Labonte gets permanent home with JTG Daugherty Racing
Bobby Labonte is moving to JTG Daugherty Racing, the team announced on Wednesday. The 2000 Sprint Cup Series Champion will be taking over driving duties for the No. 47 Toyota Camry in the 2011 season.
Labonte has bounced around several NASCAR teams since 2005 when he left Joe Gibbs Racing. He will be replacing Marcos Ambrose, who drove for the outfit in the Nationwide, Sprint Cup, and Truck series for the past five years. According to rumours Ambrose will be signing with Richard Petty Motorsports though the driver has been tight lipped about the deal and refuses to comment on it. He would be taking over Kasey Kahne’s number nine Ford, the car that won the Sonoma in 2009.
Labonte has a history with RPM; He spent three seasons with Petty Motors before they dropped him in a merger to become Richard Petty Motorsports.
The move to JTG Daugherty came after TRG Motorsports failed to sponsor Labonte’s No.71 car for the entirety of the 2010 season due to the their financial struggles. Labonte is happy to have secured a ride for the whole 2011 season after driving between with Robby Gordon and James Finch to make up the rest of this season.
“JTG Daugherty Racing is a solid race team that has come close to winning races with Marcos Ambrose and I'm looking forward to developing our new partnership in 2011," Labonte said.
The 46-year-old driver has 21 career wins though his most recent one was at the Homestead-Miami Speedway in November of 2003. Labonte’s new team is stable and will hopefully help the driver earn a long overdue win.
“The team is thriving and their technical alliance with MWR [Michael Waltrip Racing] is intact. It's great to have next year already set in stone so when this season ends we can begin focusing on next year right away. Everything is in place and we have all the right ingredients to win races together."
Since his time with TRG expired, Labonte has driven for Robby Gordon and with Phoenix Racing. He is going to spend the rest of his season swapping between the outfits before he gets his permanent home with Brad Daugherty next year.
"We are really happy Bobby has decided to join our team because I have known him for a long time and I have always admired him as a professional driver and as an individual," said Daugherty, co-owner of single-car outfit.
“He will do an outstanding job representing our products and team. He has got to a point in his career that he still has some things to accomplish. He is highly experienced with a championship on his resume and we know he is capable of winning."
Other co-owner Tad Geschickter helped Ambrose start his NASCAR career but said he understood Ambrose decision to move on to try and make it with a bigger team.
"He has no benchmark. He's only driven my cars and trucks. I certainly understood his [thinking], 'I want to see if I can catch on with a mega-team. If I'm as good as I am right now with a mega-team, I just need to go home.' There's no assurance whether our stalled results are because of my equipment or Marcos. Change is never pleasant, but I understood his thinking on it, that's for sure."
But Labonte was a logical choice to replace Ambrose, and the team gets a champion in exchange for a wanna-be-champion. Geschickter believes Labonte will work well with the outfit, and Labonte was warmly received by their sponsors, Kleenex and Lance Snacks. Geschickter is so confident in Labonte that he even went as far as to predict Labonte is the key ingredient for the outfit to advance and improve their race results.
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