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©2000 SpeedCenter Publishing RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA, CA (July 19, 2000) - PPI Motorsports (PPIM) announced today it will operate its NASCAR and CART programs from its Hickory, N.C., location beginning next season. The Hickory facility, which was established in late 1999 to house PPIM's Tide Winston Cup and McDonald's Busch teams, will operate as a full-service race shop for PPI Motorsports' CART and NASCAR teams in 2001 with centralized fabrication, carbon shop, machining, parts, travel, transportation, marketing communications, hospitality services, and administrative resources. This consolidation will require the relocation of both personnel and equipment from PPIM's facility in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., current home of PPIM's CART and off-road racing programs, at the close of the 2000 racing season. PPIM's off-road team and other business interests, including the Precision Service Racing Group (PSRG) and the Toyota Motorsports Garage, will continue to operate from smaller, separate facilities in Southern California. "PPI Motorsports has been based in Southern California for 21 years, but our business is changing," said Cal Wells III, owner and president of PPI Motorsports. "We've grown by amazing proportions over the past five years and, along with the U.S. motorsports community, our focus has shifted to two incredibly strong opportunities for the continued growth of our company - involvement in both CART and NASCAR. "In order to support these efforts properly," Wells continued, "it became increasingly clear that we needed to bring them together in a more unified, efficient environment, one that allows us to share intellectual and material resources across both programs on a daily basis." PPIM's three-building, 57,000-square-foot Hickory facility will add a fourth, 37,000-square-foot building to accommodate the company's CART operation alongside its 2001 Tide and McDonald's Winston Cup efforts. Wells selected the Hickory location due to its proximity to most NASCAR and CART venues - a decision that, among other benefits, amounted to a savings of 27 travel days for the race team and 115 on-the-road days for team transporters as based on the current CART schedule. "For our off-road program, which has been the core of our business for nearly 21 years, being in California made sense and still does," Wells explained. "But for our CART teams, which have spent countless extra days on the road traveling to and from the West Coast, living and working in Hickory will reduce time away from home and eliminate significant logistical hurdles for our travel and transportation departments. "Supporting CART's two new European races, along with travel to Brazil and Mexico, will be much more manageable now as well," Wells added. "We're making this announcement now, rather than at the end of the season, to give our employees time to consider the move and prepare for it," Wells continued. "We have put together compelling packages to assist our California-based employees with the decision to relocate, and we are supporting their efforts to get to know the Hickory area and, hopefully, move there with us." PPI Motorsports (PPIM), founded as Precision Preparation, Inc. (PPI) in 1979, is a multi-dimensional racing company with competitive interests in the CART FedEx Championship Series, the CART Toyota Atlantic Series, the NASCAR Winston Cup Series, the NASCAR Busch Series and the SCORE International Off-Road Series. For more information about PPIM and all its teams, please visit the PPI Motorsports website at www.ppi-racing.com
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