The struggles in the U.S. automobile sales market are trickling down to racing, with the latest blow coming to the Craftsman Truck Series. Dodge will not provide any financial support to any teams in the series in 2009, Dodge Motorsports senior manager Mike Delahanty said.
“We’ll have no factory-funded teams,” Delahanty said. “When times are tough, there are certain things that are lower on the priority list than others.”
Delahanty said the manufacturer’s involvement with the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series is unaffected.
In recent years Dodge has scaled back its involvement, with only Bobby Hamilton Racing-Virginia receiving money from the manufacturer this season. The team ran two trucks for the first 16 races of this season but parked one prior to Saturday’s race at Gateway, as financial constraints forced the team to lay off 15 employees and scale back operations to one team.
“There’s a lot of Dodge trucks, engines and parts out there, [teams] may choose to run them,” Delahanty said. “We just won’t be writing the checks to any teams.”
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