Go FAS Racing. Carpentier is now the president of a home construction firm in Quebec.
Michael Waltrip Racing Holdings LLC, doing business as Michael Waltrip Racing ("MWR"), was an American professional stock car racing team that last competed full-time in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. The company was as a 50–50 partnership between Robert Kauffman, the founder and managing partner of Fortress Investment Group, and two-time Daytona 500 winner Michael Waltrip, who first established the team in 1996 in the Busch Series. The team was the first full-time three-car team to field Toyota Camrys when Toyota entered the Sprint Cup racing fold in 2007, before being joined by Joe Gibbs Racing in 2008. MWR was also the last original Toyota team in the Sprint Cup Series to still be in operation, as Bill Davis Racing and Red Bull Racing Team had both ceased operations in the preceding years.
Anthony Lazzaro is a NASCAR and sports car racing driver. He is usually classified as a NASCAR road course ringer; however, he has made other starts in the Nextel Cup Series. He also has open-wheel oval racing experience.
Claude Bourbonnais, is a former driver in the Toyota Atlantic, Indy Lights, and CART Championship Car series. He raced in the 1994 CART series with 5 starts. He also raced in the 1997 Indianapolis 500, which by then had become part of the Indy Racing League, completing 9 laps and finishing in 30th position.
Calvin "Cal" Wells III is a businessman and CEO of Legacy Motor Club. The former owner of PPI Motorsports, he later served as the executive vice president of operations at Michael Waltrip Racing, overseeing the day-to-day operations of the organization's three NASCAR Cup Series teams and one Nationwide Series team, until July 2011.
TriStar Motorsports was an American professional stock car racing team that used to compete in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series. The team competed in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series primarily during the early to mid 1990s, suspending racing operations in 1997 and continuing on as Tri-Star Motors, and later Pro Motor Engines, supplying engines to many NASCAR teams prior to returning to competition in 2010.
Since its introduction to motorsport in the early 1970s, Toyota has been involved in a number of motorsport activities, most notably in Formula One, NASCAR, IndyCar, sports car racing, various off-road rallies and the WRC. Currently, Toyota participates in the Toyota Racing Series, Super Formula, Formula Three, Formula Drift, NHRA, USAC, Super GT, NASCAR, the WRC and the WEC. Since 2015, all of Toyota's motorsport activities are handled by Toyota Gazoo Racing.
Newman/Haas Racing was an auto racing team that competed in CART, Champ Car, and the IndyCar Series from 1983 to 2011. The team operations were based in Lincolnshire, Illinois. Newman/Haas Racing was formed as a partnership between actor, automotive enthusiast and semi-professional racer Paul Newman and long-time auto racing owner/driver Carl Haas. The duo were competitors in sports car racing during the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1983, they joined forces to enter the ranks of Indy car racing. Newman/Haas was one of the most successful teams in Indy car racing during the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. The team won 105 CART/Champ Car races and eight season championships, followed by two race wins in the IRL/IndyCar Series.
The NASCAR operation of Chip Ganassi Racing was established in 1989 by Cuban-American businessman Felix Sabates. The team was known as SABCO Racing, formed after Sabates purchased an R&D team from Hendrick Motorsports. The team was renamed Team SABCO in 1996. In 2001, Ganassi bought 80% of the ownership interest in the then-two-car team to form Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates; the same year the team switched from Chevrolet to full-works Dodge and received a same partnership treatment as Penske Racing, Evernham Motorsports, Bill Davis Racing, Melling Racing and Petty Enterprises teams. In 2009, Ganassi partnered with Dale Earnhardt, Inc. owner Teresa Earnhardt to merge their NASCAR operations into Ganassi's shop and entered under the Earnhardt Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates banner, while returning to Chevrolet equipment. The NASCAR team dropped the Earnhardt name in 2014, and Ganassi revealed that Teresa was never truly involved with the team. Rob Kauffman, chairman of the Race Team Alliance, purchased a stake in the team in 2015. The NASCAR program has fielded full-time entries for notable drivers including Kyle Petty, Joe Nemechek, Sterling Marlin, Jimmy Spencer, Juan Pablo Montoya, Jamie McMurray, Kyle Larson, Kurt Busch, and Ross Chastain. After already having his name removed from the team previously, at the end of the 2019 season, Sabates announced his retirement as a co-owner from the team, taking effect after the 2020 season.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
