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Thinking about starting a NASCAR team?  There is a lot to consider.  You need sponsors, the right driver, a good crew chief, and the best equipment and personnel you can get.  But, as history shows, if you screw up the name on the sign out front, you might as well kiss any success goodbye.

This week’s reports about the possible return of Foster Gillett to NASCAR with driver Kimi Raikkonen and ICE 1 Racing got Journo and me talking about NASCAR team names.  Think about the current powerhouse teams.  What names come to mind?  Hendrick Motorsports, Richard Childress Racing, Joe Gibbs Racing, and Roush Fenway Racing.  What do all of these teams have in common?  They are all named after their owner.

What’s my point with all this?  When you look back over the recent history of the sport, arbitrarily named teams often struggle to find any measure of success.  Why?  Who knows?

Think about some of the current and defunct teams that were not named in some form or another after their owner(s): Phoenix, Front Row, Red Bull, 2nd Chance, Faith, Go Green, Furniture Row, Red Horse, Panhandle, Green Light, Turn One, Competitive Edge, Eel River, PPI, Bang!, Diamond Ridge, Innovative, and the list goes on.  For most of these teams, success has and was difficult to come by.  Some have scattered wins, or a few top fives and top tens here and there, but not much more than that.

When was the last time a team not named for it’s owner won a Cup Series championship?  You’ve got to go back more than 20 years to 1989.  Rusty Wallace won the Winston Cup championship that year driving for Raymond Beadle’s Blue Max Racing team.  Since then, the Cup Series has been dominated by team owner named organizations.

After Blue Max, only one other non-owner named team has won a national series NASCAR championship.  Driving for Jim Smith’s Ultra Motorsports, Ted Musgrave won the 2005 Truck Series championship.  As a sidenote, Ultra was closed a short time after they were crowned champions.

The reasons why these teams often struggle to succeed or even survive are completely inexplicable.  Many have had top flight drivers and sponsors.  Maybe it’s some sort of weird psychological phenomenon holding them back.  Or maybe it’s just a really strange coincidence.  Either way, it appears it may be all in the name.

So to you future NASCAR team owners out there, let me caution you.  When it comes to naming your team, choose wisely…

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As we get set to make our lone trip to California this season, we’ve got quite a battle going on at the top of the standings.  Currently Kurt Busch owns the driver points lead, but by only a single point over Carl Edwards.  But there is another battle raging in the points, and the stakes are just as high, only it’s a little farther down the standings.  Near the bottom of the owners points standings are the drivers and teams working to stay in that top 35, and thus hang on to a guaranteed starting spot.  California is the final race where the guaranteed spots are based on 2010′s points, and it’s the final chance to make a move to either get or keep a guaranteed spot.

Following Bristol, the 35th spot is held down by Casey Mears and the #13 Geico/Germain team.  Their 52 points are just one better than Tommy Baldwin’s #36 team.  Those who are currently inside that magic number who could conceivably fall out are Brian Vickers, Frank Stoddard’s #32 team, Robby Gordon, and Casey Mears.  On the other side, those who are on the outside looking in that have a realistic chance of jumping up are Dave Blaney with the #36, Tony Raines, Andy Lally, and Travis Kvapil.  Kvapil and Mears are currently separated by only six points.

Many of the teams at this end of the garage are severely underfunded, but a guaranteed spot in upcoming races could go a long ways toward securing their futures.  The teams from Front Row, TRG, Tommy Baldwin, and Germain all have intentions to run full races, and would benefit greatly from a 35th or above position.  With as competitive as the sport has become, it only takes one or two DNQ’s by a team to dig an insurmountable points hole.

There are only 43 cars entered for Sunday’s Auto Club 400, so that will be a bit of a boost for those involved in the fight.  But we’ve seen as many as 48 cars entered for races this season and there are no guarantees that other teams won’t pop up.  A guaranteed starting position would go a long way towards helping these teams not only monetarily, but also psychologically.  Whatever happens though, you can be sure that the results at California will affect these teams for the rest of the season.

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