Earnhardt Ganassi drivers in the dark about future (cont'd)

Pressed on the subject, it became clear Almirola was telling the truth -- not that Truex wasn't making his best guess -- like when Almirola was asked if he'd been assured he had a ride for the season-opening Daytona 500.

"Yeah. I mean gosh -- I don't know -- I mean, I think so, yes," Almirola stammered. "Every time I think I know something, I realize that maybe I don't. But as far as I know, yes, I'm going to race in the Daytona 500 in the No. 8 car.

"Now, whether that changes or not, that's beyond my control."

“

Every time I think I know something, I realize that maybe I don't. But as far as I know, yes, I'm going to race in the Daytona 500 in the No. 8 car. Now, whether that changes or not, that's beyond my control.

”

-- ARIC ALMIROLA

The pounding continued. When Almirola was asked if he was in daily conversations about it with the team, he said "You are beating a dead horse," and when told he didn't sound "super-sure" about the 500, he agreed.

"I didn't say super-sure -- I'm as sure as I'm led on to believe, and when I got on the plane to come here [Friday], I was racing in the Daytona 500, and that's what I'm looking forward to doing.

"You know, all that [financial] stuff will be great questions for Chip [Ganassi] and Teresa [Earnhardt, team co-owner] and Steve [Lauletta] and all the people that run our race team. I do what I'm told on a daily basis -- I'm strictly an employee.

"My goal and my expectations are to race, and that's what I firmly believe I'll do, but with the financial situation the way everything is right now, there's a lot up in the air. I'm not going to speculate on anything."

At a break near the end of his media briefing, Almirola sighed and said "this was too easy." Then he was asked, that if he'd been told he'd be driving in the Daytona 500, "do you know if you're going to drive at California the week after?"

"Now we're talking," Almirola said through a wide grin, as laughter broke out in the room. "Like I said, Chip and Teresa have to do whatever makes financial sense to them, and hopefully for me that means run 36 races. For them I hope that that's the case because that means that they'll have been able to afford to do that.

"The moral of the story is we need a sponsor, badly. We need sponsorship dollars to be able to take our No. 8 Earnhardt Ganassi Chevrolet to every single race that we can."

But the fact is, Ganassi Racing shut down its No. 40 team and laid off about 80 employees a third of the way into the 2008 season when sponsorship for it didn't materialize. Earlier this offseason, Ganassi's Nationwide Series program was also disbanded for similar reasons, with more jobs lost.

Truex, whose Bass Pro Shops-sponsored Chevy unit has been the most solid throughout the whole ordeal, said that a similar fate would be a tragedy for Almirola, who scored a career-best eighth place finish in his 2008 debut, at Bristol.

"It's not a position you want to see anyone in, especially a teammate and a friend of yours [because] he's got a lot of talent and I wish he could run full time," Truex said. "I hope they can get that deal finished up. I think he's got a great future in the sport, it's just bad timing for him to be where he's at in his career, I think -- he did a part-time deal last year, had some good runs.

"Any other year, two or three years ago, that would have been good, you know, and they would have found a sponsor and they would have put stuff together, and I think it would have been [fine]. He's done a good enough job to continue and work his way up but the way things are, it's just tough, and I feel bad for him because I think he deserves a shot to run, and I think he could do a good job for somebody."

While Truex hopes Almirola will run the full schedule, he can find the bright side in a thunderstorm. Truex said the turmoil, in and of itself, hadn't hurt his team's preparation, from what he could tell.

"What's disruptive to our team, we still have less teammates -- we have less information to go around," Truex said, comparing EGR to the four- and five-car super teams of Roush Fenway, Hendrick and Richard Childress Racing. "We're down to two or three, it makes it more difficult for us for sure; there's no two ways about it.

"Can we be successful? Yes, the best year [DEI] ever had we were a two-car team, [in] 2007 -- so it can be done, we can do it. I'm looking forward to working with Juan and with [crew chief] Brian Pattie. I think we've got a good group of guys put together that we can make it work."