While many teams continue to search for sponsorship for the 2009 Sprint Cup season and beyond, one team that seems confident about sponsorship is Michael Waltrip Racing. MWR Executive Vice President Cal Wells said Saturday that he believes the team has enough sponsorship for two cars and three-quarters of another. He said he could envision the team running a fourth car part time in 2009. “I believe we’re in really good shape,” Wells said. “I’m hoping we’re actually going to run a fourth car. I don’t know that we can get it off, but we have so much in the pipeline.” As far as who would be teammates with already signed #55-Michael Waltrip and #44[will be #00 in 2009]-David Reutimann, Wells said the team hopes to re-sign Michael McDowell, who has run most of the season in a third car for MWR. “We’re selling hard around McDowell,” Wells said. “We’ve got a lot of stuff we’re working on. I honestly don’t know. There’s some [more] talent out there.” Wells also dismissed the idea that MWR would merge with another team [Like the Ganassi rumor]. “We’re looking at doing some service providing stuff with some folks that are trying to come in, kind of like the Hall of Fame [Racing] deals [with Joe Gibbs Racing],” Wells said. “We’re not to the point of announcing anything yet, but we’re looking for business. We’re not looking at [merging].”(SceneDaily.com) AND: hearing that Marcos Ambrose and Little Debbie’s could be moving to Michael Waltrip Racing in 2009 and Ambrose would not run in the Cup Series for JTG Racing. AND II: also hearing that the other primary sponsor for Reutimann in the #00 Toyota in 2009 will be Dow Chemical Company.(9-22-2008) UPDATE: JTG Daugherty Racing hasn’t named a manufacturer for next season when it moves full time to the Sprint Cup Series from the Nationwide Series but the team was working out of a Michael Waltrip Racing hauler on Saturday at Kansas Speedway. JTG Daugherty, which qualified on speed for Sunday’s Cup race with driver #47-Marcos Ambrose, had a hauler fire in June that destroyed one of its transporters. The team got some help from Richard Childress Racing when it qualified for the Allstate 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in late July. But could the team working out of a MWR hauler at Kansas be a sign of a potential affiliation and a move to Toyota? JTG Daugherty currently fields Fords. “Obviously we have a really good relationship with Michael Waltrip Racing,” Geschickter said. “At this point, we’re not ready to announce anything. But we know them better than most in the fact that we were able to go straight over there and borrow some equipment.”(SceneDaily.com)(9-28-2008)
