Dale Earnhardt Jr. says JR Motorsports lacks budget for Nationwide COT
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – NASCAR Nationwide Series team co-owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Friday he doesn’t know what the series’ new car will look like in 2010 and that his JR Motorsports team doesn’t have enough money in its current budget to pay for development of the car of tomorrow.
Earnhardt Jr., who co-owns JRM with Rick Hendrick, fields one full-time and part-time entry in the Nationwide Series. NASCAR appears to be leaning toward running the new car on restrictor-plate tracks and road courses in 2010.
“I haven’t had any conversations with anyone in the sport about the car," Earnhardt Jr. said before Friday night’s Subway Jalapeno 250. “I haven’t had any diagrams or ideas or drafts in front of me to look at. So I am just waiting in the wings like everybody else, I assume.”
Richard Childress Racing did the initial development work on the Nationwide COT for Chevrolet. The rule book is close to being finalized on the car, but NASCAR is still talking with teams about the implementation schedule.
“We have our budget worked out to where we can run this year with what we have, but we don’t have the money to develop this car,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “You’d be lucky to be able to do it just under $150,000 in just an early- or preseason development. So before you even run a race, you have spent a couple hundred thousand dollars, and we do not have that as a company.”
Like a lot of teams, JRM is simply waiting on the final rule book before building any new cars.
“Without a doubt, I am sure it will be a safer race car,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “Hopefully, we have learned a lot from what we have done the last three years from the Cup level to make a better race car than we have now in the Nationwide Series.”
But Earnhardt Jr. wondered if that was possible, saying the current Nationwide car is “the ultimate race car.”
“Brad Keselowski had a good analogy the other day,” Earnhardt Jr. said of his Nationwide driver. “He said, ‘If I look at the Nationwide Series car I would brag to my friends and show it off to them.’ And he said he wants to be able to do that with the new car as well and he wants to be excited about the way it looks and how it drives, and so I feel like hopefully they will develop a new car that will be exciting and fun to watch.”
