Ray Evernham, a former partner of Foster Gillett at Richard Petty Motorsports was a little bit astounded when he learned of the rumour of Kimi Raikkonen coming to NASCAR with a new team owned by Foster Gillett.
“I really don’t know why Kimi would partner with people who continually fail with sports franchises,” Evernham told Auto123.com.
“I don’t know how they could leave with so many unpaid bills and return to the sport,” Evernham added.
Evernham, the former Jeff Gordon crew chief, who founded Evernham Motorsports merged with Gillett to form GEM racing. When Petty Enterprises ran into some financial headwinds it merged with GEM to become Richard Petty Motorsports.
Gillett’s debts with his British soccer team forced a sale of the racing team’s assets back to Petty and NY investor Andrew Murstein, but, Evernham says he was not paid over $19USD million and brought a lawsuit against his former partner earlier this year in a state court in North Carolina.