NASCAR Winston Cup Preview |
|---|
Topics: Winston Cup
|
Stacy Compton
January 18, 2003
DAYTONA BEACH, FLORIDA
Q. What are your plans for 2003?
STACY COMPTON: A lot of stuff is up on the air as far as Winston Cup is concerned. Our Busch deal is rock solid. We have Kingsport back on board. We are excited about that opportunity. As far as Winston Cup is concerned, there are two scenarios. We are talking with Mark Melling about putting something together. Probably run about 10 races, and Tad Geschickter, our Busch Team owner, and Mark, they have been talking a little bit. We may put something together probably run five races this year with those two gentlemen sort of in partners together. So we are looking at a best-case scenario ... maybe 15 races. The worst-case scenario, we're not sure yet.
Q. Will those potential NASCAR Winston Cup starts be events where the Busch Series is a companion race?
STACY COMPTON: They will all be companion races, Mark's hometown is Michigan so I am sure he will want to run both the Michigan races and of course Talladega has always been pretty good to us. We like to go there. We got some tracks in mind that we would really like to run. A little bit of it is determined by what sponsors we are going to have. Tad is working with sponsors that have some tracks in mind they want to run. If that comes through, hopefully we will know something pretty quick, and then we will know what tracks we are going to run.
Q. Stacy, since you didn't get to take part in the Daytona test, is that going to be a problem if you do put this thing together for Winston Cup that you're not getting preseason testing?
STACY COMPTON: We won't go to Daytona. We definitely won't go to Daytona. But no, what we are looking to do isn't going to affect us for Daytona. There is no way at this point. Mark (Melling) had looked at trying to get a car ready for Daytona. Up until about two weeks ago, the plan was still a go. We just didn't get everything put in place like we needed to. We didn't want to go there and be unprepared. I don't think missing preseason is going to hurt the plans that we've got because it won't include Daytona. If we did decide to go do a speedway race, we will go to Talladega. Or, we talked about going to Daytona maybe the second race (July event).
Q. In the Busch Series, from the Busch Series standpoint, do you think the help for the Busch Series is what it should be? Do you think it's okay in the terms of number of cars? With sponsorships and the way the economy is affected, do you think the Busch Series is going to be okay?
STACY COMPTON: I think the Busch Series got stronger towards the end of the season. Early in the year, we did struggle to have full fields. We may have struggled at times to have 43 competitive cars. Toward the end of the season I think that went away. Toward the end of the season, we started sending 8 to 12 cars home. I think you are going to see that again this year. I think the series is probably as healthy right now as it's been in a while. And, it continues to get better. So I think the Series is pretty strong. Right now, the sponsorship isn't quite as expensive to go Busch racing as it is Cup. I think you are going to see that. You are going to see more teams in Busch because of that. Sponsorship is tough to get. If you can get a decent amount of sponsorship to go racing, I think you may see some people go Busch Racing instead of going Cup Racing halfway.