Saying he’s sold his interest in the Germain-Arnold Racing Craftsman Truck Series [#9, #30] team, Don Arnold confirmed he’s once again focusing on going Nextel Cup Series racing [#50 team]. “I just wanted to concentrate on Cup,” Arnold said from his new 40,000 square-foot shop located in Mooresville, N.C. “I hope within the next week to announce a Cup sponsorship deal for the rest of the 2005 season and all of 2006.” Arnold said veteran driver Jimmy Spencer would remain at the wheel of the #50 Arnold Motorsports machine. He added that the new sponsor officially would be unveiled the first week of August at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway just in time for the team’s qualifying effort for the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard. Spencer was among those testing at Indianapolis on July 5 in the Arnold Motorsports Dodge. But he crashed in Turn 1 in the afternoon, causing heavy rear-end damage to the only car the team had taken to the speedway. “We were good, but we crashed,” Arnold said. “We’re in the process of building three new cars right now.” Spencer has driven the #50 car in only three Nextel Cup Series races so far in 2005. He qualified 22nd and finished 29th in the Golden Corral 500 at Atlanta. The next week at Bristol, he qualified 29th for the Food City 500 and finished 21st. In the Coca-Cola 600 at the Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Charlotte on May 29, Spencer had a notable 17th-place spot on the starting grid, only to finish 42nd after getting tangled up in a three-car accident and retiring to the garage after 98 official laps. Spencer, who drives full-time in the Craftsman Truck Series and also appears regularly on SPEED Channel racing programs [NASCAR This Morning and Victory Lane]. Arnold ran his first full season in the Cup series in 2004, with Derrike Cope at the wheel the first 12 races. Before the year was out, Mike Wallace, P.J. Jones and Todd Bodine all got shots in the driver’s seat. With Arnold now set up in the larger Mooresville facility, the truck team continues to lease the shop located in Concord.(Naples Daily News)(7-22-2005)
