On the Nationwide tour, winning isn't good enough

WELCOME, N.C. -- Stephen Leicht won his first career race in the then-Busch Series last season at Kentucky Speedway, and might have won another had the caution not come out when he was leading late in the finale at Homestead. He compiled seven top-10 finishes, placed seventh in final points, and earned a little more than $1 million in his second season on NASCAR's junior circuit. And his reward for all that is a part-time ride for 2008.

"You would think, after two years now, all the auditioning would be over," Leicht said during a stop on the Lowe's Motor Speedway preseason media tour. "Now I'm auditioning again for an ever bigger job. I feel like it's just starting."

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In a way, he is starting over again. A full-time driver for two seasons on what's now known as the Nationwide tour, the 21-year-old Leicht currently has only two races on his 2008 schedule. He'll drive the No. 21 Nationwide car for Richard Childress Racing at California and Nashville, and turn the vehicle over to Sprint Cup veteran Bobby Labonte for 15 other events. Leicht might get a few more starts, if the sponsorship comes through. In the meantime, he'll become RCR's primary test driver, and cross his fingers that some company wants to put its name on the side of his car.

Unfortunately, it's not a situation he's unused to. Despite the moderate successes he experienced on the racetrack last season, Leicht spent the latter part of the 2007 campaign fretting over where he would race the next year. CitiFinancial, the corporation that had backed his No. 90 car at Robert Yates Racing, was moving on to Roush Fenway Racing, and Nationwide cars with Sprint Cup drivers in the cockpit. He found himself caught in the vise so many young drivers are caught in today, trapped in a series dominated by sponsors who want moonlighting Cup drivers in their cars. His results were good -- but not good enough to attract a sponsor that would rather back a big name.

So here he is at Childress, with a small piece of a historically potent car, and hoping for a little more. Given the recent upheaval at his old shop -- the retirement of patriarch Robert Yates, and the loss of Sprint and Nationwide car sponsors -- he's happy for a little stability. But he's also clearly and understandably frustrated, with so much of his future beyond his immediate control.

"Through the offseason to this point, probably in the past week or two when this really started happening, I was thinking to myself, 'Man, we finished seventh in the points, we won a race, bunch of top-fives [three], a bunch of top-10s.' It was like, what do we have to do?" Leicht asked. "It comes down to nowadays, sponsors want Cup drivers in the [Nationwide] cars. Fortunately, that's going to change soon, with what they're doing with the age changes and making Cup drivers not able to run for championships anymore. I think you're going to see that change. Unfortunately, where I am with my career and my age, I'm caught in the middle. I'm kind of in the waiting stage as the process is turning over, and I'll catch the tail end of that pretty soon, hopefully." (Continued)