In major-league auto racing, there are two things a car cannot take to the race track without: someone to drive it, and someone to pay for it. If those two items happen to come together in a package deal, then they're awfully difficult to resist.

All of which explains why Bobby Labonte, a past Cup Series champion who brought a degree of credibility to a Hall of Fame Racing operation that didn't have a whole lot of it prior to this season, will sit while somebody else drives the No. 96 car in seven of the year's final 12 races.

Bobby Labonte's reputation and fan base did for struggling Hall of Fame what others could never do, which was help it find a level of acceptance in the grandstand no matter how tough the times were.

Erik Darnell, who has shown some promising results in a little over three combined seasons on the Nationwide and Truck tours, will make his debut in NASCAR's premier circuit Sunday night at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Darnell is no slouch. He's a young guy with two career Truck Series victories and a handful of nice runs this year in a Roush-powered Nationwide Series car he's splitting with David Ragan. Of course, he's no Labonte, who has 21 career wins and a championship in 17 years in NASCAR's big league.

But right now, Darnell has something Labonte does not -- sponsorship, something that in this economic environment can be worth more than even a title on the resume.

Yates Racing, the organization that fields the No. 96 car, is responsible for filling any sponsorship shortfalls under the terms of its one-year agreement with Hall of Fame Racing, whose car owners are front-office executives with the San Diego Padres baseball team and somewhat limited in their ability to run a Charlotte-based race team day to day.

So regardless of who technically owns the car, the Yates people are making the calls here -- which seems fitting, given that it's their people who are assembling the vehicles, and their equipment on the track. Facing a late-season gap in sponsorship, and knowing that Darnell had companies willing to make the step up with him on at least a short-term basis, they made the only sensible decision.

For Labonte, no question, it has to sting. Labonte's reputation and fan base did for struggling Hall of Fame what Tony Raines and J.J. Yeley could never do, which was help it find a level of acceptance in the grandstand no matter how tough the times were. And for Labonte, 30th in points and without a top-10 finish since Las Vegas, the times have definitely been tough.

But there are still an awful lot of people out there who love Bobby Labonte, who fondly remember the class and dignity he showed in all those winning years with Joe Gibbs Racing, who may have other favorite drivers now but still pull for the steely-eyed Texas native despite how bad the car may be on the track.

That's a nice sentiment, but it doesn't pay the bills. Fans of NASCAR, conditioned by the myth that this series is a family rather than a cold-blooded business, love to get all caught up in pie-in-the-sky qualities like loyalty and equality, when in all reality teams need to meet a bottom line in order to race. That means finding and courting and retaining sponsors, which are the lifeblood of the sport.

To see the real value of sponsorship, you need to look no further than Labonte's pseudo-teammate at Yates Racing, Paul Menard, whose No. 98 car carries sponsorship from the Menards home improvement store owned by his father. As long as he has that company willing to bankroll him, he's probably going to have a place to drive, even though he doesn't have a finish better than 13th this year.

Don't like it? Hey, that understandable. Then go watch tennis, because this is the way the racing world works. When it comes to getting rides, there are always going to be drivers who have an advantage over the competition -- even more heralded competition -- because they have a company willing to follow them.

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That was the key for Darnell, who in addition to his association with Yates through Roush Fenway Racing, came with a sponsor, Northern Tool and Equipment, that was willing to plunk down some cash. In that situation, everybody wins: Yates, which gets some much-needed sponsorship money, and Darnell, who gets a chance at the big time. Everybody except Labonte, that is.

It happens more often than you might think, especially at the developmental levels. It's not unusual for that bright-eyed young driver getting a shot in a newly-sponsored Nationwide car or Camping World truck to have some family connection to the guy whose company is bankrolling the vehicle. This kind of thing is endemic in open-wheel racing, where even at the highest levels guys buy their way into rides all the time.

Max Papis has said it cost him $400,000 of his own money to get a shot with the defunct Dallara Formula One team in 1995. People familiar with the Champ Car scene in the late 1980s will tell you that one reason Jeff Gordon didn't get a sniff from CART teams was because he didn't come with a sponsor or a suitcase full of cash.

Now, given all that, let's not come down too hard on Darnell here. Already e-mails are arriving from angry Texans who claim that the kid will be booed by 150,000 people when NASCAR visits Texas Motor Speedway, one of the seven races for which Darnell is scheduled to be in the No. 96. Easy, cowboys. This is a guy who got his big break by winning one of Jack Roush's infamous gong shows, and has done enough in the Truck and Nationwide ranks to probably earn some spot duty on the Sprint Cup tour anyway.

It's to his credit, and almost certainly thanks in part to some Roush influence, that Darnell has a company willing to back him as he makes a big step up. Given Hall of Fame's rather unusual administrative structure and the fact that the deal with Yates expires after this year, who knows what these seven races will ultimately come to.

The good news is that this kind of practice is usually confined to the periphery of the NASCAR universe, like developmental tours or lower-rung operations on the Sprint Cup circuit. Nobody is kicking Jimmie Johnson out of the No. 48 just because he can write a bigger check.

At NASCAR's highest levels, the rarified air where success is measured in number of championships won, talent still trumps everything else. But down at the bottom, when it's a question of cash flow and meeting payroll, sometimes a team has to do what it has to do. These days, nobody knows the difference better than Bobby Labonte.

The opinions expressed are those solely of the writer.