Busch alone won't reverse decline of Gibbs' No. 18 car (cont'd)

Officials with multi-car teams always say that everyone has the same equipment and the same resources, and to a large degree that's usually true. But it's also true that a team's performance on the track is often a direct reflection of sponsorship involvement, and that the vehicles that run best within multi-car organizations are those with the most solid backing. While there are exceptions -- most notably at Toyota, where deep-pocketed sponsors have very little to show for this season -- you usually get the level of driver and team that you pay for.

Gibbs signs Busch

Kyle Busch has signed with Joe Gibbs Racing to drive the No. 18 Chevrolet beginning in 2008.

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Interstate has never been the highest-dollar sponsor in the Nextel Cup garage area, but team president J.D. Gibbs bristles at the notion that the No. 18 team is underfunded. Once you add associate sponsors, he said, the No. 18 team gets as much money as Stewart's No. 20 car or Hamlin's No. 11 team, neither of which have associate sponsors.

"The 11 and the 20 cars, FedEx and Home Depot have those whole cars," Gibbs said. "From Day 1 with Interstate in 1992, they've been the primary sponsor, and we've been able to sell off associates. What happens is, when you do the primary and you add the associates, you come back up to where the 11 and the 20 are. Obviously, that's predicated on running well and winning races. That won't always be the case. But currently, that's still the case. When your cars go to the track, and the way we look at funding these teams, they all bring in roughly the same amount, and it goes into a pot and it's split among all the guys. Cars, engines, chassis, development, engineering, that's split among all the guys. So really, each car, you wouldn't know the difference, financially. It's the same for everybody."

So what happened with the No. 18 team, which once stood among NASCAR's elite?

"We've got a first-class group of guys," he said. "All the engines are the same, all the chassis are the same, all the cars are the same. That's a pretty good foundation. For whatever reason, we had a hard time, and J.J. will tell you this, getting him exactly what he needed to go fast. We have not been able to give him what he feels he needs to be able to go fast. But it's not a financial issue. You can say, hey, change the guys around. We've been through that. We're not slow to make changes if we feel like we need to make a change. But I really feel we've got a group of guys ready to go, and it might be the best thing for JGR and for J.J. to have a clean start."

They'll get that with Busch, introduced Tuesday wearing a new Interstate Batteries shirt. Miller in the past has sold his sponsorship to other companies looking for limited-race deals, and spoke Tuesday of searching for a sponsorship partner that could handle as many as 15 races for the 2008 campaign. He also hasn't ruled out the possibility of a split deal along the lines of the Kellogg's/Carquest arrangement on Busch's current vehicle at Hendrick Motorsports.

The presence of Busch, a blossoming 22-year-old who's proven he can consistently challenge for race victories, will surely help in that search. You would hope that Busch or agent Jeff Dickerson asked the Gibbs brass hard questions about the decline of the No. 18 team, and received some guarantees before signing on. Because for all the luster of the Gibbs organization -- and there's plenty of it, all justly deserved -- the kid universally regarded as the best young talent in the garage area has a new ride that hasn't won a race in four years.

"Whether I'm third on the pecking order or not," Busch said, "I think the 18 team at Joe Gibbs Racing has always been the No. 1 team, because of course, they were the first team here."

In the minds of his new bosses and teammates, some of whom have been around since the Gibbs-Miller connection was forged 16 years ago, that's probably true. But in today's NASCAR, that alone isn't enough to get Busch into Victory Lane.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.