Publication: NASCAR News
You Can't Keep Yates Down | |
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NASCAR NEWS - Thursday, May 29, 2008
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Lack of sponsorship won't get Yates Racing down
Kvapil, Gilliland in top 21 of points minus primary sponsor
By David Caraviello, NASCAR.COM
In the meritocracy that is NASCAR team haulers are parked
in order of their points position, with the back-markers
appropriately located in the rear. Working your way up
the line at Darlington Raceway, you pass the bright
corporate logos of large national beer, cereal, power
tool and shipping companies -- among many others -- before
reaching two Yates Racing trucks adorned by only the
organization's insignia under the image of stylized,
fluttering checkered flag.
Unable to find full-time sponsorship after it reorganized
under a new name last year, Yates Racing has instead made
due with patchwork deals that have helped keep its two
Fords afloat. But despite that rather notable handicap,
drivers Travis Kvapil and David Gilliland have managed to
stay safely inside the top 35 in owner points all season,
something a few of their fully-sponsored rivals have been
unable to do. And Kvapil has turned into a consistent
top-20 performer, notching three top-10s despite having
six different sponsor names on the hood of his No. 28 car
already this year.
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In the most recent points event two weeks ago at Darlington,
the former Truck Series champion ran with the leaders for
most of the race and posted an impressive finish of eighth.
This bearing the sponsorship of a Ford dealership in
Fayetteville, N.C., that was as much a throwback tribute
to Fred Lorenzen as anything else. It was another step
forward for team owner Doug Yates, who is rebuilding his
organization with money out of his own pocket, along with
help from partners Roush Fenway Racing and Ford.
"Everybody asks before the season starts, what are your
expectations? We're overachieving a little bit from what
I thought setting out," Yates said. "I was so beat down
last year, too, so you have to look at it pretty negatively.
But yeah, I'm really impressed with what we're doing, but
maybe not surprised. Todd Parrott is a championship-winning
crew chief, and Travis has won races in the Truck Series
and never really got a solid shot here. I just feel momentum
is building on this team."
Yates' team has operated under the radar for much of this
year, his cars running at times with white, sponsorless
hoods bearing only the name of the organization. But it's
a rather impressive comeback from the disarray of last
season, when -- in the midst of the retirement of patriarch
Robert Yates, the departure of sponsor Masterfoods, and
the dissolution of a short-lived deal with the Newman/Haas
open-wheel team -- the two Yates cars managed only a single
top-five finish between them. Doug Yates could have walked
away and focused on running his engine operation, but
instead he paired with former Roush executive Max Jones
to revive the family business.
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And that he did, shepherding a team that to this point has
run better even without sponsorship than the organization
did last year with it. Realizing his team's limitations,
Yates stopped trying to build his own cars and instead
bought them from Roush, with whom he also co-owns Roush-
Yates Racing Engines. Ford chipped in with wind tunnel and
seven-post time. Yes, they're strapped for resources --
they don't have the money to test as much as some other
teams, and their pit crews are often stretched to the
limit. But for right now, at least, they're making it work.
"It's pretty rewarding, really," said Kvapil, who moved
up to 18th in points after his Darlington finish. "We're
parked by points, and it's nice to walk in the garage and
see some of the cars behind us and the success they've
had in the past. It's still a long season. We're not even
a third of the way into it. We just need to continue what
we started with good, solid finishes each week, completing
all the laps, and gaining momentum. We haven't been real
flashy, finished in the top five or anything like that.
We've been nice and consistent, performing well, and
logging all the miles. Along with that, we've been able
to gain a lot of points."
Kvapil, whose car at Darlington was a No. 99 of Roush
driver Carl Edwards last year, doesn't seem surprised.
"The people involved in this from last fall on, we knew
what we were going to be up against, and we knew we had
the personnel and equipment to go out there and get the
job done," he said. "To an outsider looking in, it might
have looked bleak. But we knew what we had going on
inside. This isn't the Yates Racing team of last year.
This is kind of like a new team. We've gone though a
lot of changes, and it's definitely showing up on the
racetrack."
The Roush agreement has been key, helping Yates build its
car inventory, and also providing needed engineering
support for an organization that needs to watch ever
dollar. "I guess you could say we owe some people some
money on the engines and the cars and things like that,
but that's OK," Yates said. "Because I think as people see
our performance get better, hopefully as this economy takes
a turn for the better, I think people will recognize that
we're a good value. I think what's hurting us right now
is, everyone seems to think you need a $20 million sponsor,
which is not true. I think what our team offers is really
good exposure for really good value."
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This late in the season, it's difficult to find a big-
dollar primary sponsor, given that advertising dollars
are typically committed earlier in the year. The Yates
team is making due right now in piecemeal fashion,
finding companies to sponsor a few races at a time, a
practice that pays the bills but stretches the marketing
department. The plan is to get through this season, and
find somebody willing to back the Yates cars for all of
2009.
"I think it's tough to sign a multi-million dollar deal in
the middle of the season," Kvapil said. "The sponsors that
are out there have already committed, and they're already
in place. A lot of that stuff happens in the offseason. I
know moving forward we have some two- and three-race deals
coming up, and they're always talking about, this sponsor
might want to do four or five races down the road. We feel
like we are going to keep piecing it together and moving
forward."
Of course, if the CEO of a Fortune 500 company showed up
at the Yates shop with a check tomorrow, he wouldn't turn
it down. "We're not short-handed or anything like that,"
Kvapil said. "But if we had a little more money, maybe we
could do a little more testing, or get one or two more
guys in here to kind of help out. Our guys work really
hard and there's definitely not any extras around Yates
Racing. We're doing a great job, and we have everything
we need. We don't have any extra, that's for sure. It
would be nice, hopefully when we get some sponsorship and
color on these cars full-time, then we can kind of take
that next step and develop our race team and get it to
the next level."
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