#14-Tony Stewart, driver of the #14-Office Depot/Mobil 1 Chevy and owners of Steweart-Haas Racing (#14, #10-Patrick & #39-Newman) was the guest on the NASCAR Weekly Teleconference. Below is the transcript in part, dealing with the loss of the U.S. Army on the #39 Chevy of Ryan Newman and plans for 2013:
: Q. With U.S. Army now leaving a few weeks ago, where does that leave you as far as commitments with new sponsorship for your team next year?
Stewart: We ‘re working on it, it’s definitely still a setback but ‘
Q. Is it your hope to have three cars next year? Stewart: Yes, and it has been since we signed Danica.
Q. On the sponsorship deal, last year at this time it seemed like the environment was changing a little bit and maybe getting a little bit better and if you ‘re still seeing that kind of thing and what it’s like out there now in terms of what kinds of things you ‘re having to do to get sponsors now that maybe you were or were not last year at this time.
Stewart: Well, I still think it’s gaining momentum. We have been able to bring in Aspen Dental and Quicken Loans on board and those are two companies that had not been a part of NASCAR racing in the past. I ‘m pretty proud of that side of it. You know, it was definitely a huge disappointment that we were going to lose the U.S. Army. But it’s not something that we have had a lot of at Stewart Haas Racing, we have not lost a lot of partners. And especially a group like U.S. Army, they have been a lot of fun to work with and they been a very dedicated group and have been very involved with what the race team is doing and very such pore at this point. We are going to miss out having them on board next year. But I still think it’s coming around. There’s a lot of new companies that we are seeing in the sport, and we are seeing that in our organization. So we are not giving up hope and throwing in the towel thinking that we are losing one sponsor; we are going to hopefully be able to try to find somebody else.(Team Chevy)(7-25-2012)
