JTG Daugherty Racing needs to re-sign with MWR in Cup; plans to scale back Nationwide effort
LOUDON, N.H. – JTG Daugherty Racing doesn’t have enough sponsorship to continue running Michael McDowell beyond next week’s NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Daytona International Speedway, team co-owner Tad Geschickter said Saturday.
The team has sponsorship for Marcos Ambrose for the two Nationwide road-course events later this season but beyond that, Geschickter is not sure how many races the No. 47 car will run over the second half of the season. Tom’s snack company has sponsored the car for much of the first half of the season.
Geschickter, whose team is 16th in the Nationwide owner points, said he has not sent in an entry for the July 10 race at Chicagoland Speedway.
“You need a good bit of money to run competitively in the series,” he said prior to the Nationwide Series race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. “You could see us run some in the back half [of the season]. We’d like to run them all, but we’re kind of down to miracle time right now. We have about 10 days before we have to make some hard calls.
“We’re still talking to some folks, but I’m not going to venture to bet where it’s going to end up.”
Geschickter said the organization is concentrating on its Sprint Cup effort with driver Ambrose. The team is imbedded with Michael Waltrip Racing as part of a technical alliance, and it has worked well with Ambrose sitting 18th in points in what is his first full season of Cup racing.
Whether that MWR relationship continues remains to be seen.
“As far as what we’re doing next year, we haven’t started discussions with them yet,” Geschickter said. “We’ll have to renegotiate for the next year. … They’ve done a really good job. The secret’s been that we have integrated our people into their shop.”
Geschickter said in addition to the Cup program, he hopes to field a full-time Nationwide team in 2010. The Nationwide program is out of the JTG Daugherty Racing shop, which is in the same building as the Wood Brothers Racing shop.
“We’re really working on hard on putting together the right partnerships for the long-term,” Geschickter said. “Some of those [want to] run a race or two this year. I expect us to be running Nationwide again next year full time based on what we’re working on sponsorship-wise.”
