Team owner Billy Ballew forges ahead in Truck series without Kyle Busch
Billy Ballew Motorsports team owner Billy Ballew plans to continue on without driver Kyle Busch next season in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. // David Griffin, NASCAR Scene
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Life will go on at Billy Ballew Motorsports after Kyle Busch.
That was the message team owner Billy Ballew delivered on Monday, three days after his flagship driver announced plans to field a pair of NASCAR Camping World Truck Series teams under the Kyle Busch Motorsports banner in 2010.
Busch has driven a part-time schedule for Ballew since 2005 and won 16 races in 62 starts for the team owner. Sponsor Miccosukee Resort and Gaming is moving with Busch to KBM.
“From the sponsors’ standpoint, it definitely affected us,” Ballew said in a phone interview Monday with www.SceneDaily.com. “But we have a lot of good things working, and we’ve got a lot of drivers that have a great interest in driving the truck next year, so basically we just have to buckle our shoelaces up and really get aggressive in our sponsorship search to try to match it with the drivers that we have available, which are quite a few.”
Ballew said he plans to run a full season in 2010 with Aric Almirola, one of several drivers to share time with Busch last season in the No. 51 Toyota.
Almirola made 14 of his 16 starts for Ballew in the organization’s No. 15 Truck.
Ballew expects to name a sponsor for Almirola by the end of the week but isn’t sure which of the two trucks Almirola will drive. Ballew hopes to name a sponsor and driver for his other team by Jan 1., early enough to participate in a Toyota test at New Smyrna Speedway in Florida on Jan. 12 and 13.
Richie Wauters, crew chief on the No. 51 Truck, will return to his post, but the team is waiting on sponsorship before filling the vacancy left by No. 15 crew chief Doug George, who is leaving for Kevin Harvick Inc.
“We have a lot of drivers that we’re working with in order to get a second program secured,” Ballew said.
Ballew said candidates for the second truck include 2005 series champion Ted Musgrave, who didn’t compete in 2009 after parting ways with HT Motorsports late in the 2008 season.
“I’ve got a good relationship with Ted and him and Richie Wauters, both being from Wisconsin, used to race short-track cars together for years,” Ballew said. "And Ted is a past champion, and Ted can still do the job.”
Ballew also said that Steve Wallace, who is expected to run a full season in the Nationwide Series for Rusty Wallace Racing, could also run a part-time Truck schedule for the organization.
Ballew said he learned from Busch’s agent on the Wednesday night before the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway that the 24-year-old driver would be leaving to start his own team.
Prior to that, Ballew said he expected Busch to return in a part-time role once again.
“I have a lot of respect for Kyle as a person,” said Ballew, a Georgia businessman whose team joined the series full time in 2002. “I think if me and him had had a dialogue in the last six months as we had in previous years without him being so busy and managers doing his talking other than him, it [would] have probably worked out a lot better for both of us on that end.”
Busch admitted after Friday’s announcement about his new team that leaving Ballew was bittersweet.
“I wish Billy the best,” he said. “I know he’s still got Richie over there who’s a great crew chief, so those guys, they’ll be fine. And that’s why I felt like I could leave them. They’ve got a great core group of setups to go to every single race track and be competitive.”
