Craven team still wants second car Higher finishes necessary first

Cal Wells III, owner of PPI Motorsports Team, is hopeful he can land a second race team for a limited deal this fall, but he said the odds of that happening will be dictated by Newburgh native Ricky Craven and the team’s performance in the No. 32 Tide Chevy Monte Carlo.

Craven is currently 34th in driver points and has only one top-20 finish in nine races this season, a 16th at the Advance Auto Parts 500 at Martinsville Speedway two weekends ago. Only rookie Scott Riggs and veteran Derrike Cope are behind Craven in points among drivers who have qualified for all nine races.

Veteran Nextel Cup driver Johnny Benson would probably drive the second car, the No. 96.

“We’re trying to put ourselves in position to do that at the end of the year. I’m optimistic it could happen if we can get the 32 running better. That’s the key. We’ve got to put numbers on the board,” said Wells.

Wells is trying to line up sponsors who would be interested in a limited primary sponsorship deal with the 96 car. The primary sponsor for the 96, in addition to dictating the paint scheme on the hood of the 96 team, would also get some associate sponsor space on a quarter panel of Craven’s Tide car.

The 40-year-old Benson and potential crew chiefs will test with the team at Charlotte and Kentucky later this month.

“We’ve talked a lot with Johnny. Rick feels he would be a quality teammate,” said Wells.

Wells said they have had an “incredibly frustrating” start to the season and that was best epitomized by last Sunday’s blown engine at Talladega Speedway, where Craven posted a pair of top eight finishes a year ago. He finished 43rd.

“We’ve had some bad luck and some has been self-induced,” said Wells. “Richard Childress Racing has a tremendous restrictor plate package, but we’ve had problems at Daytona and Talladega this year. We were incredibly fast during happy hour at Darlington, but Morgan Shepherd hit us on the very first lap and we hit the wall. We were running very well at Rockingham, we were top 10 with 30 laps to go, but we had a component failure. But we ran horribly at Texas and at Las Vegas.”

“Hopefully, we’ve gotten the bad luck out of the way and we can have a strong second half,” said Wells. “Rick has been doing his part. Now we’ve got to do ours. Everyone is growing in their positions.”

The Tide team has several new team members, including crew chief Dave Charpentier.

Next up is Sunday’s Auto Club 500 at California Speedway.