Notes: Wallace continues searching for sponsorship

Three weeks before the end of the 2009 season, Nationwide Series team owner Rusty Wallace's view of the future was far from crystal clear. But he had no question about what he needed to do. He confirmed it at Phoenix.

"We're 100 percent done with [son] Stephen's car, with Five-Hour Energy, but we've only got about 40 percent of the budget we need for Brendan's [Gaughan]," Wallace said of his Nos. 66 and 62 entries. "I'm getting a little nervous about it. I got all the employees together and told them we were 50-50 on a lot of [sponsorship opportunities] so if you've got to go to Phoenix and Homestead and look for a job, go for it, because I don't have [the budget] at the moment.

Wallace

"I'm not a quitter, I'm going to stay digging and make it happen. I plan on having [the money] but I don't have it at the moment. I didn't want to get to the last race and give them all a big surprise."

Gaughan's family is heavily involved in the Las Vegas hotel and casino industry, but Wallace said it's not a solution to his budget woes; nor was running a partial season for Gaughan.

"The deal with Brendan is he's all-in and he's not going to do anything partial," Wallace said. "He wants to do everything. The casino business is funding part of it and the stipulation is they'll fund it, but they want to run [all the races]. Michael Gaughan [Brendan's father] is a great friend, he's done so much for us and he wants to go racing. He can put so much money into it out of the casinos but the problem is we've got to get more to be able to pull the trigger and say we're going to go for it.

"It's my intention to have Brendan in that car. I like the way he drives and we've all learned so much and I know we'll continue to get better."

Prior to Homestead, Wallace announced he would run Toyota Camrys in 2010. At Homestead he said the Toyota alliance was more a technical windfall than financial, with no effect on the budget shortage for Gaughan's team.

"We've been doing all of this on our own, we have no [technical] deals with any Cup teams," Wallace said. "With what Toyota and TRD [Toyota Racing Development] bring with technical and engineering support, all their teams work together and this was something we had to do."

Steve Wallace and Gaughan ended the season seventh and ninth in the Nationwide standings, but it's close to decision time for Wallace; though his older son Greg, a team vice president, said Tuesday no layoffs were imminent.

"I hate it, but we've come right down to the wire," Rusty Wallace said at Homestead. "The best case, if we have to lay some of the guys off, is that we would be able to hire them back if we get the sponsorship we need. But I know I'm not going to go into [wife] Patti and my life savings to run a race car."

Toyota shopping some of its best

When Toyota recently closed its Formula 1 program, speculation that it would unleash a stream of the Japanese automakers' best engineering and mechanical minds toward its NASCAR arm was quickly dispelled. The economy's rendered that impossible, according to TRD president and general manager Lee White.

"We're head count frozen and don't have the ability to hire anyone right now," White said. "We are currently in the last stage of hiring a new chief engineer for our chassis deal in North Carolina, and it took me about six months to get approval. And that was one position, so it's unlikely TRD would take advantage of [the available personnel] even though we'd like to." (Continued)