Clint Bowyer’s future with Richard Childress Racing remains uncertain – NASCAR news
Clint Bowyer still has no idea where he will be driving in the 2012 season as Richard Childress Racing are still looking for sponsors to fund their No. 33 Cup car but have been unable to come up with anything concrete so far.
Bowyer, who is in the final year of his contract with RCR, is already in talks with Michael Waltrip Racing (MWR) for the next season. Both sides have confirmed that they are in the process of talks and after losing their competition director to MWR, RCR
look set to lose out on Bowyer as well.
“It would be a good home, and something that I would be excited about,” said Bowyer
Bowyer failed to win a race or even get pole at qualifying for RCR. He barely missed out on the Chase as he finished 14th, well ahead of his two other teammates, Paul Menard and Jeff Burton. The only driver to qualify for the Chase from RCR was Kevin Harvick.
Richard Childress insisted that he will do everything possible to find sponsors for Bowyer but if Bowyer gets a better opportunity, he should take it. He said that he wanted Bowyer to stay and Bowyer wanted to stay but the only issue was the sponsorship
deal.
RCR are not short of options however. Childress said that he had a list of drivers that could replace Bowyer and he had ‘several’ companies that were interested in sponsoring the No. 33 car. The only issue is that they were not willing to sponsor the car
for the entire season.
“It's hard today to sell complete sponsorship,” Childress said. “It's tougher than it's ever been, so we just have to do our best with it.”
Should RCR not find a sponsor, they can drop the No. 33 car to the Nationwide Series and field three cars in the Sprint Cup.
According to rumours, Richard Childress could sponsor his grandson, Austin Dillon, in the No. 33 Cup car for a few races and have another racer run the rest of the season. However, Childress said that he does not want to force Austin to take the jump so
quickly and would prefer if he spent the next year in Nationwide racing instead.
Austin Dillon currently drives in the Truck Series and has driven four Nationwide series to date. He is set to race in the Nationwide series in 2012 with his brother, Ty Dillon to replace him in the No. 3 Pro Bass Shops car in the Truck series. Ty currently
drives in the ARCA series.
With a multitude of options in front of RCR, it remains to be seen what Richard Childress decides to do with his No. 33 car and will Clint Bowyer feature in any of those decisions or not.
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