No Sponsors Yet For Yates Racing?

January 16, 2007

By Chuck Abrams

Chuck Abrams

Unbelievable as it might seem, the two Yates cars, the 38 for David Gilliland and the 28 for Travis Kvapil, have no sponsor going into Daytona. With Robert Yates retiring and Doug Yates taking over the organization it seems that the two teams are short sponsors entering 2008. After Ricky Rudd went back into retirement, Yates grabbed Kvapil back from the Craftsman truck Series to take over that ride and as of now, there is no sponsor for the car. The Gilliland team has possible sponsors (Wix Filters, Mac Tools, Raybestos) according to Jayski’s team list but those are not confirmed from what I understand.

Yates/Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing is the official name of the new racing entity, but both teams still have their own separate websites newman-haas.com/ and the Yates site ryr.com still list former sponsors and Ricky Rudd as the driver of the 88 car.

Going from one of the top teams a few years ago to the doldrums of sponsorship today, it is amazing to me how far and how fast Yates has fallen. While it seems almost too fast for imagination, it is probably a track that is very traceable. Look at the poor performance of Dale Jarrett and Elliott Sadler over the past few years and you can see why sponsors looking for on track performance now may have looked for greener pastures.

Enter Ricky Rudd and David Gilliland and the 2007 Daytona 500, where both Yates drivers sat on the front row. Everyone was all smiles as the season began but outside of a few decent finishes, Yates continued to have another sub-par year and sponsors that were probably already looking elsewhere before 2007 had their worst nightmares come to realization. Move a couple of hot drivers (Kyle Busch) to new teams and Voila! a new opportunity to sponsor a winning driver.

Although Roush Racing has fallen off a bit, the joint engine program between Yates and Roush seems to have benefited Roush far more than master engine builder Yates. In addition to the horsepower issue you have to look at crew chiefs, teams and drivers. Obviously Yates is in the lesser category when it comes to drivers. While Kvapil is proven entity in the CTS he has yet to make am impact in Cup racing. Personally, the jury is still out on Gilliland. A Busch win and a couple of decent Cup runs on restrictor plate tracks does not automatically make him someone to build a team around, but you have to start somewhere. And since Yates was not in the party mix for the 2007 Kyle Busch Sweepstakes….

Daytona testing allowed us to see RYR cars with www.sponsoryates.com on them. If that isn’t a sad sign of the times I don’t know what is.

Joe Gibbs returning to NASCAR?

Drive fast, turn left and keep the shiny side up. Let me know your thoughts on all this.

Feel free to send Chuck your thoughts on this and other race topics at Insider Racing News. The blog at www.turnleftracing.com is down now due to spammers. We will have that back up as soon as we can.

The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.

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