LEVEL CROSS, N.C. (AP) – Petty Enterprises will leave its longtime home in Level Cross and move its NASCAR shop 70 miles down the road to Mooresville next month to be closer to the center of racing in the Charlotte area.

The company said team owners Richard and Kyle Petty agreed to lease space in the shop formerly used by Robert Yates Racing until the team can find land to build its own facility.

Most NASCAR teams have built shops in Charlotte’s suburbs, with the Pettys among the last to make the move.

“We just felt like, over a period of years, we’ve been in Level Cross for 50 or 60 years, and it worked for us,” Richard Petty said during Wednesday’s announcement.

“But, over a period of time, the face of racing has changed so much. As it changed, we didn’t change as quickly as some of it. We said, ‘OK, we’ve got to get back into the fold here.”‘

Petty Enterprises now has a 60,000-square-foot operation in Level Cross, near the homes of the Pettys.

The racing operation dates to 1949 and was founded by Richard’s father, Lee Petty, in a machinery shed next to his house.

Although the team has fallen on hard times in recent years, with only three wins since 1983 and none since 1999, Petty Enterprises has won 268 races in NASCAR’s top series, 10 championships and nine Daytona 500s, mostly with cars built and maintained at the Level Cross shop.

Kyle Petty and 2000 series champion Bobby Labonte are the current drivers for the Petty team.

Richard said the old shop will still house “a race car or an airplane, I don’t know, something,” but clearly things will not be the same.

“When you walk through he gates at Level Cross, you walked through NASCAR history,” he said. “We were there when it started, when it went up and when it went down, and that kind of stuff.”

“It’s really, really hard to do,” he added. “Plus, we were so much a part of the community. It’s kind of hard for us and for the people around the community to accept.”

AP-ES-11-07-07 1709EST