TRG Motorsports owner Kevin Buckler hopes the "triple play" his team executes at Lowe's Motor Speedway during the next two weekends convinces anyone who still doubts how serious he is about NASCAR racing.

Buckler, principal in The Racers Group that also will field seven entries in two GT classes at this weekend's Grand-Am Rolex Series sports car races at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, said he's committed to the full Sprint Cup Series season, even though none of the three vehicles David Gilliland will drive at Lowe's Motor Speedway is currently sponsored.

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I'm absolutely adamant about finding a partner sponsor for a few of these races.

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KEVIN BUCKLER

"We're going to try to continue to work really, really hard on doing as many races as we can this year -- we will probably make every race in some fashion this year in the Cup Series," Buckler said on a national media teleconference Wednesday. "We've been chasing dollars week by week. And there are very few people out there that have discretionary budgets for next month -- they're looking for next year.

"So we took a deep breath, got a few bucks in the bank ready to go after a few races and we'll go after properly looking for a budget for 2010."

In 2008 TRG made its initial foray into stock cars via the Truck Series, where it won in its seventh start; and the ARCA RE/MAX Series where, running a limited schedule TRG sports car regular Andy Lally won the pole at New Jersey and led the first 29 laps before finishing fourth in a rain-shortened event and newcomer Ben Stancill started sixth and finished seventh at Chicagoland.

"We had this thing start with the truck program last year, we threw in all of our resources and started the business, bought a building [in Mooresville, N.C.]," Buckler said. "We started to figure we'd get our black eyes and bloody nose in the Truck Series first [and] just kind of figure out the way to do this.

"We did a pretty good job; I was proud of the guys. We had a win, a bunch of top-10s; the economy was strong and I figured we'd be going into this season with three full-time trucks because that's who was courting us last year as well as some ARCA cars.

"The sponsorship, when it dries up, dries up first in the lower series. So ARCA and Truck are slowing up, [even with] great racing and great stuff -- but it's just hard to find the money and it's expensive.

"So we took a stab at the Cup program a year early. We were planning to go in 2010 [but] things came together this year, and we did it. We got a little money together, ran the first few races and surprised ourselves. Missed Daytona, started qualifying our way in with David Gilliland, and it's just been bam, bam, bam." (Continued)