Well, only a couple more days til we head out to MIS, and more bad news on the economic front for NASCAR.
In the truck series, the Red Horse racing team, with defending NASCAR Truck Series Champion (and Michigander) Johnny Benson, shut down operations of the #1 team effective immediately due to lack of funding. The #1 team will not race at MIS this weekend and the defending champion is currently without a ride. How awful is that for the Truck series??
On the Cup side of things, Richard Petty Motorsports (RPM) gave nine more of it's employees pink slips Monday and reduced salaries in an effort to cut the budget and further streamline its operations. That's not a good sign since they already have the #1 sponsor in all of sports, Budweiser, on their side. It means that the Chrysler bankruptcy and lack of funding from Dodge is affecting them more than most people thought it would, and that they are hurting for cash while not yet halfway through the 2009 Cup schedule. Not a good omen for Dodge (and Kasey Kahne) fans. I even heard that although RPM debuted the Dodge R6 motor at Dover two weeks ago, they couldn't run it again in Pocano last weekend because they didn't have enough of the motors to support back-to-back weeks of racing (??!!) Talk about shoestring budgets...geez.
None of this is good news as the NASCAR Nation heads into the "Motor City" and the Irish Hills of Michigan this weekend. We'll see how things continue to unfold for the rest of the week. Maybe Johnny Benson will find a ride for the weekend and get to race in front of his hometown fans afterall and RPM will scrape together enough parts to run R6 motors again. Only time will tell.
Marc.
