Furniture Row owner admits manufacturer switch could be possible
Despite the team’s sudden success in 2015, Furniture Row Racing is already wondering if a switch in the future will help it get even better.
Team owner Barney Visser said Wednesday on SiriusXM Speedway that a new sponsor and a manufacturer change could be in the offing.
“We’re looking for sponsorship,” Visser told SiriusXM Speedway host Dave Moody. “We need to get some of that in place to negotiate the kind of contract (for Truex) that we’d both like to see. It may involve a change in manufacturer here. We’re not sure.
“There just doesn’t seem to be any money out of General Motors and probably never will be for us. So something’s got to give. We’ll see where it goes.”
Furniture Row has an alliance with Richard Childress Racing and is considered a fourth car for RCR despite the fact FRR is based in Colorado. And not only is Visser the owner of the race team, he’s the owner of Furniture Row. He would like sponsorship to not only possibly add a second team, but help out his pocketbook too. Self-sponsoring a team isn’t cheap.
While Chevrolet is the dominant manufacturer in NASCAR – 22 of the 43 entries in Sunday’s race at Pocono were Chevrolets – Furniture Row isn’t going to get up the Chevy food chain anytime soon. Hendrick Motorsports is the most powerful Chevrolet team and also provides equipment for the four Stewart-Haas Racing cars. And then in addition to RCR, there’s Ganassi Racing. If you’re playing a game of Chevy power rankings, it’d be a struggle to get the No. 78 into the top 10 teams despite Martin Truex Jr.’s second-place points standing in 2015.
If a switch in manufacturers was to happen, there are two candidates: Ford and Toyota. And if we’re handicapping the field, Toyota seems like a better bet, assuming the manufacturer can get its teams on board with increased information sharing.
Toyota has Joe Gibbs Racing’s four cars and Michael Waltrip Racing’s two as its flagship teams. There’s room at the inn for another team. The Gibbs Toyotas are consistently faster than the MWR cars and have been since MWR downsized to two teams in 2014. And drivers, notably Kyle Busch, have lamented the lack of collaboration between the teams. It stands to reason that if they worked closer together, the MWR cars would be more formidable.
If the Toyota cars start working together more, Furniture Row could be a valuable asset and maintain its performance. If the status quo remains, a move would be risky unless a direct alliance with JGR happened.
A Ford move would be risky too. While the Ford teams use Roush-Yates engines, Team Penske is the only team performing close to the level FRR is right now. While Roush Fenway Racing is showing flashes, it hasn’t had consistent speed for any of its three cars this season. And Richard Petty Motorsports gets its equipment from Roush.
If Furniture Row would be looking for a similar alliance arrangement with Ford, Penske would be the only top-level option barring a miraculous Roush turnaround.
Truex’s contract is also up at the end of the year, though it doesn’t seem likely he’ll move on. While he said Wednesday that contract discussions haven’t started, he said he wants to stay.
With the team that we’re building, that we’ve built, I feel like this is the kind of situation that I’ve really looked for my whole career,” Sunday’s Pocono winner said. “You know, the guys have done such a great job and they’re so good at what they’re doing, and we have such a great group. You know, I feel like this team is special. I feel like it’s – you look over the years at Chad Knaus and Jimmie Johnson and the team that they built and what [Jeff] Gordon did with [crew chief Ray] Evernham back in the day. This team has that feel of it’s just special, and they’re doing special things. They’re making – they’re building great race cars, they’re making good decisions, they’re making it really easy for me to do my job. Honestly it’s so relaxed and so much fun that, yeah, I mean, I really want to do everything I can to keep this group together because I think there’s so much more we can do.”
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
