It was announced earlier this week that Petty Enterprise’s 43 car will be losing sponsorship after this season. General Mills is off to sponsor the fourth Richard Childress team, and it’s a good decision the part of the famous Cheerios brand.

RCR will be in victory lane before Bobby Labonte in the 43, and for more reason than one. Labonte’s cars aren’t where they need to be this season, and rumor has it that the former champ will be going with General Mills to RCR next season. When ESPN’s Marty Smith asked about Labonte’s driving future, he dodged the question and cited current performance issues as his main focus despite an offer from the Petty’s to finish his career at Petty Enterprises.

Yates Racing has a history of power under the hood, but currently has nothing on the hood to pay for it. Both Travis Kvapil and David Gilliland were without sponsors at the Cup race at Texas. The future isn’t looking good for either team. Kvapil’s 28 has had K&N Air Filters and Gilliland has Freecreditreport.com giving some backing, but neither company is interested in a full season of sponsorship.

The Yates cars are both sporting “sponsoryates.com” logos, and team owner Doug Yates is stressing to potential partners that Ford’s presence in NASCAR is solid.

"Combined with enhanced manufacturing support from Ford, I know we are poised for success now more than at any other time during the past 20 years," Yates said on his sponsor seeking website.

What the sponsorship situation at Yates Racing speaks more about than anything are the struggles big names are having with money. The American economy is receding, and with it are NASCAR sponsors. Many top teams are now signing more than one sponsor to take primary sponsorship of a car. Corporations don’t have the funding for the full 36 race season. This practice has been used in the past at Roush Racing, but can now be seen on Kyle Busch’s 18 team and Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s 88.

Sponsorship issues aren’t the only problems at Petty Enterprises. Robbie Loomis, direction of competition at for the Pettys, made the decision to remove Kyle Petty from the 45 car at Texas and replace him with rookie Chad McCumbee. The story blew up over the weekend when McCumbee failed to qualify the 45 for Sunday’s race and Petty voiced displeasure with the situation.

“We’re not in a good competitive situation right now. We’ve got to make our stuff better,” Petty said. “If I’m the problem then I’m the one that needs to get out of the way so it can get better.”

Petty stated that it wasn’t his decision to step out of the 45, and then hinted he would possible drive elsewhere in the future. Petty will be back in the car next weekend at Phoenix, making this evaluation of the program a useless step in fixing things at Petty Enterprises.

“You’re trying to stay a part of the sport and catch up to the sport. We’re talking to investors. We’re losing sponsors. We’re trying to find sponsors. We’re trying to get drivers. We’re trying to keep drivers. We’ve got so many balls in the air. Most teams can juggle one, but we’re having to juggle five or six,” Petty said.