Working agreement with Yates gives Roush room

RICHMOND, Va. -- Roush Fenway Racing was trying to figure out how -- or where -- to park its fifth Nextel Cup race team when NASCAR rules go into effect limiting all organizations to four teams.

Now that it appears Roush Fenway perhaps has found a home for that team via a working agreement with Robert Yates Racing, there were additional questions being asked in the garage area prior to Saturday night's Chevy Rock & Roll 400 at Richmond International Raceway. For instance, is the emerging business model illustrated by the Yates-Roush Fenway agreement the way of the future in Cup racing? And also, is this an obvious attempt for Roush Fenway to circumvent the four-car limit?

Yates Racing

Robert Yates announced his retirement from NASCAR after the end of the season and will hand over control of his race team to his son, Doug.

• Complete story, click here

Both Roush Fenway president Geoff Smith and Robin Pemberton, who is NASCAR's vice president of competition, basically confirmed the former and denied the latter.

"Yates Racing is a solution for us with regard to that fifth car, but that's not the only solution, and we don't have to make a decision on that for another couple of years so I can't predict how exactly that will work out," Smith said. "We are not close to any of the prohibitions that NASCAR has laid out [in regards to the four-team limit]. Not even close. We're in another universe of where this is a real careful, safe deal."

Pemberton added: "It's racecars and parts and pieces. If you had the world's biggest building and you just had little 4-foot walls dividing it, and you had 30 different car numbers in there, that wouldn't be right. But when you've got facilities that are 10 miles apart, or five miles apart, set on their own, they're running their own businesses."

Roush Fenway currently is the only organization not at the four-car limit. Since it had five teams at the time NASCAR developed the rule, the team has been given until 2010 to eliminate one of its cars. Now it appears that it can move it to Yates without eliminating it, if it so ultimately choose.

The four-car limit per organization was imposed by NASCAR to prevent mega-teams from developing and monopolizing corners of the sport. But now the fear is that by forging certain alliances -- Joe Gibbs Racing has a similar one with Hall of Fame Racing, and Dale Earnhardt Inc. recently absorbed Ginn Racing -- the largest, best-funded teams may essentially be able to circumvent the limit at least in terms of exchanging vital information and at least some key components of cars.

Smith, in fact, spoke of eventually helping Yates Racing -- which currently runs two cars, the No. 38 driven by David Gilliland and the No. 88 that will be driven next year by Travis Kvapil -- develop into a four-car operation. If that happens, Roush Fenway eventually could have a total of eight cars contributing vast amounts of technological information to their operation. The two companies already have established a joint engine-building operation. (Continued)