January 8, 2009
By Doug Demmons
The big race of the 2009 NASCAR season won’t be at Daytona. It’ll be the next week at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif.
Not big in the sense of competition or publicity or prize money. Big in the sense of revealing just how badly the shrinking economy has hurt NASCAR teams since Homestead.
There have been plenty of announcements, hints, stories and rumors since then, but the lineups of who will drive what haven’t been this much in flux this late in the offseason in quite a few years.
Daytona won’t tell that story because even teams that only plan to race a few times in the year will still come out to Daytona because the purse is huge and the prestige is just as high.
The real test will be the next week at Fontana, when teams have to truck all the way across the country.Don’t be surprised if the Auto Club 500 doesn’t have a full field of 43.
In the Camping World Truck Series, it’s likely to be even worse. The Truck Series was already having trouble filling its field of 36 last season. This year may be a shadow of that.
When the San Bernadino County 200 runs at Fontana, how many of the remaining truck teams are going to foot the expense of hauling everything across country for one race and then hauling everything back for the next truck race at Atlanta? Not many.
“California’s really the one I think is going to hurt,” Truck Series veteran Rick Crawford said Tuesday. “If I was in an economic crunch I would pick the races I’d go to.”
Crawford is among a dwindling number of truck drivers for whom everything is already lined up and ready to go. Even the team that won the 2008 championship, Bill Davis Racing, might not be around. The team was sold last month to Triad Racing Technologies and it was reported Tuesday that Triad will shut down its truck operation to concentrate on its one-car Sprint Cup program.
Crawford’s Circle Bar team will run the No. 14 despite having lost factory support from Ford, which decided last year to quit funding its truck teams. But the No. 10 is in limbo. Brendan Gaughan was Crawford’s teammate last season, but he announced this week that he’ll be driving for Rusty Wallace Inc. in the Nationwide Series.
Whether the No. 10 continues this season will likely depend on whether a new associate sponsor can be found to replace the Gaughan family’s South Point Casino, Crawford said.
“They’re going to have to bring in an associate sponsor to keep the team going,” he said of potential drivers for the No. 10. “But we’re by no means ready to stop the program just yet.”
Crawford said Circle Bar has received interest from 11 drivers about the No. 10, four of whom have some potential for bringing along an associate sponsor. NASCAR’s cancellation of testing this year means a decision won’t have to be made right away, he said, but at least by the end of January.
Crawford, who is still in the process of trying to buy Mobile International Speedway in his hometown in Alabama, said there needs to be more owners in the series — more owners of one- or two-truck teams as opposed to bigger operations. And NASCAR needs to step in with a bigger effort and more promotion.
“Make sponsors happy, give them a little extra, entice them to come in,” he said.
Doug Demmons is a writer and editor for the Birmingham News ~ he writes daily and weekly auto racing columns ranging from NASCAR to open wheel to Formula One, local tracks and more... you can read Doug's columns online at Blog of Tommorow
The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.