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NASCAR Notebook
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Published: August 26, 2008
Mears moving to Childress car
■ Casey Mears will drive Richard Childress' new fourth Sprint Cup car for the next three seasons, and Childress also announced that Mears will be getting the Jack Daniel's sponsorship, and that Clint Bowyer will be getting the new General Mills sponsorship.
The crew chiefs and team rosters will be announced later, Childress said.
Mears is currently driving for Rick Hendrick's Kellogg's sponsored team, and there were apparently corporate conflicts with General Mills, hence the sponsorship swap.
Mears, 30, the nephew of four-time Indy 500 winner Rick Mears, passed up a possible IndyCar career to focus on NASCAR, and he has been on the Cup tour six years. His lone win came in last year's Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte.
Bowyer has been on the Cup tour since 2005, and he leads NASCAR's Nationwide tour.
Hendrick hired Mark Martin last month to take Mears' place on the Alan Gustafson team next season. Mears was 27th in the standings and his three teammates were in the top 10 when Hendrick decided in late June to change his 2009 lineup.
Childress said: "There have been a lot of questions asked about what we are doing. One I get a lot is about the points on Clint's team -- are we changing them, what are we doing? The points will stay with that team."
That will guarantee Mears a spot in the field the first five races of 2009, but Bowyer will have to make those fields on speed.
Mears said he's confident he'll fit in: "We are going to get along just fine. I am a big team player, that is how I like to race. I have seen a lot of success with it in what I have done with other teams.
"It's a good match for everybody. From the outside looking in, it feels like it is going to be a good fit."
■ Michael Waltrip, who will apparently lose sponsor UPS to rival Jack Roush at the end of the season, will have Aarons as a partial Sprint Cup sponsor for 18 races next year with David Reutimann, who is currently sponsored by UPS. No word on the rest of the sponsorships.
■ Some Sprint Cup championship contenders had a woeful Saturday night at Bristol Motor Speedway, but Kevin Harvick, Jeff Gordon, Bowyer and Denny Hamlin left the track pleased.
Particularly Hamlin.
"Last week was the low of lows I guess could you say for our team," Hamlin said, referring to his slump. "There's not one specific place I could point fingers. I just thought as a team we weren't getting the job done.
"The driver is a big part of that team, so I felt there were a lot of things I could have done different throughout the summer. But for the most part mechanical failures ailed us. If we can put a halt to those, we are going to win races as often as Kyle (Busch)."
Harvick, who has been in a slump recently, started sixth and finished fourth, and called it "a big night for the big picture. We're peaking at the right time, and we'll be ready to go hopefully by the time we get in that Chase."
Gordon, who was once a man to beat at Bristol, called his finish "a great top five … definitely a great rebound from the last couple of weeks."
Gordon had a good view of the Carl Edwards-Kyle Busch finish: "I saw those guys racing pretty hard up front. Those are the guys to beat right now, so it's understandable. They're the guys going for the championship in a way, because they're going to get those bonus points (for wins) … and we're kind of all second or third best right now."
■ Clint Bowyer was one of the luckiest of the night, rallying from a crash that could have spelled disaster to his title playoff hopes.
"We got caught up in someone else's mess, and Gil Martin (his crew chief) and all the guys did an awesome job fixing the car so we could keep racing. We came out of Bristol with a top 10 and we're back inside the top 12. It was a really, really good night."
■ The Dodge teams generally have seemed in disarray all season. Ryan Newman, who is leaving Dodge and Roger Penske at the end of the year to jump to Chevrolet, was the best of the bunch at Bristol, running sixth most of the evening. Teammate Kurt Busch, who used to dominate the track when he drove Fords for Jack Roush, was once again never a factor. His brother is the tour's hottest driver, but Busch has faded to little more than a weekly footnote.
Chip Ganassi shut down one of ■ his three teams a few weeks ago, and now Reed Sorenson is apparently ready to jump to the Ray Evernham-George Gillett operation.
Juan Pablo Montoya continues to look much too mediocre. He finished 19th after starting at the rear of the field, and his car clearly was short of power. Ganassi is considering a shake-up in his engine department and leasing engines next season from Evernham-Gillett, in what could be a cost-saving move.
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