Menard Takes His Sponsor Elsewhere, DEI Left to Look For New Sponsors

The slow, inevitable trickle continues.

Paul Menard has up and taken his sponsor, Menards and headed over the Yates Racing beginning in the 2009 season.

With Menards going with Paul, the Army expected to head to Tony Stewart's team, that leaves DEI with Bass Pro Shops with Martin Truex Jr.. The once mighty DEI garage, who could pad their sponsors coffers with appearances of their ex-driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr., is now finding themselves scrambling to find themselves more sponsors.

As it is, Almirola has no sponsor yet for the No. 8 car either.

Not looking so good, not giving Jr 51%, huh?

Well, let's see what happens and how many cars they really will be fielding in 2009!

To be fair to DEI, I'm not sure if this would not have happened anyway. Other shops are struggling with sponsorship issues too in this silly-season of economic down turns.

source

Stewart AND Newman to HAAS-CNC?

As noted on sirius-speedway.com, the sponsor dominoes are falling.

Heck, usually it's driver silly season, but this year the dominoes are the multi-million dollar contracts on the hoods of the cars.

Tony Stewart is expected to announce his 2009 move to Haas-CNC, with Office-Depot and Old Spice.
Ryan Newman is being rumored to hop on board with Stewart, with Jack Daniels on his hood. (Damn, does this invalidate every Alltel diecast I've ever purchased?)

UPS is headed to the No 07 of Clint Bowyer. That's how Jack Daniels is becoming available for Newman.

And as noted in the post quoted, we have a number of other drivers whose driving contracts are up and due or are in question:
Scott Riggs, Johnny Sauter, Martin Truex Jr., David Reutimann, Reed Sorenson, David Ragan, Paul Menard and Dave Blaney.
It's nuts and we're only in July of the year.

Randy Moss to start a Truck Team?

Yep, first he was football, and all that and then something from when I used to watch and he was on the Minnesota Vikings.

But now word on the street is he's headed for team ownership in the Truck series.

When I first heard about this, I said 'peshaw'! But that was an ignorant point of view without even having read any article.

Over on Do You NASCAR?, Tim writes that
Randy Moss, star WR for the New England Patriots, announced this past Tuesday the official formation of Moss Motorsports, LLC and his intent for the team to race a partial schedule in the Craftsman Truck Series as early as in the second half of this year, with a full-time schedule on his radar for 2009.",

"Something that many of you may not know already, is that this is not the first venture in the racing world for Moss. He has been involved with sponsorship for local dirt track racing, and has also served as an ambassador for the Urban Youth Racing School."

For more on the issue, go check out Tim's post for the whole article: Do You NASCAR?

Jeremy Mayfield, Jeff Green News and Snippets

This is an excerpt from an article:

Jeremy Mayfield is expected to get a chance to rebuild with Michael Waltrip Racing next season. Sources say Mayfield has agreed to a deal to share the No. 44 with Dale Jarrett, who will drive a limited schedule in '08. Jarrett will announce his plans for next year at Lowe's on Friday.

also,

Before agreeing to join Waltrip, Mayfield had been rumored to be talking to Haas CNC Racing, which signed Scott Riggs last week after Jeff Green decided not to return to the No. 66 -- which is 29th in owner points -- and signed with another team, according to a source.

Why would Green leave a team on the rise with owner points he worked for? It would have to be a team he thought had greater potential and could overcome not having owner points at the start of next season with performance. The two organizations that fit that profile are Joe Gibbs Racing and Richard Childress Racing, which both want to get to four cars. Gibbs, of course, is switching to Toyota next year and the manufacturer is likely willing to supply the funding for an additional entry. Childress has been trying to find a sponsor for its fourth car.

(If this were true, that would be great for Jeff.. He's done consistently well in the COT events and if he's with a good enough team, I think we will see him at the forefront of competition next year. My premise is if Dale Earnhardt see potential in the man, there's got to be something there.)

Here's the entire article with many more details: sportsillustrated

J.J. Yeley to Drive for HOF Racing

J.J. Yeley will be replacing Tony Raines at Hall of Fame Racing, allowing him to maintain his association with Joe Gibbs Racing.

Yeley was introduced as the driver for the No. 96 car at a Tuesday news conference.

Yeley spent the last two years driving Gibbs, but he's in the final year of his contract and will be replaced by Kyle Busch in 2008. The decision was difficult for Gibbs officials, who have invested heavily in the 30-year-old former sprint-car star.

... See the rest at foxsports.com

Evernham and Crocker

Ray Evernham thinks his relationship with Erin Crocker has hurt her career! (YA THINK?)

Team owner Ray Evernham says the best thing for developmental driver Erin Crocker is to find a new race team because if he tells someone else she has talent (Driving that is), they think it's a biased statement. Thus he thinks she needs to find another race team to develop in her own shadow.

http://sports.espn.go.com/rpm/news/story?seriesId=99&id=2951523