CONCORD, N.C. -- The race team had recently laid off most of its employees, sold most of its equipment, and battled persistent speculation that it was closing its doors. The company had recently lost $100 million in a failed advertising campaign and hired a new CEO. The driver had recently parted ways with a storied organization, one that was supposed to have a front-office position waiting for him once his competitive days were done.

'Ask' around

Ask.com made a big splash into NASCAR announcing they would sponsor the No. 96 driven by Bobby Labonte among other things.

• Complete story

Not too long ago, Hall of Fame Racing, Bobby Labonte, and an Internet search engine called Ask.com all faced futures about as stable as a 401(k) fund. Yet somehow they all found themselves together Tuesday on the second day of the NASCAR Sprint Media Tour, a trio embodied in a white No. 96 race car with Labonte's name scrawled over the door, the team's insignia stamped on a side post, and the company's logo splashed across the hood. Hall of Fame's owners get another chance to show they're not the NASCAR neophytes so many perceived them to be. Ask.com gets another chance to make up for past advertising missteps. And Labonte gets another chance to prove he's not quite finished yet.

"I have to admit that sometimes after doing this for awhile, you kind of do some of these things, or you do the photo shoots and you're like, 'OK, I've got to go do another photo shoot,' and do all that stuff," the usually mild-mannered past champion said. "But I am freaking excited about this."

With good reason. Labonte's split from since-shuttered Petty Enterprises, where he had driven the organization's flagship No. 43 car for the past three years and was slated to eventually move into management, left him adrift in a sport reeling from economic recession, with plenty of rides but few sponsors to back them up. He wanted something with a little security, and he struggled to find it. "I don't want to say that I lost hope," he said, "but obviously throughout Christmas and New Year's, I wasn't real sure."

Earnhardt Ganassi pursued him hard, so hard that some media outlets reported that Labonte was taking a ride in the organization's No. 8 car. He almost did, but co-owner Chip Ganassi "just didn't have a lot of the things in order to make it work for the whole season. There was a lot of if's in there," Labonte said. Then Max Jones, co-owner of Yates Racing, called. Yates had fielded two cars for the past two seasons with little or no sponsorship, using pluck and assistance from Roush Fenway Racing to make it work. They were forming a partnership with Hall of Fame. The No. 96 car was open. There was sponsorship.

Was Labonte interested? You bet. "Bobby had other options," said Tom Garfinkel, an Arizona Diamondbacks executive who co-owns Hall of Fame with Jeff Moorad, the likely future owner of the San Diego Padres. "Bobby moved on it quickly."

Under the terms of the new partnership, the No. 96 car of Labonte and the No. 98 of Paul Menard will both be housed at the Yates shop and be prepared by Yates personnel. Labonte will inherit the points of the No. 38 car driven last year by David Gilliland, who is apparently no longer with the team. Jones will basically oversee both cars, even though they're technically listed under different owners, meaning that Garfinkel shouldn't have to fly in from Phoenix quite as often.

“

I have to admit that sometimes after doing this for awhile, you kind of do some of these things, or you do the photo shoots and you're like, 'OK, I've got to go do another photo shoot,' and do all that stuff. But I am freaking excited about this.

”

-- BOBBY LABONTE

"I think there's going to be more seamless integration in what we do," said Garfinkel, who worked with Ganassi's team before getting into baseball. "In a lot of ways Max is going to be running the team. I'm more than OK with it, I'm thrilled with it. I'd rather not fly back and decide who the right-rear tire changer is going to be. I'd rater let Max use his expertise to decide those things."

Hall of Fame's previous alliance, with Joe Gibbs Racing, was anything but seamless. Although Hall of Fame used Gibbs equipment, both teams had their own, independent engineering departments, and their performance was in no way comparable. Garfinkel and Moorad purchased controlling interest in Hall of Fame from former NFL quarterbacks Troy Aikman and Roger Staubach prior to last season, and their first year at the helm was a rough one: five different drivers, only one top-five finish, and five DNQs from a campaign spent primarily outside the top 35 in owner points.

Garfinkel had expected a car capable of placing between 20th and 25th, and got an average finish of 30.6. "Certainly the results were more disappointing than we had expected. But we think now we have a model we think can help us improve out competitive position and grow over time," he said.

"I had been in this sport for a long time, so I don't think we came in with eyes shut by any means. I think we had a very keen sense of humility coming into this sport. I think that sense of humility was sharpened a little bit. I don't know if naïve is the right word, but we did have bigger expectations than the way things worked out the first year."

The idea of a partnership with Yates stemmed, strangely enough, from a Diamondbacks-Red Sox game in Boston in June. Yates, aligned with a Roush Fenway program co-owned by the Red Sox's parent company, was receptive. A bigger hurdle was the lack of sponsorship. As 2008 wound down, Hall of Fame struggled to find backing. The organization laid off most of its employees and sold most of its equipment, which was snatched up by Stewart-Haas Racing and former crew chief Tommy Baldwin, who is starting his own team. In New Jersey, an agency rep named Eric Bechtel, seeking sponsorship on behalf of Hall of Fame, made a cold call to Jim Safka, the CEO of Ask.com.

Safka had his own issues to deal with, taking over the company on the heels of an ineffective $100 million television ad campaign that trade publication Advertising Age called "a disaster." Bechtel kept calling. Safka kept ignoring the messages.

"When you're CEO of a company, you get a lot of cold calls," Sakfa said. "And I avoided this cold call for months. Finally my assistant said, 'This guy won't stop calling. For me, take his call for five minutes. If you talk to him for five minutes, he'll stop calling.' So I did, and I was also curious about NASCAR. I did want to get around to exploring the sport at some point. It was like peeling back an onion. Once I got into it, it was just one layer after the next, and it got more and more interesting."

Safka attended the 2008 season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway with Garfinkel and Moorad, and saw the potential. He saw a sponsorship market cleared of clutter by the ongoing economic recession. And the seeds were planted for what became a multi-platform, NASCAR-centric advertising campaign, one that involves not only the No. 96 car, but also series sponsorship, television ads during NASCAR races, and -- in the interests of full disclosure -- a presence on this Web site.

It's rare new money in a sport that's seen many smaller teams like Hall of Fame get squeezed out. "Other people were folding their tents and going home," Safka said. "I just saw that as a big opportunity, because there's less clutter for us to be able to come in and get our message across."

Is it a perfect situation? No. The employees at Hall of Fame who were let go after last season won't get their jobs back. The sponsorship deal with Ask.com isn't for a complete season, but 18 of the first 21 races, and up to 29 total, according to a clarification issued by the company. Although the Hall of Fame logo will be on the No. 96 car, it will essentially be a Yates vehicle, housed and built and overseen day to day by Yates personnel. If Garfinkel and Moorad want to have their names on a race car but essentially be absentee owners and concentrate almost solely on baseball, they have their chance.

Of course, that's yet to be determined. Tuesday was about a sight rarely seen in NASCAR during these dark economic days, the kind of splashy car and sponsor unveiling that in more prosperous times used to happen every other week. And it was about three different yet interconnected elements -- a team, a driver, and a company -- that through each other all found another chance.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.