Sad State of Affairs When the 4th Place Driver Has No Sponsors

I was just listening to The Morning Drive on SiriusXM radio and they were chatting up Trevor Bayne.  Trevor Bayne is 19 points out of first place in the driver standings of the NASCAR Nationwide Series and he won't be able to race in this weekend's NNS event at Bristol, the Ford EcoBoost 300, because his team ran out of sponsor money.

The fourth place team has no funding to continue.

It's a shame that that a top contender in the series has to park it because of lack of funds, but the gritty reality of it is that this sport, at any level, is expensive to run in and this part of NASCAR, the Nationwide Series, apparently isn't big enough to draw in the money at this stage of the game.

Trevor said in the radio interview that he's preparing himself and getting ready as if he's going to run the Bristol race this weekend, but him and his team are still fishing for running funds.

He pointed out how important his entire run is each day, because when a sponsor interviews a driver, they want to know about all aspects of a race, not just the end result of the day.  He's very aware of needing to look good to attract the money.  But it has me wondering how sponsors really view the NNS aspect of NASCAR when the 4th place team can't find money.

And along with Trevor, Kenny Wallace will be out of money in a race or two also.  The economy is still trying to recover and no one has excess advertising funds.

Trevor Bayne came to the limelight last year when he ended up winning the Daytona 500.  With only 20 cars on the lead lap and having survived incidents that took out Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski, Greg Biffle, Matt Kesneth, Dale Earnhardt Jr and the like, he mustered an excellent drafting posture and found himself pushed to the win by Carl Edwards, in the No. 21 Motorcraft Ford from the Woods Brothers.

It was a popular win, but his team couldn't rest on their laurels and has had to make ends meet since then.  Now, in all likelihood, Trevor Bayne will have to watch the race rather than be in it.

Of course he said, with 3 easy payments of...  

He has a great attitude on the radio and I wish him luck, but admittedly, each NNS race cost around $100k per team.  I just don't have that in my back pocket.  And if I did and I sent Trevor a check, my wife would probably kill me!

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