Troubles ahead for Nationwide Series?

By Joe Dunn

    NASCAR is looking ahead to 2011 with some not so subtle changes for the NASCAR Nationwide Series.  The biggest change of course is the move to the new car. That project has been in the works for a couple of years and the first official appearance was earlier this month at Daytona.
    I spoke to several NNS team owners over the weekend at ORP and the general consensus is that the smaller teams see this new car as a financial burden that most cannot afford.  It’s no secret around the garage that NASCAR had contacted the larger Cup based organizations, among them, Roush Fenway Racing, Joe Gibbs Racing and Richard Childress Racing to each bring extra cars to Daytona for the first race. The fear of not having enough cars to fill the field for a highly anticipated and publicized race was real.
    NASCAR truly was surprised when the entries came in and a full field was assured.  With the addition of Dale Earnhardt Jr. in a special Richard Childress car, and Carl Long in a one race deal with a new owner, one car even went home missing the race. But the real story was the fact that most of the teams there had no backup cars. Joe Nemechek was one of them. “ I had one car there, and no backup. That was not a new car, but rather an old Cup car that we rebuilt to make into a COT car.” Nemechek told me at ORP, “ I don’t know yet what I’m going to do for next year, if we can afford to build some of these new cars. The money is just too tight now.”
    Jennifer Jo Cobb, owner /driver of the #10 team in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series has aspirations of moving up to the NNS in the future. She was forced to partner up with Baker Curb Racing to build a single car which they jointly plan to run in the four races scheduled for this year. “That car was destroyed at the beginning of the race at Daytona, and we have no backup car.  We are rebuilding it for the Michigan race, but since I will be driving at Darlington that week we’ll have another driver in the car” Cobb said,  “ We started building the new car early, but it became obvious that this was not a cheap project. Baker Curb lost their sponsor on the 27 car earlier in the season and they were struggling to fund a new car, so we partnered up on this deal for the four races.”
    It’s not just the new car that is hampering some of the smaller limited budget teams. “We entered a car in the Nationwide race at Gateway and we didn’t make the field,” said Cobb, “ The lack of testing is really hurting us, but with the way the testing rules are we just can’t prepare a new car for a track that I have not driven before.  That was obvious at Gateway.”
    The problems with this series is funding, With the economy not rebounding as many had hoped it would, the majority of the NNS teams are really in trouble.  The sponsors have gone away and attracting new ones is a near impossible task. “ A few years ago, you could land a $200,000.00  sponsor relatively easy, heck, sometimes you were turning them away.”  Nemechek said, “ Now, you are breaking your neck and bending over backwards to land a $20,000.00 deal.  You can’t build new cars and keep racing like that.”  In addition to the loss of sponsorship money, the race purses were all cut this year too.
    At the beginning of the season, NASCAR announced that in conjunction with lowering ticket and concession prices, the track would be cutting the purse money by 10%. Several team owners have privately confirmed that the 10% is an exaggeration. Some say that the cuts in some cases were more in the neighborhood 20-30%. One team official compared the present purse structure to a welfare system.  “We don’t usually start and park, but we will be for a while.”  I was told, “The difference in purse money between finishing 40th after 10-15 laps and finishing 28th after 100 or more laps, won’t pay the tire bill.  And if the car gets tore up, your in even more trouble money wise.”
    These situations point to  real genuine problems in the series, and those problems are not going to be remedied by mandating a new car that many of the teams simply can’t afford. NASCAR did step in and approached the ARCA series, the result is a change in ARCA rules for 2011 which allow their teams to run the shorter wheelbase cars.  This will present a market for the current cars that will become obsolete after this season. That will help some of the bigger teams as they recoup some money from the old cars, but just as it did when the Cup teams moved to a new car, the supply will be a lot bigger than the demand. At that time, the old cars sold for pennies on the dollar and only the front running team’s cars were in demand.
    I spoke with Cindy Shepherd Caldwell, of Morgan Shepherd Racing, about this a few weeks ago at Kentucky Motor Speedway, and she was pretty blunt about it.  “There will only be so many buyers, so most of them will be looking at the Gibbs, Roush, Penske, and Childress cars.  Teams like us will be lucky to give these cars away.”  Then of course there is the case of the Super Speedway cars, those cars built exclusively for Daytona and Talladega. ARCA’s rule change did not include those tracks, so those cars, even with the top teams, are without a market.  Some of the teams were looking to strip down and unload those cars after Talladega, but many are now sitting behind the race shops collecting dust. Many of the teams are hopeful that ARCA will change the rule on those two tracks, they have promised to make a final decision sometime in September.

Hornaday and Bush repeat at ORP

By Roger Faulkner

It was another hot weekend at O’Reilly Raceway Park, in Clermont, IN. as the track came alive for three solid days of great racing. This was my second year at the great old track to cover Nascar for On Pit Road, but this year we got there early, arriving Thursday afternoon. That early arrival gave us time to catch the USAC action as the Midgets and the Silver Crown Sprint cars were in action.
The Midgets ran their 30 lap feature first and it was Kody Swanson of Kingsburg, CA. that led the race flag to flag. Among the field that night was Jason Leffler. Ryan Newman attempted the race in a Tony Stewart car, but they could never get the car to handle and pulled in after only a couple of laps in the heat race. In the Silver Crown race, both Leffler and Newman started the 100 lap race, with Newman starting second and leading the first lap. But both Newman and Leffler would retire early as the race was dominated by Brad Sweet, Kody Swanson and Bobby East. On lap 64 Tracy Hinds took the lead and never looked back as he collected the win.
In the Nascar Camping World Truck Series AAA Insurance 200, it was an three early battle between, Pole sitter Timothy Peters, Kyle Bush and Ron Hornaday. But as the laps wore down, it was Hornaday taking the lead and holding off the challengers. Peters would eventually fade back in the field and the battle was all Hornaday and Bush, but the crafty old veteran hung out there to repeat as the winner again this year at ORP. Bush had to settle for second, followed by Matt Crafton, Johnny Sauter and James Buescher. Rounding out the top 10 was Rookie Austin Dillon, sixth, followed by series point leader Todd Bodine, Brad Sweet, David Starr and Timothy Peters in 10th.
A jubilant Hornaday celebrated hard in Victory Lane as he is on a rebound from a poor start to the season. He made reference to that bad start when he declared, “this win is for Ray Dunlap.” the popular reporter for SPEED TV, “ Ray said that I was out of the running and could hang it up, early in the season. Ray, I’m still here.”
On Saturday night, the Nascar Nationwide Series took to the same track at ORP, with Trevor Bayne starting on the pole for the second year. Nascar had been watching the weather all day and there were threats of rain, so the start of the race was moved up 15 minutes. Bayne led the early laps, but as the race settled in it was Kyle Bush and Trevor Bayne swapping the lead several times. Carl Edwards charged to the front, but he never had enough to get past Bush. With an eye on the radar Nascar made quick work of the 6 cautions in this race and finished the race in less than 2 hours. It looked like the race was going to finish early and right on the 200 lap mark, but a spin in turn 4 by Joe Nemechek brought out the 6th caution on lap 196. That set up a green-white-checker finish with Edwards pushing hard to catch Bush. But Kyle would have no part of that so on lap 201 he collected his third win in a row at ORP in the Nationwide car. Edwards crossed the line second, followed by Almirola, Bayne and Sorenson. Series point leader Brad Keselowski finished 8th.

Danica get’s a top 25, along with Morgan Shepherd

By Joe Dunn

    In her last race in the NASCAR Nationwide Series at New Hampshire Motor Speedway Danica Patrick got together with Morgan  Shepherd which sent her into the wall. It was a pure racing incident where Shepherd got loose and slid up into Patrick’s car.  The immediate reaction from Danica has been well documented and of course included a lot of comments that illustrated her lack of knowledge about NASCAR and the way these cars react to each other on the track.
     In the aftermath she finished 30th, 5 laps down, while Shepherd finished  8 places ahead of her 3 laps down. Skipping Daytona, Danica returned at Chicagoland for the Dollar General 300.  This week, she didn’t have anything to blame on anybody else.  Her run, which mainly consisted of being 2 or 3 laps down to the leaders was the typical run of a rookie, except of course for the TV guys still drooling over her and giving her way too much attention.
    Danica again began the race weekend with one of the best cars, for one of the best teams, that was specially prepared for her and this race.  Danica’s performance was pretty much uneventful this week.  She managed to stay out of the way of the leaders, and it wasn’t until past the halfway mark before she actually challenged anyone on the track.  She managed to stay out of trouble and finished a career best 24th, 2 laps down.
    For Morgan Shepherd the Dollar General 300 was a new type of learning experience for the 68 year young veteran. When the rumors went out early in the week that Richard Childress Racing  was not going to run the unsponsored 21 car at Chicago, there was discussion about Shepherd using the 21 number on his car for a guaranteed start.  Those discussions continued but by the time they were at the track Thursday, NASCAR had ruled that an RCR car must be used to complete the deal.  The frenzy that followed resulted in an RCR 21 car arriving at the track late Thursday.  By the time the car made it through inspection, Shepherd was able to run 17 laps in the final practice with a car that was not prepared for this race.
    This was a rather uneventful race for Morgan Shepherd also, except that he didn’t have to worry about qualifying.  His driving style was pretty similar to what it has been for the past years. Treating the car like everything was coming out of his own pocket, (which for the most part IS the case) he carefully ran a conservative race, taking care not to tear up the car.  Shepherd is an old school racer who understand the phrase, ‘bring it home in one piece.’  In the end, Shepherd finished 25th, 3 laps down, one spot behind Danica.
    There are still a lot of unconfirmed rumors running about Shepherds future with the 21 team. But so far, now comments yet from anyone at RCR or from Morgan Shepherd. Speculation is that Childress may allow Shepherd to use the 21 car in the remainder of the unsponsored races for the season.
    All of this of course brings us back to the month’s old question, where is John Wes Townley?  Still, nobody at RCR will comment.