Ginn sells out: Got in over his head, then got ahead

It was barely one month ago when Jay Frye, head honcho at Ginn Racing, was talking boldly about trying to make a run at adding star driver Kyle Busch to the fledging race operation.

Of course, that was about a month after Frye had talked boldly about making a run at adding supernova superstar driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. to the fledging operation.

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All of which was less than six months removed from team owner Bobby Ginn's bold proclamation that he knew what he was getting into and that he had grand plans for the organization formerly known as MB2 Motorsports.

When it was MB2 Motorsports, it didn't try to kid anyone -- least of all those in the operation itself. It was as competitive as it dared try to be, but it never pretended to be one of the big boys in the sport of Nextel Cup stock-car racing. It more or less just quietly went about its business, trying to survive as a lower-tier team in a sport becoming more and more dominated by the giants such as Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, Joe Gibbs Racing, Richard Childress Racing, Penske Racing and Dale Earnhardt Inc.

Perhaps that was Ginn's greatest error. He thought he could be different.

In the end, he couldn't pull it off. So with the announcement set for Thursday that Ginn Racing is merging with DEI, effective immediately, the great Ginn experiment pretty much is snuffed out before it got much of a real start.

Driver Mark Martin as recently as two weeks ago talked about Ginn Racing being remembered as "the little team that could." In the end, they were just another little team that couldn't.

More details are expected to be forthcoming Thursday during a news conference at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where the new DEI-Ginn partnership will be rolled out for participation in the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.

But this much we know already: Ginn bit off more than he had the horsepower to chew when he charged onto the NASCAR scene as owner, taking over the MB2 Motorsports operation late last year. He immediately hired 75 new employees and poured millions into infrastructure upgrades such as two corporate jets and a seven-post shaker rig that even some of the sport's super-teams had yet to purchase.

Then the No. 01 car of Martin's nearly won the Daytona 500 -- and for the first six weeks of this season, the Ginn operation was the darling of the Nextel Cup circuit. The honeymoon between Ginn and his latest adopted sport, however, was shockingly brief.

First came the layoffs and restructuring of the operation a few weeks ago, which was only a prelude to what Ginn really had in mind. He already wanted out as the lead man responsible for the mess he had created by expanding too fast -- before he had secured the sponsorship dollars necessary to cover his tracks.

So plans were made to have Frye, the CEO and minority owner of Ginn Racing, shut down the Busch Series team entirely and lay off scores of employees who mistakenly thought they were part of building something special over the course of what Ginn had initially described as a comprehensive five-year plan. Veteran driver Sterling Marlin, who deserved better after making race after race and at least hanging well inside the top 35 in driver points, was let go and the No. 13 team of veteran driver Joe Nemechek was thrown into limbo.

Now we know why.

Ginn had an escape plan at the ready. For how long, who knows? Maybe this was his plan all along -- to come in, fix up a race operation like it was an old rental property in need of some curb-appeal repair, and flip it for a profit like a real-estate developer does.

Merge ahead

The No. 15 car of Paul Menard will suddenly be thrust into the top 35 in owner points thanks to the DEI-Ginn Racing merger, while the No. 13 car of Joe Nemechek has raced its last.

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We did mention that Ginn was a real-estate developer, didn't we? Did we also mention that three decades ago, he nearly was run out of that business after making a series of what proved to be empty promises to a number of investors in Hilton Head, S.C.? Or that his company currently is the target of a class-action lawsuit filed in Michigan by plaintiffs who claim they were defrauded?

Beginning in this Sunday's Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, Martin will share the No. 01 ride with newly signed Aric Almirola, whose recent signing with Ginn now makes sense because Almirola really was signing with DEI instead. No other cars that began the season with Ginn Racing will be in the Brickyard field.

The owner points from Marlin's No. 14 machine will be assumed by the No. 15 team of driver Paul Menard, guaranteeing Menard a spot in Sunday's race. It hardly seems fair to buy your way in when so many other decent teams have to scratch and claw to qualify for each event, but that's the way it's done sometimes in NASCAR.

Regan Smith, who thought he would race at the Cup level this weekend and the rest of the season for Ginn, instead finds himself preparing for a Truck Series race -- his once-rosy future as cloudy as the sky when a summer afternoon thunderstorm beckons. Nemechek's No. 13 team has been folded.

Other questions linger in the aftermath of the sudden merger. Ginn had an engine-lease deal with Hendrick Motorsports, but DEI already had earlier commenced on a new engine-building merger with RCR, leaving someone, for once probably Hendrick, holding a contract not worth the paper on which it was written. Ginn had a promising stable of developmental drivers it supposedly has been grooming in Jesus Hernandez, Kraig Kinser and Ricky Carmichael. What happens to them?

What happens to anyone who happened to buy into the Nextel Cup pipe dream Ginn sold all of NASCAR?

If you're lucky, all you have to do is write about it and move on. Others drawn closer like moths to a gentle flame that flickered and then destroyed them in an ill-planned fireball won't be so fortunate.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.