#1-Phoenix Racing team manager Marc Reno hurried out of the Pocono Raceway garage area Friday afternoon when owner James Finch’s Sprint Cup driver this weekend, Terry Cook, failed to qualify for Sunday’s Gillette Fusion ProGlide 500. But going to Nashville Superspeedway for Saturday night’s Federated Auto Parts 300 to watch Finch’s Nationwide Series operation isn’t an option. For the first time since Daytona in 2007 a Phoenix Racing car won’t be on the grid for a Nationwide race. In fact, Finch will drastically cut his 2010 Nationwide schedule. Reno said that the only two races Finch plans to run this summer are with the Nationwide new car, at Daytona (July) and Michigan (August), they hope with Sprint Cup driver Ryan Newman. Finch’s future may include selling his Nationwide operation — though he seems as committed as he ever was to the series, having five Nationwide new cars in his fleet. “I think the press picked up on it when he was trying to sell the [Nationwide] team to [Steve] Turner [Buescher’s future father-in-law],” Reno said. “I think it just snowballed, they asked James questions and he just gave them a cute answer. There’s not a big line there to buy [the Nationwide team] but [Finch] honestly just wants to cut back that [Nationwide] deal because that division is getting so bad. “The purses are horrible. We run second at Dover and made $30,000, then ran 30 laps in the Cup race and made $75,000. Something’s not right on all that — and if you don’t have a Cup driver, you can’t compete. And you can’t get one to drive all the races since they’re all tied up. James literally told me last week if Newman would drive them all, he’d run them all. So our schedule with that [Nationwide] car is pretty much whatever Newman wants to run — and if it’s not him it would pretty much have to be someone of his quality.”(NASCAR.com)(6-6-2010)
