Edward Raabe won’t say yet who his race car driver will be, but [#73] Raabe Racing Enterprises is speeding ahead with an $8 million Nextel Cup race team in Daytona Beach. The team is based out of a 60,000 [not 6,000] square-foot facility at 1870 Mason Ave., formerly home to a plastics manufacturing company. The building has been refitted with everything from fabrication equipment for sheet metal and heavy steel, to a chassis dynamometer for engine tuning, to tooling needed for engine modifying. The facility also is home to a graphics operation that can wrap a race car or an 18-wheeler with race-team logos. Raabe Enterprises has a lease with the option to buy the building “but everything else is debt free. We have $8 million invested. It takes in the neighborhood of $10 million to $15 million a year to operate,” the owner said.
The local team started the season at this year’s opening race at Daytona International Speedway with [#73] Chevys bought from the established Morgan-McClure Motorsports team (headquartered in Abingdon, Va.). They also borrowed a driver, Eric McClure. In Daytona Beach, the team ran the Gatorade Twin 125s on Feb. 17, but did not qualify for the Daytona 500. The team competed in the second race of the season, the Auto Club 500 at California on Feb. 27. By the third race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the team finished 32nd in a field of 43 at the UAW-Daimler Chrysler 400. After three races on the season’s schedule, McClure told Raabe he chose not to make the Atlanta race, the fourth race in the 36-race season.
That put the team out of racing so far this season, but Raabe said he hopes to finish out three or four races at the end of the season with an experienced driver, but he’s not ready to say who. Meanwhile, the shop has continued to operate with about 14 employees, as support services to the local dirt, asphalt and drag race car drivers.
The new Raabe venture, he said, is well financed by himself, with John Baiamonte, an entrepreneur from Florida’s West Coast. The team’s only major sponsor now is Raabe’s daughter’s and son-in-law’s company, ARC (Aquatic Re-lease Conservation) Dehooker (www.dehooker4arc.com), which makes fishing industry-related products in Port Orange. He is looking for an additional sponsor. Raabe said the ARC Dehooker company eventually will be moving to Daytona Beach — and that 23,000 square feet of the racing enterprise building also will house ARC Dehooker. “We will possibly expand with a new building, but that is two years down the road at least,” he said. When that occurs, Raabe said ARC Dehooker expects to hire about 75 employees.(Daytona Beach News Journal)(9-12-2005)
AND hearing one driver talking to the team is John Andretti, who is looking for a ride after the #14 ppc Racing team suspended operations and has been driving races here-and-there for #4 Morgan-McClure in Nextel Cup and #15 Billy Ballew truck series team.(9-12-2005)
