Almirola expects more from pared-down RPM

Aric Almirola doesn't feel he has to convince anyone that Richard Petty Motorsport scaling down to one car will be a good thing.

However, he has plenty of reasons as to why it will help improve the performance of the No. 43 Ford - something that is imperative after Almirola finished 26th in points last season while now-retired teammate Brian Scott finished 31st. Between the two of them, Richard Petty Motorsports had just two top-10 finishes, one top five, and six laps led.

"Over the last couple years, we have been a little bit diluted and so to be able to take this opportunity (with Scott retiring) is not what we wanted as a race team by any means, but sometimes in life you get lemons, and you have to make lemonade," Almirola said.

"This gives us the opportunity to do that. It gets us centrally-focused on one car, and we retained a lot of employees, so now it's all-hands-on-deck on that 43 car, and we're going make every effort to get that car back running the way it needs to run."

While Almirola revealed there was the opportunity for RPM to put a second car on track this year, it wouldn't have been done to the highest quality. After falling as far behind as the organization has in recent years, fielding a car just to run one would not have been in the best interest of all involved.

As for Almirola, he returns for his sixth full season with the organization. It was 2014 when Almirola took RPM to victory lane in the July race Daytona International Speedway, which led to a berth in the playoffs.

It has since been a long performance fall. Between 2015 and '16, Richard Petty Motorsports earned just four top five and 11 top-10 finishes while finishing no higher than 17th in points (Almirola in 2015). Statistically, those were the worst two seasons RPM has had.

There has also been driver turnover. Marcos Ambrose took RPM to victory lane in 2011 but left the team following the 2014 season. Sam Hornish Jr. was one year and done in 2015 after earning just three top-10 finishes. Scott was also one year and done, choosing family over racing after his rookie Cup Series season.

Almirola is eagerly looking forward to a new season where all resources and efforts will not only be aimed towards turning things around but having to do so with just one car.

"I'm looking forward to getting our race car back up front," Almirola said. "We have a lot of great sponsors. That's one of the amazing things about our race team is even though our performance was not what we wanted last year, we still have sponsors that are incredibly committed to us, and I'm so thankful and so fortunate for that. We owe it to them if not just ourselves to get our performance back to where it needs to be."

The effort will include upping the ante on its technical alliance with fellow Ford team Roush Fenway Racing. Over the last few years, Almirola admitted the Petty organization had spread itself too thin by taking what Roush was giving them and then tuning it to their liking.

"Then we kind of went out on a limb and started doing more and more and more on our own, and we almost got to a point to where we spread ourselves too thin," Almirola said. "Our resources were limited and not just financially, but manpower, equipment and things like that. We had gotten to where we probably overstretched our boundaries. So, for us, it's really been about coming back together, focusing.

"We've scaled back to one car, but then focusing on what we do best and we don't have an engineering staff of 70 or 80 engineers like the race teams we race against, but Roush does. For us to be able to pull from that resource and piggyback off of the knowledge and the people and the resources that they have, and then bring their cars into our shop and go from there and get them ready to go race, I think is going to get us back to kind of where we were two years ago when we were really competitive."

The good news is there's nowhere to go but up.