Posted by JimmyC Link: Here's the rest.
on December 1, 2008, 8:43 pm
Stubborn Dude
Dale Earnhardt Jr., leaving the company his father founded should have been a wakeup call for his stepmother and current owner of what's left of DEI, Teresa Earnhardt. The economy has taken a major downturn since his departure, but the fortunes of DEI have only gone downhill ever since.
In the struggling economy, companies with major sponsorships with NASCAR teams are abandoning ship and some teams are forced to merge with others just to stay afloat. For example, DEI has merged twice since the departure of NASCAR’s most popular driver, first with Ginn Racing and most recently with Ganassi Racing, not to mention joining forces with Richard Childress’ engine development program.
The number of cars the race teams are fielding has dropped too. Before this season, Ganassi and DEI ran a total of seven cars. Now that they have merged, the team will only race four and at this point still does not have a sponsor for all four cars.
Although, no official announcements have been made, Ganassi will most likely transfer from the Dodge organization it was with last season -- to Chevrolet, which is the current make and model of the Earnhardt-Childress Racing engine program.
Car owner Richard Childress was glad to see the merger and expects the newly formed Earnhardt-Ganassi team to use Chevrolet engines.
“It'll make them stronger for sure. If it's put together and works like ECR, it will be great. ECR has worked beyond all of our expectations,” Childress said in an espn.com article by David Newton.
However, the problem at DEI lies not with the struggling economy, but the current management. Look at what the addition of Tony Stewart has done for the Haas CNC team. Why would Teresa Earnhardt allow the most popular driver in NASCAR to get away? All she had to do was give her stepson the partial ownership he requested and DEI would most likely be one of NASCAR’s strongest teams.
More in the link.
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