KANSAS CITY, KS. – Team Rensi Motorsports is looking for sponsorship for both of their Fords for the 2008 season. President Ronnie Russell said Saturday that the team will not operate next season unless sponsorship is found before the season finale in Homestead.
“Today we don’t have anything. We do have a reasonable commitment from a huge company that we feel good with on Bobby (Hamilton, Jr.)’s car. We feel very good about it but we do not have anything signed,” Russell said.
Prior to the start in Kansas Russell confirmed without hesitation that Hamilton, who is currently sixth in the overall driver standings, will be the driver of the No. 35 barring the sponsorship but as for current driver Richard Johns in the No. 25, that is yet to be determined, based on the funding.
“McDonalds is leaving. FreeCreditReport is leaving. From what we understand with McDonalds is they have always wanted Kasey Kahne. FreeCreditReport, there has been rumblings that they want Greg Biffle. Our sport is being run by about 12 Cup guys, over there and over here. Those 12 guys can’t do all of it. Even when you have 27 Cup guys running, people in the seats don’t come to see 27 Cup guys. They come to see five or six of them. We all know that. All you have to do is look at t-shirt sales,” he explains of the team’s forced financial troubles.
“We get things to where potential sponsors say ‘ We will never see it on TV.’ They won’t show a Busch guy on TV. That affects our sponsorship. We’re 42 points out of fifth place in this series. You would think that you would get something. You never get talked about. It’s like you don’t even exist.”
“I’m trying to work with every angle I can. I’m working with certain celebrities to maybe bring somebody in. If you don’t have a Cup guy you need a celebrity as an owner. You are trying to get in front of people and get talked about.”
I have been writing lately that NASCAR needs to consider offering franchises. My argument is largely that 43 teams a year should get a franchise and everyone else should go Busch racing. The franchised Cup teams drivers would not be allowed to go Busch Racing. That would be one way to end the Buschwacking. It also ends Cup teams having to go home.
I have argued give one year franchises to the top 35 in points from the previous season and fill the last eight slots through a qualifying school. My qualifying school would consist of Florida races leading up to Speedweeks. Races would be run at Homestead, Lakeland, the streets of St. Pete and at Daytona.
It is nice to see a serious writer has his own take on franchising.
Seven years ago, I was sitting in a hotel lobby in Richmond, Va., having breakfast when Ed Shull, who worked with Gatorade’s NASCAR sponsorship program, joined me. As usual, we launched into a broad discussion about the future of NASCAR. After that conversation, I wrote a column about how NASCAR might move toward franchising. Some of the ideas were Ed’s, some were mine and some were the product of our collective noodling over omelets and hash browns.
“One of the issues bubbling under the surface of stock-car racing ... is the question of franchises. Should NASCAR set a limit on the number of teams in the top circuits?
“There are those who dismiss the idea as being totally contrary to tradition, the idea that anybody who wants can try to make a race. But racing hasn't been like that for years. ... Without franchising, a team owner ... gets dimes to the dollar on something he has worked on for a lifetime. That's not right.”
Every word of that is still relevant today, and the basic framework of what we drew up would work even better now. Since I don’t know the ins and outs of the laws that govern such things, “franchise” might not even be the right word. But it’s one we can understand, at least in concept, so I will use it anyway.
NASCAR establishes 50 franchises for the Nextel Cup Series. That’s 50 seats at the stock-car racing grown-ups’ table. Companies – not individual owners like a car owner and his mother, uncle and lawyer – currently with more than one team competing full-time in the Cup Series each get two slots. Single-car teams get one franchise. By my count, that would fill 37 of the available slots – there are 15 full-time teams with two or more cars plus seven full-time single-car teams.
The remaining 13 slots would be sold by NASCAR via sealed bid. Rick Hendrick and Jack Roush could bid for two additional teams since the current maximum is four teams. Going forward, however, no company could own more than three franchises, and nobody now at three would be allowed to move up to four.
Each year for five years, owners pay a fee of $1 million for their first team, $2 million for a second team and $4 million for a third team. After five years, and a maximum payment of $35 million, the owner is fully vested and becomes the outright owner of his or her franchises.
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