Twenty years ago he was a short tracker looking for a job with a NASCAR Winston Cup team. When he was hired at Petty Enterprises, Robbie Loomis probably could not have forseen the roller coaster ride he would take in the often-contentious and roller coaster world of racing. It's been a ride that saw him rise in the span of a decade from rookie crew chief to the choice of a NASCAR champion.

Loomis became a fast-riser at Petty Enterprises, and in 1990 amid a wholesale reorganization of the then-stuggling team, he became director of the team's pit crew. By 1992 he was graduating to full-time crew chief status as veteran crew chief Dale Inman became team manager and raceday spotter. His team of young crewmen went through the draining 1992 season as Richard Petty ended 35 years as NASCAR's most famous race driver, and began preparing for the next step of making Richard's team a winner again after the famous #43 had not reached victory since the mid-1980s.

The climb was slow, but never were there not signs of improvement. In 1993 the driver was Rick Wilson, with whom Loomis had worked when both raced Florida short tracks and who had a negative reputation in NASCAR circles for crashing cars. Wilson and Loomis were a tandem on a team nearly a decade removed from victory and which had plummetted in recent years to struggle just to finish in the top ten. In that 1993 season the finishes were not spectacular, but they nonetheless signaled legitimate improvement, as Wilson showed top-ten competitiveness in the months of May, June, and July before injury to Wilson left him out of the car for a race and it was decided that he was not the future of the team.

The 1994 season proved to be tumultuous as former road racer Wally Dallenbach Jr. was hired and almost immediately clashed with Loomis, who was annoyed with his driver for feuding with him about shock packages even though the driver had yet to achieve any respectable success in NASCAR circles. Despite this, Dallenbach authored spectacular runs at Talladega in two races, a top-five finish at the Sears Point road race, and a top-ten at Dover, Delaware, but was doomed by six races where he failed to qualify. The axe finally fell at NASCAR's inaugural Brickyard 400 where a poor effort led to a postrace argument that erupted into a savage tirade against Dallenbach by Loomis.

Former Indycar racer John Andretti joined the team in mid-August, and to the surprise of most, he clicked with the team immediately,

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