DCT, Barrett working to overcome obstacles

For John and Nancy McGill, thoughts of Mexico this week haven't exactly been filled with dreams of tamales and cliff divers.

"It's a long trip to Mexico City and it's a pretty tough weekend for our guys, not to mention the fact it's pretty expensive," said McGill, who owns DCT Motorsports with his wife, Nancy.

"The only way you come out ahead, and I don't necessarily mean financially, but the only way you come out ahead is to have a really good run," he added.

DCT Motorsports fields the No. 36 Chevrolet for driver Stanton Barrett in NASCAR's Busch Series. Sunday's race in Mexico City will be the first for the sanctioning organization in the country, and the first road course race in several years.

In many ways, it's an exciting time for NASCAR, which McGill readily acknowledges. In others, he has some concerns.

"We're going self-funded and not sponsored. That makes things pretty tough from the start," McGill said. "The race may be a great event from a turnout standpoint but there is a tremendous amount of cost and red rape - more than I ever envisioned. There is a lot to go through in all of the detail - inventory, trailers, caravans, the restraints of not really being able to rent cars, the passports. There is special insurance for this one race because, like most teams, we're not covered outside of the country.

"NASCAR has done a lot to help with the red tape and to answer questions but there aren't a lot of good answers to some of the questions. Some things just have to be done," he added.

Sponsorship, which is an issue for several NASCAR Busch Series teams, has been an especially huge issue for this week's event. McGill, a successful real estate developer from Cleveland, Ohio, has been working to put together sponsorship packages for the entire season.

"I don't blame NASCAR at all for wanting to go down there and you have to applaud them for seeing the potential there," McGill said. "Still, I would have expected there would have been an abundance of companies, sponsors, who wanted to further penetrate Mexico and that market. With the population that is there and the potential that is there, we were hoping for some sponsorship but haven't seen that yet."

Running well will be especially important at Mexico because of the additional costs involved, McGill said, but he feels his team - and his driver - could rise to the challenge.

"Stanton has had some pretty good successes on road courses, such as Road Atlanta and a few other places," McGill said. "I'm confident that even though he doesn't run road courses on a regular basis - and few, if any, Busch regulars do - and he is not from Mexico, he will be very competitive. I wouldn't be doing this if I couldn't bet on our abilities to go down there and compete."

An award-winning stunt man from Hollywood, Barrett has appeared in well over 100 movies - including the soon-to-be-released Dukes Of Hazzard, Spiderman II and others - as well as hundreds of television shows and commercials.

Barrett, who is also running some NASCAR Nextel Cup Series events again this season, has been driving since he was 16 years old, and has competed on the highest levels of NASCAR racing. He is a native of Bishop, Calif., and is well known not just in Hollywood but also in motorsports.