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Posted on July 27, 2007
Urge To
Merge
It’s sort of like the old
Jimmy Buffett song which included the
memorable line, “urge to merge”. A few
NASCAR teams got that “urge” today and
you have to wonder what the results will
be. Let’s look at the facts.
Booby Ginn, a real estate
developer bought MB2 Motorsports from
Nelson Bowers in 2005 with a mission to
make it one of the best teams in
NASCAR. He nearly succeeded. Steady
improvement from the time Ginn took over
seemed to point to great things for the
team. Unfortunately, things went sour.
After Ginn wooed Mark
Martin away from Jack Roush Racing (now
Roush-Fenway Racing) to train his
younger drivers, he suffered a lack of
sponsorship. Ginn placed his own
resorts on the side of the cars, but the
money was coming out of Ginn’s deep
pockets. It finally got too much for
him to bear. Last week, he released
veteran drivers Sterling Marlin and Joe
Nemechek and announced he would be going
to two or three teams with Mark Martin
and Aric Almirola driving one (Martin is
only committed to a limited schedule)
and Regan Smith driving the other. That
all changed today.
The blockbuster
announcement today was that Dale
Earnhardt, Inc. (DEI) had merged with
Ginn Racing to field four teams—the No.
8 of Dale Earnhardt, Jr, the No. 1 of
Martin Truex, Jr., the No. 15 driven by
Paul Menard, and the No. 01 with Martin
and Almirola at the wheel. It was
heralded as a win-win situation with
DEI, fresh off their engine agreement
with Richard Childress Racing,
bolstering their team and Ginn getting
rid of what had become a financial
nightmare.
The odd men out are
Marlin and Nemechek. These are two men
who have proven records in NASCAR’s top
series. Nemechek, 44, has won 4 races
in the Nextel Cup Series and has a
reputation of being very competitive.
Marlin, 50, has won 10 races in NASCAR’s
top series and most recently won at
Darlington in 2002. Both are searching
for rides.
The only Ginn team to
transfer to DEI (they will keep the
name) will be the Martin-Almirola Army
team. Regan Smith is demoted to truck
duty for now. What happens next?
It’s a shame that drivers
of the stature of Nemechek and Marlin
got caught up in this. Big money men
like Ginn have been lurking around
NASCAR for years, coming in with a flash
and leaving soon after. You could name
them, but I won’t and I’m surprised that
so many drivers get caught up in this.
To Ginn’s defense, he thought he had a
Panasonic sponsorship lined up for his
team only to see it go away, but trading
Nemecheck and Marlin for Almirola and
maybe Smith has to be a youth movement
to end all youth movements. The old
line that sponsors want youthful drivers
just doesn’t make sense here, even with
Almirola’s recent good runs. It should
be interesting.
The other merger move was
a complete surprise. Last month at New
Hampshire, Robert Yates declared that he
had set around a table with bankers and
declared that he had no debts and he was
no longer seeking any investors. He did
leave open the possibility, but he
sounded like he would go it alone. That
changed dramatically on Wednesday.
After a press release from Ford’s PR
firm that a news conference would be
held in Indianapolis on Friday
concerning the team’s future, word
leaked out that Yates’ Ford team would
merge with successful open-wheel team,
Newman-Haas Racing. No details were
given (that supposedly will come at the
2:40 PM news conference), but it appears
that Yates was looking for money to
bolster his underachieving Cup teams.
Not knowing the details
of the merger, one has to assume that
Ricky Rudd and David Gilliland will
continue to campaign Ford Fusions on the
Nextel Cup circuit, but other details
are not known. Yates, in his
partnership with Roush-Fenway racing
continues to build world-class Ford
engines for Ford teams, but Robert Yates
Racing hasn’t been competitive this
year. It looks like an effort to get
back on track.
The big bonus in all of
this came to what was known as the Wood
Brothers Racing team. The Woods have
fallen on hard times in recent years.
After hiring Ken Schrader to mentor
eventual driver Jon Wood, grandson of
Glen Wood, the team’s founder, the team
fell out of the top 35 teams and had to
hire former champion Bill Elliott to
insure they would make races. That’s
all ended with the closing of the No. 13
team (formerly driven by Nemechek). The
Woods now sit in 35th place
and now have an automatic entry into all
races if they can stay ahead of Bill
Davis Racing’s Toyota, driven by Dave
Blaney. No word has been forthcoming
about whether or not Schrader will
return to the Little Debbie team.
In my opinion, it’s
foolish to trade successful, established
drivers for young, unproven shoes, but
Major League Baseball teams do it all
the time. They trade an aging slugger
for a young hotshot and it all works
out, but what about the guys left
behind? And what will become of the new
DEI without Junior and the addition of
Mark Martin? Time will tell. Will
Nemechek and Marlin land on their feet?
So many questions and few answers. The
first clue will come at Indy.
You can
contact Ron at
insman1@charter.net
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