Ganassi leadership not panicking over changes in NASCAR program

Chip Ganassi President Steve Lauletta isn’t looking up in the sky and waiting for a boulder to fall on the team.
 
Yes, in the last week the team saw Texaco announce it was leaving as a half-season sponsor for Juan Pablo Montoya and driver Reed Sorenson announce he has signed with Gillett Evernham Motorsports for 2009. But the team has known those moves could happen.
 
“We’re not surprised by any of this stuff,” Lauletta said in a phone interview Wednesday. “I’m the exact opposite of being in a state of panic. … We’re moving in the right direction.”
 
Sorenson’s departure was announced Tuesday, leaving an opening for the No. 41 Cup car sponsored by Target. Sorenson is 31st in the driver standings in his third Cup season. Lauletta said the team hopes to have a new driver named quickly.
 
“A lot of people have called,” Lauletta said. “Chip, being a driver's owner so to speak, whenever there is a seat in any of the cars available, a lot of people call.
 
“We’re working through our options. … I don’t think there’s one thing that we’re looking for that’s going to weigh the decision one way or another.”
 
Dario Franchitti, whose Sprint Cup team was shut down midway through this season, is a candidate for the ride.
 
“I’ve talked to Dario and he’s talked to Chip,” Lauletta said. “He’s done a great job since getting back in the Nationwide [Series] car since we shut down the [Cup car] and his leg healed [from a Talladega crash].
 
“We feel like he’s definitely somebody that we’re going to talk to and a candidate as well as a number of others that are not with the organization.”
 
Target, which also sponsors Ganassi’s two IndyCar teams, also will play a role in the decision.
 
“They played a role in the conversations that we were having with Reed and ultimately the decision of deciding to kind of both of us move in different directions,” Lauletta said. “They’ll play a role in what the future holds from a driver perspective.
 
“It’s a team of drivers with the two IRL guys and then the NASCAR driver, and we want to make sure that person fits in with what Target wants to do from a marketing perspective.”
 
Montoya’s performances have gotten better in the last month, giving the team confidence that it is making progress in overcoming its struggles, Lauletta said. He was running well at Indianapolis before a tire went down, he had a plug-wire issue at Pocono, and at Bristol he had a good car on race day.
 
“It’s getting better,” Lauletta said. “We’re learning more. … We’re doing a lot of testing. We feel like we’re getting our hands around the car more than we have in the past. Those are all the steps that get you to the point where those top-10s and the wins will start coming.”
 
One of the biggest challenges is keeping the employees focused on improving the team with all the changes and keeping them from believing rumors that the team will possibly merge or be bought out, Lauletta said. Lauletta said 99 percent of the rumors are false.
 
“This is a business, and they’re all business decisions that are made,” Lauletta said. “We make a thousand of them a day. When you start back at [Franchitti’s Cup team], that was a smart business decision we made because we realized that we didn’t have the proper funding for the second half of the season and we were starting to take the focus away from [Sorenson] and [Montoya], and the same from a resource perspective.
 
“[Texaco parent company] Chevron, we worked really hard with them to keep them in the sport and keep them with our team, and ultimately they made a business decision to get out of the sport. We didn’t lose the sponsorship to another team, just like we didn’t lose the Coors Light sponsorship to another team [after last season]. And now on the Reed front, it was a joint decision to move in a different direction.”

• Mentioned Drivers:
• Dario Franchitti