Red Bull Done in Nascar?

When Toyota entered Nascar's Sprint (then Nextel) Cup Series in 2007, three teams signed up to field Camrys for the rookie manufacturer. They were Bill Davis Racing, Red Bull Racing and Michael Waltrip Racing. Four years later, it appears that only Waltrip's organization (predicted by fans to be the first to fold) will be the lone team of those original three racing in 2012. Davis' team closed up shop after the 2008 cup tour due to sponsor Caterpillar leaving for Richard Childress Racing's No. 31 car and now it seems that Red Bull is pulling support of it's two car operation after this season.

It was reported Monday that the Austria-based energy drink juggernaut will no longer fund it's Nascar team but still be involved in other forms of motorsport. The team is sponsoring Formula One driver Sebastian Vettle's championship run, winning just about everything on that circuit, but the team has struggled mightily on the American side of their racing endeavour. They have come close to winning a few times this year with Kasey Kahne and have a few top tens with Red Bull veteran Brian Vickers.

In it's four year history, RBR has earned just one win with Vickers at Michigan in 2008 and one Chase for the Cup berth in that same season. Other than that, the team has been a middle of the pack one at best.

Even though the story just broke, there are already two scenarios for this operation next season. The first, and most likely, involves team GM Jay Frye and driver Mark Martin buying the team and racing with equipment supplied by Hendrick Motorsports. The other involved former crew chief and team owner Ray Evernham buying the team, a story that Evernham insists is false.

One has to wonder though how committed the Red Bull brand actually was to their Nascar program. They are based in Austria and, because of that, spend no time at the racetrack. You can't run a successful racing organization when every other owner shows up at the races every week, concerned and interested in how their team is running and operating and you aren't. Both the team's drivers are moving on after this season (Kahne to Hendrick Motorsports' No. 5 car and Vickers has said he's exploring his options) and their lack of success on the track is doing very little to entice other drivers to sign up to race the team's Toyotas. There are still many questions to be answered and it will be a little while longer before we know all the details, but it will be very interesting to see how this all unfolds.