March 18th, 2010 
Journo I don’t understand JR Motorsports. They spend an awful lot of time complaining about their money situation. Dale Jr. advertised how much the wrecks cost him at Daytona; and they seem to constantly be advertising their struggle to find sponsorship (welcome to the club). And lest you think otherwise their team spokesman is more than willing to underscore how much Jr. is putting into the team out of his own pocket. So what do they do? They decide they’re going to run a car full time that they don’t appear to have fully funded. What!?
Apparently it was just too good of a team not to run full-time. And That’s fine. I’m happy for Scott Wimmer. Certainly Wimmer is a proven winner in the Nationwide Series and he’s a little easier sell to sponsors. When he’s in good equipment he’s shown he can be competitive. But why the sudden change in rhetoric?
Maybe they do have money lined up for this team. Maybe this weekend is a way for them to cement some deal. Or perhaps they lined something up for the #88 and had enough money from another deal to keep this thing going. I don’t know.
If they don’t though I hope for their sake they’re not going to try the ‘let’s run well and hope we impress a sponsor strategy.’ We saw how well that worked for Ganassi, not once but twice. Ask Aric Almirola and Dario Franchitti (and all the people who got laid off). Or how about RAB Racing, a team that really doesn’t have any money, trying to make a go at a full-time run this season with Scott Riggs (right now their asking fans to help sponsor their ride). This strategy generally has one certain result: lost money.
Unfortunately waiting and hoping you can quickly put a deal together just isn’t very realistic, especially in the Nationwide Series. You can get away with running a competitive truck team (and not lose your ass) by piecemealing different small deals; it’s substantially harder in the Nationwide Series (unless Junior is willing to lose some money).
It’s fine if they want to run a team full-time without full funding. I don’t care. But quit talking about your money issues and how much everything is going to cost you. We get it at this point.
Related posts:
Posted in 
Tags: 
Yeah, when I first saw this I was confused too with all the talk about the cost of wrecked cars & whatnot. Maybe they’re thinking “what the hell.” Wimmer can win in the Busch series let’s see what happens. Saying that they plan on running the full season at least gets the word out to potential sponsors. I’ll be surprised if they do run the whole season though.
Journo – To clarify the assumption that RAB Racing is asking fans to help sponsor the ride, they are not. The idea for the fans to sposnor the 09 was started by the Scott Riggs fans. A few spoke with some people at RAB Racing to set the program up and figure out the best way to make it work. The sponsorship is only for one race, kinda like the Kenny Wallace fan car from last year, among others.
I read the story yesterday and did a WTF. Besides running #7 full time (after complaining about the money thing, and Yes things do change) they said they still don’t have sponsors for the full year for #88. I might not understand how things all work in NASCAR world, but I would think you would want to get one team fully sponsored before you start on another one, specially the way sponsorship (or lack of) is this year. They are basically doing a 180 in 1 months time. Must be some pretty significant changes going on over there.
I’m sure Danica is responsible somehow. Yeah, that’s it.
Whether it ends up being a full season or X additional weekends at the track, that equates to X # of additional paychecks. Lighten up Journo. I would be happy to have a paying job for any length of time if I were currently out of work.
It seems obvious to me that it is being done so the car will be locked in in owner points the next time she races. I believe she wouldn’t have made the show at Vegas based on time.
she being Danica
I thought I saw Dale Jr. quoted somewhere since Daytona that he might be considering running a few more N-wide races himself. Maybe JR is in discussions for some sponsorship that involves Dale Jr. driving some of the races himself.
I think Kyle hit it on the head, just my 1.24322 cents worth.
Rick- Where did I criticize them for running the team for the whole season? As I said in the post I think it’s great if they want to run it full-time. My gripe is their constant complaining about their money situation to only do this without full funding. The moral of my story is, don’t complain if they’re going to do stuff like this, because money must not be much of a problem.
Journo- I’m with you on the whining. It gets old fast. Maybe Jr is just a tightwad and he’s thinking more about the expense side of the balance sheet. I was just thinking more of the upside for those that need employment.