Finally, the NASCAR world is feeling a little bit of good news amidst a backdrop of nothing but bad for both the sport's and the rest of a world's business climate.Earlier this week, Tommy Baldwin, Jr. -- the Daytona 500-winning crew chief from 2002 with Bill Davis Racing's Ward Burton -- announced he was putting plans in place to field a new race single-car race team for the 2008 season starting with next month's Daytona 500.
The team, Tommy Baldwin Racing, said in its PR that "With tough economic times upon us, the timing for starting this team is right. Our overhead is low and we have a great group of talented mechanics and specialists to choose from. We can offer sponsors the chance to get into Sprint Cup racing at a fraction of the costs [...]."
It sure seems odd that "tough economic times" and "timing [...] is right" go together, but there's a vast amount of resources available in the Sprint Cup market place in terms of mechanics and other crew members who have been laid off, in addition to teams that are probably selling off inventory to gain back some capital.
With the right amount of sponsors and a little bit of help from Toyota, this team could be an interesting low-budget venture. Jayski says the driver could be Dave Blaney from the unsponsored No. 22 BDR team.
Additionally, JR Motorsports, General Motors and Dodge all had a small bit of good news this week.
JR Motorsports, looking to field a Nationwide Series team for the talented Brad Keselowski after the loss of the U.S. Navy sponsorship in 2008, announced this week that GoDaddy.com will pick up the slack for the sponsorship. Keselowski will also run seven Sprint Cup races with the sponsor in 2009.
Also, GM, facing a few problems with the auto industry, announced that they'll continue their sponsorship at Daytona while Dodge indicated that while a 30 percent reduction in their NASCAR budget will reduce some sponsorships and promo displays, they won't be cutting research and development for their teams -- hoping that the lower number of teams in the camp will increase results.
Dodge failed to score a team in the 2008 Chase.
The outlook isn't exactly bright for NASCAR at the moment, but any bit of good news is surely welcome.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-08-2009 @ 12:59PM
beverly vann said...
WHY ARE THERE 12 CARS IN THE CHASE AND 10 GOES TO NWE YORK THAT NOT FAIR TO THE OTHER DRIVERS
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1-09-2009 @ 10:46AM
GrumpyOldMan said...
Unfortunately this morning some bad news. Elliot Sadler has lawyered his way back into the 19 car. As a Dodge fan, I was looking forward to A.J. getting some better results in that car.
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1-09-2009 @ 12:27PM
CJ said...
Hey, grumpyoldman, your nuts if you think AJ was better than Sadler! Sadler has something called wins under his resume and has made the chase and competed for championships, can AJ say that? AJ has potential, but Sadler is a stock car specialist who knows what it takes to get the job done, he just has had inferior equipment to do so, and every other Dodge driver shows that, including Kahne missing the Chase!
And your fooling yourself if you think AJ would do better, cause even if he had a decent average finish in those last five races of the season in the 10 car, he still wasnt competiting for wins at the end of the race, as none of the GEM cars were! And as a Dodge fan, shouldnt you be wearing a paper bag on your head! I like Dodge, but i back Chevy on the racetrack and Chevy and Toyota(unfortunately) are the two top manufacturers in the sport with Ford only represented by Roush(which is pathetic) and Dodge now only represented by GEM and Penske, and even GEM was trying to buy Bill Davis Racing to get the Toyota manufacturing support. The deal only fell thru because Gillett couldnt gather enough finances to secure the deal. And as far as Penske, i read earlier in the year that Penske would run Dodge's this last year, create a satellite team to start on building Toyota development for him, and then switch to Toyotas in 2010, and what ironic is that Robby Gordon Motorsports, after his fallout with GEM, started leasing his Dodge engines from Penske and now he's switching to Toyotas, so he could be Penske's jumpstart team for 2010. Not to mention ive heard and read several stories where Kurt Busch is very unhappy with how his Dodges have been running and is not very optimistic with the other Dodge's on the track either and i think the only way Penske will keep Kurt is if he gets some more help and horsepower, and Dodge does not have the means to accomplish that.
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1-11-2009 @ 2:59PM
Stewart Fan said...
My 2009 prediction is: Dodge will be out of Nascar before 2009 ends.
I just don't see taxpayers funding them since they are owned by a privately held holding company. They may merge with GM or Ford because they are public companies and it would help the union employees.
Most people (including me) don't want to bail out a group of very wealthy people. They should use their own money to bailout the company.
Here is the company that owns them: Cerberus Capital. Who are the investors, financials, etc? It's not there because they do not want the public to know.
www.cerberuscapital.com (I have never seen a website disclose so little information)
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