Twitter from Ray Dunlap – “Hearing that Vision Aviation Racing laid off 95% of staff on Wed afternoon. [Note: #51 is entered at Dover as a Chevrolet with Chris Fontaine as driver.] (Ray Dunlap@truckpits)(5-12-2011)
UPDATE:When asked this morning during Truck Series qualifying about how he ended up in the No. 51, Fontaine replied that he got a call while at a wedding in the Bahamas that he would be racing the No. 51 this weekend. Fontaine remarked that while he has heard all the rumors regarding layoffs at VAR, he is unaware of the details going on behind the scenes in that shop, and that his team was running the No. 51 as a favor to VAR for their support of his race team back at Daytona. The No. 51 truck Fontaine is racing this weekend is the same Chevrolet that he ran as the No. 84 at Darlington back in March. Fontaine’s next race will be at Charlotte this coming Friday; no word on which number the team will be running.(Frontstretch.com)(5-13-2011)
UPDATE 2: Three weeks after Justin Johnson qualified third for his best effort as a rookie driver in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, he was left without a race truck to drive on Friday. The 25-year-old from Las Vegas was affected by major cutbacks this week at Vision Aviation Racing and was not entered in the race at Dover, Del. Team manager Tom Davis said Thursday team owners decided this week to make substantial cutbacks that included laying off 10 employees and scaling back to one part-time team. It is uncertain how many more races Johnson and teammate Dusty Davis, 18, also of Las Vegas, will enter this year. “We’ll put some drivers in our truck at high profile races like we did when we put Michael Waltrip in the (No.) 51 at Daytona,” Davis said.Johnson was replaced this week by Chris Fontaine and some reports put former Formula One champion Kimi Raikkonen in a Vision truck for the May 20 race at Charlotte Motor Speedway. “Justin and Dusty will get in some (truck) races at some time this year,” Davis said.”We’re fortunate to have good owners with good business acumen that realized we had to slow up and be prepared for the long haul,” said Davis, a former Las Vegas radio executive and father of Dusty, who has competed in three truck races this year for Vision. The team, funded by the owners of Vision Aviation, plan to continue developing the team. “Bottom line is we’re going back to our original plan,” Davis said. “We’re about the future so we had to slow up a bit and get caught up (financially). Davis said Vision chief operating officer Steven Acor, who lives in Las Vegas, decided to scale back the racing operation to compensate for the increased cost of aviation fuel and expansion plans for Vision Airlines, which has one of its four national offices in Las Vegas.(Las Vegas Review Journal)(5-13-2011)
