Rick Hendrick open to more Cup affiliations, including potential alignment with JR Motorsports
Team owner Rick Hendrick (right), seen here talking with driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., is considering more NASCAR Sprint Cup affiliations for 2010. // Jeff Robinson, NASCAR Scene
SONOMA, Calif. – To compensate for cuts from General Motors, Rick Hendrick is thinking about expanding his affiliate programs.
Hendrick already had cut some spending thinking that GM would end up filing for bankruptcy, nullifying some of its commitments. And now he is thinking about how to expand his business with affiliate programs, including the possibility of aligning with JR Motorsports in the Sprint Cup Series.
Hendrick would have to sell off his half of JR Motorsports if Dale Earnhardt Jr. and sister Kelley Earnhardt wanted to move JR Motorsports from being a Nationwide Series team to a Sprint Cup team because of the four-team owners cap.
“That’s something that Dale and Kelley are looking at,” Hendrick said Sunday at Infineon Raceway. “That’s a possibility.”
Hendrick has had a successful operation this year with Stewart-Haas Racing being an affiliate program. SHR purchases cars and leases engines from Hendrick. That affiliate program, which has included Ginn Racing in the past, could expand next year to include Phoenix Racing or even Red Bull Racing, if that organization moves to Chevrolet.
“I’m going to stop racing and [just] build cars and sell motors,” said Hendrick, whose 2007 engine program with Ginn that included one Nationwide and three Cup programs was worth about $13 million annually. “[Seriously], you don’t turn down any business these days. Probably what I’ll see, we’ll convert some of the other programs if it comes to pass.
“We’ve worked with [Red Bull’s general manager] Jay Frye [at Ginn] for so many years, and Tony [Stewart at SHR] and them, that’s a seamless deal for us. … That’s another avenue. If we cut back our Nationwide effort, we’ve got the [personnel] we can turn them into a Cup deal.”
One of those organizations could become a Cup home for JR Motorsports driver Brad Keselowski, who won the Cup race at Talladega earlier this year in a Phoenix Racing car and also has seven Cup races on his schedule with Hendrick Motorsports.
“We’re looking at different options with some of our external situations with other teams and I told Brad that I want him to have the best opportunity,” Hendrick said. “If we can’t give it to him, then I want him to have the best.
“He wants to do something that is somehow associated with our company and we’re working on it and hopefully in the next few weeks we’ll have something sorted out. … He’ll be running Cup [next year]. Whether he’ll be running them all or whether he’ll be running 75 percent of them or what, I don’t know.”
Like all owners who have had their support cut by GM as it goes through a transition into a new company as part of Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, Hendrick has to look at ways to make up that difference.
The cuts made as part of renegotiated contracts with teams were done this week. Hendrick quipped that his support was cut “somewhere between zero and 100 [percent].”
“It’s a big impact any time you lose support from your sponsor,” he said. “I’ve been kind of, for a year or better, thinking that this could happen, so we’ve been trying to address things and do things a little bit differently. … We’ve been trying to cover our bases for about a year.
“Everybody is having to make adjustments, but it’s not going to change the way we race or how we show up on the race track. I’ve been telling our guys the only way I could see GM surviving long-term was to go into bankruptcy. I’ve been saying that for over a year, so we’ve been kind of expecting it.”
Hendrick also said he didn’t believe the testing moratorium wouldn’t be lifted.
