NASCAR silly season produces interesting rumors
As the focus this NASCAR “Silly Season” has seemed to primarily be on crew chiefs since the season concluded at Homestead-Miami Speedway a few weeks ago—at least as far as actually finding jobs after being kicked to the curb or quitting positions with certain teams goes—there hasn’t been much news lately in regards to drivers who have lost rides with their teams of 2011.
There’s no word yet as to the 2012 racing homes of David Reutimann, David Ragan, Brian Vickers, and the like. The biggest driver-related news was the firing of Kurt Busch from Penske Racing, or as the official announcement from the Penske camp put it, a mutual parting of ways. Mutual or not, Busch won’t be in the Penske No. 22 car in 2012.
There doesn’t even seem to be any heavily-circulating rumors regarding most of the aforementioned drivers. Maybe that’s because there doesn’t seem to be many rides out there available for them; however, Busch being out of a ride has set the rumor mill spinning as of late, bringing back memories of silly seasons of old when the off-season primary topic of conversation seemed to center around who’ll be were the following season.
When Busch was let go—or mutually agreed with team owner Roger Penske that his time was up, however you want to look at that situation—fans began scratching there heads wonder where he’d end up in 2012. After all, there didn’t seem to be any quality rides out there for the former Sprint Cup champion. A rumor did spread soon after, though, hinting that maybe Penske was interested in Regan Smith, the Furniture Row Racing driver who claimed his first career win in the 2011 Showtime Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway.
But, still, the question was, “Where would Kurt Busch go?”
On Tuesday, reports from several NASCAR news outlets had Richard Petty Motorsports interested in Busch. Whether or not the unnamed sources making the claims of RPM’s interest are credible or not remains to be seen. Even so, the rumors of a possible RPM/Busch pairing opened up an entirely new can of “what if” worms, like “what about A.J. Allmendinger?”
Richard Petty Motorsports is said to be interested in putting Busch in the No. 43 car. That same rumor puts Allmendinger out of a ride. Reports of speculation that somewhat conflict with RPM”s interest in putting Busch in the No. 43 car but go along with the organization’s rumored interest in Busch say that sources within the RPM organization claim that the organization is more interested in adding a third car (the team also fields a No. 9 car for Marcos Ambrose), if sponsorship can be found to fund an expansion, for Busch.
But that raises another question. If sponsorship can’t be found for a third team, is RPM still interested in Busch—enough so that it would be willing to fire one of its two current drivers to make a place for him?
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Who said the soap opera genre is dead?
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