Mike Skinner uncertain of 2009 NASCAR plans after team's demise
In a little more than a week, Mike Skinner’s plans for the 2009 NASCAR season have gone from near certainty to complete limbo. As of now, that’s where they remain.
Skinner, who still had a year left on his contract at Bill Davis Racing when Triad Racing Technologies purchased a majority interest in the team on Dec. 22, says he was told by team management the next day that new owners Marty Gaunt and Mike Held would continue to field the team’s Camping World Truck Series program in 2009 with Skinner returning to the No. 5 Toyota.
Then on Jan. 2, Skinner says team management informed him that the entire truck program would be discontinued, leaving three likely drivers - Skinner, Tayler Malsam and Brian Scott – having to alter plans for the coming season.
Johnny Benson, who won the 2008 Truck title for BDR, had already announced plans to leave the team in 2009 for Red Horse Racing.
“Through the holidays there was not an issue. Everything was good,” Skinner said in a phone interview Friday. “They laid everybody off. [General manager] Mark Chambers had already called the team back. Everybody was coming back to work on [Jan. 5], and then he had to make that second call to all my guys and go, ‘Guys, you don’t have a job.’
“That was kind of a bomb dropped on you. It’s a little bit of a shell-shocker.”
Skinner doesn’t have a ride as of now but says he has been in discussions with two Truck teams and some Sprint Cup teams, none of which he named.
“I’m 85 percent sure we’ll land something,” the Susanville, Calif., native said. “If some sponsor comes along it will be 100 percent.”
Toyota Tundra, which served as the primary sponsor on Skinner’s truck throughout his time at BDR, had planned to continue the partnership if Skinner remained with the team next season, the driver said.
“We’re working feverishly trying to get some sponsor interest,” he said. “We’re willing to take deals that a year ago we wouldn’t have even talked to anybody about. … Next thing you know, when it would take $3 million to do something, now all of a sudden a half a million dollars looks pretty good.”
Skinner, a winner of 25 races in NASCAR’s Truck series, joined Bill Davis Racing late in 2004 and found quick success with the team. He suffered through a disappointing 2008 season in which he worked with multiple crew chiefs, won only once and finished sixth in the standings.
“I just think there was a lot of mismanagement in the way the whole thing came down,” he said.
As for why the new owners at Triad Racing Technologies decided not to continue fielding trucks, Skinner isn’t sure.
“I got some conversation from them [about running trucks], but I didn’t really understand it,” he said. “I think they were just talking. I don’t know if they were ever going to run. I really don’t know. I wish I knew.
“I think they want to be in the engine-building business. I really don’t know what the deal is there.”
