Click Here To Find Cool Nascar Items!

RAB Racing announced Tuesday that Jason Bowles would be taking over the #09 for this weekend’s Nationwide race at Phoenix. Bowles is the reigning West Series Champion and will be making his second start in NASCAR’s number two series.

This move of course displaced the guy, albeit temporarily, who had been in the car all season, Scott Riggs. Since Daytona, Riggs has been on a race-to-race deal with the team, keeping the car in the top-30 (meaning a guaranteed starting spot), but doing so without any major sponsorship.

The driver change certainly didn’t appear, to me at least, to be a controversial move, but boy was I wrong. The linked announcement on the team’s Facebook page has gotten a lot of comments (some of which have been deleted), and unfortunately most of them have been quite negative.

Here were some of my favorites:

Wow! While you are stabbing Scott in the back, you may as well kick his ass too!

Your logic wreaks of stench like that of a sewer.

Now I understand fan loyalty, but this is far beyond the pale. That fans would attack a team that put their driver in a car unsponsored is beyond me. As we’ve said here many times racing is a business, and as we all know it takes money to run a business. Unfortunately Scott isn’t bringing any to the table.

While I know they both wish they were, the team’s two owners aren’t made of money either. Robby Benton and Brack Maggard are not Roger Penske and Rick Hendrick. At this point they are funding a team out of their own pockets for Riggs. If you ask me, and I’m sure if you ask Scott too, this is a pretty generous thing to do.

Beyond their own financial well being though Maggard and Benton have employees who depend on them every month for a paycheck. The money that Jason Bowles is bringing to the team means they will be able to keep going for an extended period of time. That means these guys will be able to pay their bills and feed their families. It also means the team will live to fight another day potentially with Riggs behind the wheel.

While I’m sure RAB would love to keep Riggs out on track (especially with the way he’s been running), if money comes along from some other driver they have to take it. Certainly the generous donations of some very loyal fans helped, but that $30,000 wasn’t even enough to fund the full weekend at Nashville let alone keep him running for more races (not that they’re complaining).

Robby Benton told the AP:

“The amount we were able to raise was unbelievable,” Benton said

I think too often we let our loyalties cloud our judgement of situations. For five races this season (four he qualified for) RAB has put Scott Riggs in a car and asked nothing of him, but to drive (I challenge you to find another small team that would do the same). For that they are getting harangued by select Riggs fans on the Internet and I’m sure through other forms of communication. I find that distasteful and mind-boggling to say the least.

TheNASCARInsiders.com

Follow the Insiders on Twitter or be a fan on Facebook!

Click Here To Find Cool Nascar Items!

I don’t understand JR Motorsports. They spend an awful lot of time complaining about their money situation. Dale Jr. advertised how much the wrecks cost him at Daytona; and they seem to constantly be advertising their struggle to find sponsorship (welcome to the club). And lest you think otherwise their team spokesman is more than willing to underscore how much Jr. is putting into the team out of his own pocket. So what do they do? They decide they’re going to run a car full time that they don’t appear to have fully funded. What!?

Apparently it was just too good of a team not to run full-time. And That’s fine. I’m happy for Scott Wimmer. Certainly Wimmer is a proven winner in the Nationwide Series and he’s a little easier sell to sponsors. When he’s in good equipment he’s shown he can be competitive. But why the sudden change in rhetoric?

Maybe they do have money lined up for this team. Maybe this weekend is a way for them to cement some deal. Or perhaps they lined something up for the #88 and had enough money from another deal to keep this thing going. I don’t know.

If they don’t though I hope for their sake they’re not going to try the ‘let’s run well and hope we impress a sponsor strategy.’ We saw how well that worked for Ganassi, not once but twice. Ask Aric Almirola and Dario Franchitti (and all the people who got laid off). Or how about RAB Racing, a team that really doesn’t have any money, trying to make a go at a full-time run this season with Scott Riggs (right now their asking fans to help sponsor their ride). This strategy generally has one certain result: lost money.

Unfortunately waiting and hoping you can quickly put a deal together just isn’t very realistic, especially in the Nationwide Series. You can get away with running a competitive truck team (and not lose your ass) by piecemealing different small deals; it’s substantially harder in the Nationwide Series (unless Junior is willing to lose some money).

It’s fine if they want to run a team full-time without full funding. I don’t care. But quit talking about your money issues and how much everything is going to cost you. We get it at this point.

Click Here To Find Cool Nascar Items!

Now that Danica is taking a NASCAR hiatus for a few months, can we please get back to talking about the actual competition in the Nationwide Series?

Three races into the season, the top ten in NNS points could be mistaken for the top ten in the Cup Series.  Seven of the top ten are Cup drivers, with only Justin Allgaier, Steve Wallace, and Scott Riggs representing the NNS only crowd.

Of the three, Allgaier looks to be strongest challenger to unseat a likely Cup-driving champion.  In three starts this season, he has one top five and three top ten finishes.  At Las Vegas, Allgaier looked to be a contender for the win before fading late and finishing seventh.  He certainly has the backing and the team to get it done, and the knowledge and experience from a solid rookie campaign could push him over the top.

There are also several intriguing new-comers to the series who could surprise and break through for wins.  James Buescher, Trevor Bayne, Brian Scott, Colin Braun, and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. all could have a say before the season is over.  They all have the necessary talent and are all driving in equipment that has won in the recent past.  Three races in, Buescher, Bayne, and Scott are all inside the top 20 in points, while Braun and Stenhouse have struggled and will have to dig themselves out of a hole.

Of the three Nationwide only drivers in the top ten, I think the most interesting story is that of Scott Riggs.  He was tabbed to pilot the #09 Ford for RAB Racing only a few short weeks before Daytona.  Riggs filled the seat that was vacated when John Wes Townley left the team and took his family sponsor to Richard Childress Racing.  The RAB team is running without a major sponsor, yet has still found a way to be competitive against fully funded, Cup backed teams.  With a little help, this team could be a factor.

It seems unlikely that, with so many Cup drivers in every race, a young driver like Allgaier will be celebrating at Homestead.  Carl Edwards, Brad Keselowski, and Paul Menard are all planning on running the full slate of Nationwide Series races.  But like they say, that’s why we run the races.