This is an era of change in NASCAR.

The shape of the cars is changing, the marque badges on the cars are changing, the kind of drivers behind the wheel of the cars is changing and for the subject of this blog, the name of the guys who own the cars are changing.

In the past season we've seen.

Roush Racing become Roush-Fenway Racing

Evenham join forces with sporting magpie George Gillett

Yates join up with Newman/Haas/Lanigan of the Champ Car series (in fact these mergers aren't kept to NASCAR)

Michael Waltrip has teamed up with Robert Kauffman a few weeks ago

And now team owner Bill Davis has revealed he is looking for a partner, with Jacques Villeneuve, and his manager Craig Pollock as front runners.

NASCAR is now big money, as has been mentioned upteen times in relation to several different topics, and for the smaller teams (or perhaps any one with less money that Hendrick/Peru) a wealthy partner is a must if they are to remain competitive in the sport right now.

I find it interesting that with all of the backlash against the foriegn influence of drivers coming into the sport (make of that what you will) the appearence of foriegn, or at least not 'Old Racing' ownerships has gone relatively undetected, and largely uncomplained about. After all Gillett and Villeneuve are Canadian and Pollock (I think) is British.

Are all these jonny-come-lately-owners good for the sport? In the short term yes. They fill a need among the regular owners for fast cash injections. This gives more teams a better chance of competing, technology, sponsor and driver wise. However, this also widens the gaps between the haves and the have nots - the Roushs,GEMs, MWRs and the Furniture Rows, the Morgan-McClures. The bigger problem comes if/when these guys pull out. You immediately would have a huge vacuum in accounts which would mean teams on the verge of crumbling which is bad - very, very bad.

In an attempt to put some flesh on this allow me to take through the weird world of British Soccer team ownership. In recent years we have seen an influx of new guys, Malcolm Glazer (Man United), Thaksin Shinawatra (Man City), Roman Abramovich (Chelsea) and a certain George Gillett (Liverpool). These teams have all seen massive spikes in spending, and so competitiveness. However, as any Chelsea fan will tell you the fear is that the money leaves and the big investments in wages, facilities etc suddenly become unworkable, and the collapse begins.

These new investors will spike NASCAR's spending in the short run, but when NASCAR is out of fashion, they will run to the latest fad, and leave the husk of a team behind.

So owners, by all means take your partners and Do-Si-Do, but save the last dance for NASCAR.

And now for the afterthoughts......

Firstly, it seems NASCAR doesn't like the foriegners, mispelling Dario Franchitti's hometown as 'Edinburg' - for cryin' out loud it's Edinburgh (I won't even start on how to pronounce it....)

Secondly, in fear of encroaching on Forensic's and Tex's GGW patch, I think I've found another project keeping Photogr away from the racetrack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnzFRV1LwIo