NASCAR: More Trouble for Wood Brothers Racing?

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Eddie Wood spent some time On Pit Row last Tuesday night.  

The president of one of NASCAR’s most iconic teams, who has fallen on hard times of late, talked about the challenges of his single car team, the decisions that were made at Daytona in regard to qualifying, the subsequent need to rebuild the racecar, and race trim after the first lap were among the topics that Eddie addressed.

Because the No. 21 is outside the top-35 in points, it was necessary to get into the Daytona race on time, and to do that they needed to strip the race car of power-robbing necessities like the fan belt and oil with a viscosity.

Eddie took responsibility for some of the problems the team has had and admitted that the new cars the team has built may have been a bit on the flexible side. They have taken measures to correct that problem, but will take some time to completely rebuild their cars.

With all the car problems the Wood Brothers have endured, it now looks as if they may have some serious sponsorship problems: It was announced this week that part-time WBR driver Marcos Ambrose will be competing full time in the Cup series in 2009 for Doherty-JTG Racing.

The impact that has on The Wood Brothers is that JTG will be taking McKee Foods as the full time sponsor. McKee foods is the parent company of Little Debbie Snacks, and a tri-primary sponsor for the No. 21.

Add to that loss the uncertainty of the Air Force sponsorship.

The Navy has left one of the most stable Nationwide Series teams with the most popular Cup driver as that teams owner—Dale Earnhardt, Jr.’s JR Motorsports.

The Detroit News’ Doug Guthrie wrote a great article about JR Motorsports' loss of The Navy and the same scenario most likely could play out for the Wood Brothers with the Air Force.

If those two kicks in the butt aren’t enough, how about their third primary: Motorcraft.

Motorcraft is a full-fledged subsidiary of The Ford Motor Company. There isn’t much else that needs to be said about Detroit’s Big Three. GM is starting the process of cutting back its motor sports budget among its $10 million overall cutback.

If GM is starting to scale back, it won’t be long before Ford follows suit, causing more economic turmoil for the Wood Brothers.