Catchfence

STATESVILLE, N.C.— AJ Allmendinger isn’t one to fall behind the times. The 27-year-old Californian designs his own apparel including his popular black AJ hats. Now he is branching out to embrace the digital age as the Richard Petty Motorsports driver has begun twittering for his fan club members.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them. Allmendinger has been posting his tweets since last weekend offering his take on practice, qualifying, the weather or anything else that happens to run through his mind at the time. To join Allmendinger’s fan club and receive his tweets visit www.ajallmendinger.com.

This weekend Allmendinger will twitter from Dover where he’ll drive the No. 44 Auto Value Bumper to Bumper paint scheme for the first time in the 2009 season.

ALLMENDINGER QUOTES

ALLMENDINGER TWITTERING— “Its been pretty fun so far. It’s something we started as an added bonus to our fan club members and it’s been taking off from there. I don’t know how many followers I have so far but I hear back from a lot of people. I try to do it several times each day. Its not like going to be ripping on other drivers or talking about stuff that will get me in trouble but it probably won’t be limited to racing. The only thing I was told by my business manager was no sex or profanity. Despite that, I thought I would give it a try any way and it’s been fun.”

ALLMENDINGER ON DOVER—”We need a good run. It’s like we have been in a rut the last few weeks. I got into the wall pretty good early on at Charlotte and we just didn’t have enough time to get the car fixed and get back up with the leaders before it rained. Our times were fast enough I know we would have gotten our lap back. But that’s been our luck of late. It can all turn around at Dover though.”

ADDITIONAL NOTES OF INTEREST

· Allmendinger will sign autographs at his merchandise hauler at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday in Dover.

· Allmendinger finished 16th in the fall race at Dover

· Allmendinger will drive chassis 269 this weekend.

· All Petty cars will carry a four-inch round Autism Speaks decal on the car at Dover.

- Richard Petty Motorsports, Press Release