NASCAR’s annual winter Media Tour usually harvests some news and that’s a good thing because things are pretty quiet right now. After an early flurry of news before Christmas, things have quieted down. That period right after the close of the season last year was dominated by the revitalization of Richard Petty Motorsports with Richard himself in control. Part of the reason for this is the Media Tour itself (why announce something early when you have most of the reporters all together at one time?). The Media Tour starts on Monday, January 24th.
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[/media-credit]The last two weeks, RPM announced they had renewed a sponsorship contract with Best Buy for A.J. Allmendinger’s No. 43 Ford Fusion. With Stanley Tools already shored up for Marcos Ambrose in the No. 9 Ford, it looks like RPM will start the 2011 season on firm footing. RPM’s four-car team performed admirably last season amid speculation of its demise. With that monkey off their backs, we could see an increase in performance for that team.
We also saw Ray Evernham return home, but not to help Hendrick Motorsports on the track. Apparently, Evernham and his marketing arm will help HMS market a new line of performance parts and automobiles, somewhat like Jack Roush does with Ford. This means Evernham no longer will co-host the ESPN NASCAR broadcasts, citing the fact that it would be hard to be critical of HMS, and thus stifle objective reporting. He will be missed on the broadcasts.
So we wait. Lots of questions will have to be answered at the Concord, NC-based tour, and that is usually the case. The biggest question will be about the Chase. Will they actually introduce elimination into the recipe? Are there other changes we haven’t even addressed? Yes, we wait. And the Daytona 500 is less than 40 days away. Patience is sometimes a very hard concept.
