Chip Ganassi hits brakes on 20 years of NASCAR racing
First CHARLOTTE, N.C. — things first: Chip Ganassi is “no doubt about it, 100%” rooting for Kyle Larson to win the NASCAR Cup Series championship in Sunday’s season finale.
“Look, I’m fine with Larson and absolutely I am pulling for him,“Ganassi said. “It would prove what everybody has said all along — that he was going to be a champion someday.”
Larson, a nine-race winner this season and the title favorite, of course will not be racing for Ganassi at Phoenix Raceway. He drives for Hendrick Motorsports now.
What an ironic ending it would be if Larson goes and gets that big trophy on Ganassi’s final day in NASCAR. Ganassi brought Larson into the series from sprint cars and then developed him over nearly eight seasons, taking him right to the edge of superstardom.
The future of Ganassi’s NASCAR operation depended on Larson, but Ganassi fired him last year over Larson’s use of a racial slur. There wasn’t really any other decision to make. Ganassi could keep Larson or he could keep the sponsors that keep the lights on at the shop. Larson got a pink slip.
A year and half later, Ganassi will leave Phoenix with NASCAR in the rearview mirror. He sold his NASCAR operation to Trackhouse Racing. All of it belongs to Justin Marks and Pitbull as soon as the race is over.
Ganassi didn’t sell because he lost Larson. It was a free agent year, anyway, and there was no guarantee Larson wouldn’t move to Hendrick Motorsports. But it didn’t help.
The sponsorship market is tight and new business hard to find. Pitbull and Michael Jordan are now NASCAR team owners and Chip Ganassi Racing, in its 20th anniversary year, was no better than middle class.
Marks couldn’t get the NASCAR charters he needed for his own upstart team, so he bought an entire race team after cold-calling Ganassi. It’s been a fast-moving four months: CGR had a farewell luncheon at the shop Tuesday. Some employees will be hired by Trackhouse; some are out of luck. That’s business.
“You could be melancholy if you want to be, but I look at it and see a lot of successes over the years,” Ganassi told The Associated Press this week.
“We had wins, we had poles, twice we were one race away from making the championship four. But we also brought in a lot of people, and we brought in a lot of great sponsors over the years,” he said. “You never read about that, we never made the papers for that, but we grew great managers and great engineers and great mechanics.
“And we did it over 20 years, so you know a lot of these people well and you see them grow and their families grow and their kids grow, and I’m very happy with what we did and what my legacy will be in NASCAR.”