NASCAR: UPS to Cut Back Sponsorship

UPS announced that it will no longer fund a full-time sponsorship on the No. 6 Ford for Roush-Fenway Racing.

They did announce they will sponsor 4-8 races on Carl Edwards' No. 99 Ford in the same camp.  Fastenal also announced they will sponsor 17 races on the No. 99 Ford next year as well.

UPS joins Crown Royal as the second primary sponsor to leave or scale back money for Roush-Fenway and NASCAR.

That means funding is in place for Edwards and Biffle that has 3M as his major sponsor for next season, but the No. 6 car driven by David Ragan and the No. 17 driven by Matt Kenseth have no primary sponsor lined up for next season.

The two full-time Nationwide Series teams for Roush-Fenway, the No. 6 Ford driven by Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and the No. 16 Ford driven by Trevor Bayne, don't have full-time primary sponsors as well.

The 2003 NASCAR Champion Matt Kenseth isn't going to go anywhere though. He will likely find something by next season, but the loser in this scenario is David Ragan.  Ragan is signed through next season, but without a full-time sponsor it will be hard to land funding for a full season.

Ragan scored his first career win this past July in Daytona and was looking like a prime suspect for a wild card spot in the Chase, but his recent string of bad finishes dropped him to 20th in points and it's looking like he will be on the outside looking in when the Chase starts in three weeks at Chicago.

With the lack of success for Ragan and the difficulty of finding a full-time sponsor I don't see Ragan in the No. 6 Ford much longer.  Free agents like Clint Bowyer or Brian Vickers may be able to bring sponsorship money or even Roush-Fenway Nationwide driver and this year's Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne may not have any trouble finding sponsorship for a full-time crack at Cup racing.

I would say current Nationwide Points leader Ricky Stenhouse Jr. would be a potential candidate, but he would be in the same boat as Ragan as far as finding sponsorship money.

UPS joins Office Depot, Red Bull, Dupont, Budweiser, Crown Royal, Valvoline, and Aflac as major corporations leaving full-time sponsorship funding.

UPS has been a primary sponsor in the Cup series since 2000 when it was the primary sponsor of Dale Jarrett's no. 88 Ford.  UPS followed Jarrett to Michael Waltrip Racing in 2007 and left in 2009 for it's current role with David Ragan at Roush.