Marcos Ambrose has confirmed that he’s found a new drive in America’s NASCAR and that he won’t be returning to V8 Supercar racing in Australia.

Next year he will race for Richard Petty Motorsports, a team bearing the name of the greatest NASCAR driver of all.

Although it was 1983 that he scored the last of his 200 victories as a driver, Richard Petty remains “The King”.

He won seven championships in a 35-year career and in his last season, 1992, he made US$60 million - four times as much money as that year’s Formula One world champion, Nigel Mansell.

Petty’s father Lee was one of NASCAR’s original team owners more than 60 years ago.

But over time, particularly the past two decades, the team diminished. It became a mere ghost of what it had been.

Last year it was merged with another team and the owners now are tycoon George Jillett Junior, also a co-owner of English Premier League club Liverpool, Boston Ventures (a private equity firm whose investments include Motown Records, Billboard magazine, the National Enquirer and toymaker Mattel), and Petty – largely as a figurehead.

RPM won a couple of races last year with one of NASCAR’s younger stars, Kasey Kahne, but it’s not one of the heavyweight teams running four competitive cars and winning regularly.

Kahne is now heading for what he sees as greener pastures and his seat that will be filled by Ambrose, who announced three weeks ago that he would walk away from the comparative minnow JTG Daugherty Racing after five years – the last two of them in NASCAR’s premier division, the 36-round Sprint Cup.

Ambrose said he needed to discover whether it was him or JTG Daugherty that was preventing him winning a Cup race.

He’s had podium finishes on road courses - and won three times in the second-tier Nationwide Series at the most famous of them, Watkins Glen in upstate New York - but has struggled on oval tracks.

Not so much on the short and the long, superspeedway tracks, but the predominant 1.5-mile (2.4km) “intermediate” ovals.

While RPM is far from the best outfit in NASCAR, Ambrose at least feels it will give him a better chance to showcase his talent.

And, after two years racing a Toyota Camry, it will return him to the Ford fold for which he won V8 Supercar titles in Australia in 2003 and ’04 and raced his first three years in America.

This is another sign of the changing face of RPM.

“The King” was synonymous with Dodge, but now the team bearing his name runs Ford Fusions.

Ambrose says he’s never been more intimidated than the day he first met Petty six years ago.

It was in a darkened room of a workshop at the Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina and he recalls the icon who looked “10 feet tall, bullet-proof, with the (cowboy) hat, and the belt, and the sunglasses on”.

Now 73, Petty yesterday welcomed Ambrose to RPM as “a very talented and passionate driver … a great addition to our team”.

Ambrose responded: “Who would have thought that this little Tasmanian kid would one day drive for ‘The King’.”

Ambrose has always had, with good reason, confidence in his ability. With an ounce of luck he would have won a Cup race by now – especially at Sonoma, California, a few weeks back, but somehow, unbelievably, he stalled his engine while trying to conserve fuel as he led almost in sight of the finish.

He’s paid his dues in America, always professing how lucky he is to be in the NASCAR ranks, racing against the best drivers – certainly the best in the black art of oval racing – in the world.

Along with his confidence and ability there has been a humility, which has won Ambrose many fans among the American motorsport public and respect within the NASCAR “family”.

So it was odd to hear him yesterday equate himself to the modern day “king” of NASCAR, Jimmie Johnson, a driver who has done something not even Petty could do – win four Cup titles in a row.

While it’s difficult to compare NASCAR racers with the best in F1, world rallying or touring cars, a strong case can be made that Johnson is the best race driver on earth today.

Yet Ambrose said yesterday: “I believe that I’m as good as anybody out there and can win four championships just like Jimmie Johnson has done.”

Having faith in one’s talent is a great strength, but having finished 18th in his first full Cup season last year and slipped to 26th in the standings this season it was a very long bow for Ambrose to draw.

“Until you get to the point that you can prove or disprove what you’ve got, it’s very hard to be sure,” Ambrose said.

“We’ll see in 2011.”

It’s a huge feather in Ambrose’s cap that he broke into NASCAR and has held his place there.

But in the company of Richard Petty, with 200 Cup wins, and Jimmie Johnson, with 52 victories, Ambrose, winless from 70 Cup starts, would be better biting his tongue, concentrating on conquering the ovals and notching his first Cup success.

And even then just taking it one win at a time, rather than thinking he’s already the equal of NASCAR’s reigning “king”.