There has been lots of controversy lately concerning the #11 Joe Gibbs Racing's Cup entry (JGR). Initially J. J. Yeley was being groomed for that ride while biding his time in the Busch Series. Yeley's stats haven't been very impressive in the few races that he's driven in this season. Yeley has only driven in 14 events so far out of the 27 Busch Series events that have been run up to this point. Out of those 14 events, the rookie Yeley has only scored two top ten finishes and eight top 20 finishes.
Yeley was supposed to drive the #11 Chevy in the Talladega Cup Series event this coming weekend, but Gibbs didn't feel that he was ready for the heavily taxing restrictor plate event and had contracted the out of work driver Ricky Craven to pilot the entry.
Now there's talk around the garage area about Jason Leffler taking over the JGR #11 Cup Series ride for the 2005 season. Rumors are abounding that Leffler has indeed closed the deal with JGR and that he'll be back in the Cup Series full time next season, vacating the seat in the Busch Series #00 Haas Automation Chevrolet. Leffler has been doing some talking to the press concerning the subject and has apparently let the cat out of the bag before the official announcement. He has stated that although he will be driving full time in the Cup Series, he still plans on driving a limited schedule in the Busch Series.
On another front, I still can't believe that the Busch Series is going to travel down to Mexico City to race on it's road course. This move goes against everything that NASCAR has been saying over the years, extolling their cost cutting initiatives to save face for not paying out better race purses in the Busch Series. They have even created untold problems within the series with their three sets of tires under caution rule. Now they throw all of those cost cutting initiatives out of the window with this move to get into road racing.
The France family, which owns the Nazareth Speedway along with its sister track in the northeast, Watkins Glen International, closed the Nazareth facility because of poor ticket sales. The Nazareth facility had poor ticket sales because the France family owned International Speedway Corp. (ISC) refused to spend the money to market the events that were only a hop, skip, and a jump from the major markets in New Jersey and New York. That was a pathetic move, closing the Nazareth track due to greed.
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