Wrecked cars will cost Dale Jr's teams around $200,000

Satuday was not a good day for Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s JR Motorsports team.

 

First, teammate Danica Patrick was collected in a crash and could not continue after she clipped a car and heavily damaged the right front of the car. Then later, as Dale Jr. was running among the leaders, he was clipped and sent on his roof. The car was destroyed. So, JR Motorsports lost one car and had a second damaged quite a bit.

 

Recall, this is a team struggling to find sponsorship for a full year effort and now this happens to the team.

 

"We tore up a really, really good race car,'' Dale Jr. said. "I'm sure it's dead. We built that one, we can build another one. The thing about it for us, to be honest is, we do our (accounting) books by the month and kind of know where we are financially and we were looking for about $400,000 between now and the end of the season, trying to work that in somehow and find that or cut that somewhere and we just knocked ourselves back a few steps because we tore up that car completey and I don't know about (Patrick's car). It was an expensive day for us.''

 

I asked Dale Jr how much he would estimate went into those two cars that were wrecked Saturday.

 

"Race car like that, as long as the engine is OK, which I hope it is, it was a good one, we obviously don't own that,'' Dale Jr. said. "The car itself is $125,000-$150,000. Danica's car, if it can be repaired, it will cost about $60,000 to fix it or maybe $50,000. It cost $200,000 to come here for each car and we spent another $150,000. I'd say we're around $650,000 just this week trying to get to the race. You tear them up and it gets expensive. We dont' budget for that part. We'll be all right. I've got one hell of an accountant. My mom pitches in. Kelley is smart. We'll figure it out. We'll get it right. We were kind of sponsorsless on a couple of events still. Things have a way of working themselves out. They always have.''

 

I then asked Dale Jr. that, based on his marketability, he'll have to run more Nationwide races (recall the blog yesterday where Kyle Busch talked about how sponsors want Cup drivers in Nationwide rides and are willing to pay for that) later this season.

 

"I only have two marked right now,'' Dale Jr. "I'm willing to drive up to four or five. We have had that on the table for several months to offer to anyone that is interested in coming to our company. I'm ready to go. We're already working on a couple of them deals, we should be fine.''

 

Now, to put the costs into perspective. Dale Jr. said the team spent about $650,000 for the two teams to get here to Daytona. Well, Dale Jr. finished 29th in Saturday's Nationwide race and collected $46,660. Danica Patrick finished 35th and collected $52,528. That's a total of $99,188. Understand that some of that money goes to the driver (although one might guess that Dale Jr.'s share goes into the team since he's the car owner). Patrick likely gets a percentage of what she earned. So, if that's the case, then the team brought in less than $100,000 in prize winnings from its two cars. That's where sponsorship comes into play. Based on Dale Jr.'s estimates of what it cost, the team would have needed to have brought in more than half a million dollars in sponsorship to break even with losing one car and damaging another. That's what makes this sport so tough.

 

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Now on to a few other things at the track Saturday

 

# Tony Stewart won the Nationwide race to score his 15th career victory at Daytona. He is tied for third in all-time wins here at the track. Dale Earnhardt is first with 34 career Daytona wins. Bobby Allison is next with 16 wins and then Stewart is tied with Cale Yarborough with 15. Stewart, though, still lacks a Daytona 500 win and admits he'd trade some of those wins for a 500 victory.

 

# Cup had its final practice Saturday. Jeff Burton led the way with a top lap of 195.194 mph. He was followed by teammate Kevin Harvick at 194.641 mph. Third was Marcos Ambrose at 194.376 mph. Fourth was David Reutimann at 194.321 mph. Fifth was Matt Kenseth at 194.267 mph.

 

# AJ Allmendinger changed engines after Saturday's practice and will go to the rear today.

 

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Danica mania

 

OK, on to Danica. She started 15th and finished 35th after she was collected in a crash. She avoided one wreck early and then fell back in the pack as she fought the car's handling and then couldn't avoid cars wrecking in front of her. Here's what she said after the race about her day:

 

"In that incident on the front straight I did the same thing (when she avoided the earlier incident by keeping her line and cars slid down the track). I could see something actually happening out of (turn) four. Some car got sideways and he got it it looked like and I slowed down in the middle of four because I saw it and I thought we were all under control again and then all of a sudden you see smoke. I literally couldn't see a thing. That's the problem, if we could figure out how to make the tires have no smoke, I think there would be less crashed race cars. Unfortunately, that's the inevitable of what' s going to happen here. It's also a product of racing so close together. You don't give yourself any gap to take some open space or see anything. I was just caught up in an accident like so many other people get at these big speedways.''

 

On what Danica learned today:

 

"I really look at it like I had two little mini races at the beginning. There was the first stint and the second stint. The first one wasn't really pretty. I definitely dropped back but I wasn't comfortable. I wasn't about to fire it in to stay up where I started and crash. That wouldn't have been good for my day. I just dropped back because I wasn't happy and we made a stop and we made an adjustment and I got more comfortable. I could feel the difference and I'm sure you guys (the media) could see it, I was running in the pack and I felt much better. The car felt better, and I was more confident. I'm just going to take away the fact that I know what it's going to be like out there come next year. Everybody wants to do well at the Daytona race so, I'm glad I got this head start on next year.''

 

 

 

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