There has been plenty of good news of late on the NASCAR front. TV ratings for Chase races are up. The points race is a barn-burner. Popular drivers, including Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon, have had good seasons, and one of the sport’s older and more respected teams, the Wood Brothers, broke a long losing streak by winning the Daytona 500 with the fresh-faced Trevor Bayne at the wheel of the iconic No. 21.
But the generally good news apparently hasn’t been enough to attract new sponsor dollars to the sport.
When Matt Kenseth rolled his No. 17 Ford into Victory Lane in Charlotte on Saturday one of his first comments was that he doesn’t have a sponsor for 2012. His current backer, Crown Royal, is leaving at the end of the season, and it also appears that his Roush Fenway Racing teammate David Ragan, the July winner at Daytona, could be without backing next year, as his sponsor UPS is expected to scale back its NASCAR participation.
Team owner Jack Roush said that even if no sponsor is found, he won’t park Kenseth’s car, who is in the thick of the championship battle with five races left to run.
“The 17 car is secure in Roush Fenway’s livery,” Roush said in the winner’s interview at Charlotte. “We will run it with or without a sponsor next year, but it would be a shame if we’re not able to attract sponsorship.”
Roush said there has been interest among potential sponsors, but so far there’s no deal.
“This is my 24th year of being in the business, and this is the most difficult time that I’ve had,” he said. “We’ve gone through a transition with our sponsors from a time when they wanted to compete for a top car to where now the best sponsors want just enough of a car to be able to do their promotions and want to share the bulk of the expense of it, if they can.”
The partial-sponsor model will be used next year on the No. 20 car at Joe Gibbs Racing, as Dollar General, a long-time Nationwide and Camping World Truck Series sponsor, will share sponsorship of Joey Logano’s Cup car with Home Depot, which has been the primary sponsor of the car since Gibbs began fielding it in 1999.
Honor, not jinx
Before the start of the Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Jimmie Johnson expressed little concern about his appearance last week on the cover of Sports Illustrated, a position that has “jinxed” many an athlete in the past.
“I never even thought twice about it, to be honest with you,” he said. “It is such a huge honor to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated.”
He said the previous Thursday that he didn’t believe in the jinx.
“I would have to imagine that if you talked to the other people that were supposedly jinxed, they just didn’t play right,” he said. “They didn’t do their jobs. I am not going to be superstitious about that. I will be about the time I get up and some other goofy things that I do, but I chose not to be superstitious about this.”
Then Saturday night, Johnson, the winner the week before at Kansas, slammed the wall in the closing laps and dropped from third in the standings and four points off the lead to eighth in the standings, 34 points back.
Johnson’s task
One of the bigger questions surrounding this year’s Chase for the Sprint Cup is whether Johnson can dig his way out of the points hole he finds himself in after he wrecked Saturday. Big comebacks are possible, as Johnson’s fellow California racer Ron Hornaday Jr. is showing. Hornaday is in the midst of a pretty remarkable recovery, although he still has a ways to go to take his fifth Camping World Truck Series title.
After the O’Reilly 200 at Bristol Motor Speedway on Aug. 24, Hornaday was ninth in the standings, trailing then-leader Johnny Sauter by 68 points. Now after scoring three victories in the past five races, including a win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Saturday, he’s just 21 behind current leader Austin Dillon heading into the final four races of the season.
He’s also trying to help his Kevin Harvick Inc. team win the owner points title and therefore has been driving the team’s No. 2 Chevrolet instead of his usual No. 33 for the past two races. He plans to stay in the No. 2 this weekend at Talladega.
About the Author
