Pastrana-Waltrip Racing announced Tuesday afternoon that they will be going on a limited schedule after the upcoming race at Chicagoland Speedway. They will race at least eight more events this season, but will need sponsorship to add additional events. Rookie Ryan Truex Jr. will be in the car at Chicago.
[media-credit id=2 align=”alignleft” width=”229″]
[/media-credit]Team co-owner and executive vice president of PWR Blake Bechtel said that the team will entertain more sponsorship opportunities and would rather race a full-time schedule.
“This isn’t a performance decision, it is an economic decision,” Bechtel said. “We started the year with a 10-race commitment to Ryan Truex, a seven race commitment to Travis and the race in Montreal with Patrick. We believed we could fill in the open races but it is now time to make the very difficult decision to limit the liabilities.
“We have a great partner with Michael Waltrip Racing and our employees will be redeployed in other areas of the company while PWR is not racing. The other silver lining is that we know we are going to race in 2012 with Travis, so this is a transitional period.
“Ryan is really starting to mature in the seat and the team is starting to jell with great runs at Richmond and Dover. He deserves to run every week so that he can keep getting that valuable experience. We will entertain and pursue other opportunities so that we may race more than the existing commitments.”
Travis Pastrana will still race in seven races for the team this season in the Nationwide Series, the first race being July 30 at Lucas Oil Speedway Indianapolis. He will also race in September at Richmond, in Dover and Kansas in October, and in Texas, Phoenix and Homestead in November. Boost Mobile, Samsung Mobile and KMC Wheels will sponsor Pastrana in those races.
Patrick Carpentier will race for the team in Montreal with sponsorship from NAPA Auto Parts.
