Hot on the heels of my long winded rambling yesterday about the mix up of drivers and teams in NASCAR, it was unofficially announced today that Bobby Labonte will drive for the new Hall of Fame/Yates Racing team that just announced their alignment as well. Bobby will be driving the number 96 Ford Fusion for Hall of Fame team. According to the Wikipedia Yates Racing will field 3 cars but according to Yates Racing’s own website they only have 2 cars. The number 28 driven by Travis Kvapil (pronounced kwapil) and number 38 driven by David Gilliland.
Hall of Fame Racing is co-owned in part by Dallas Cowboys QBs Roger Staubach and Troy Aikman. The ties are solid with Bobby Labonte. Hall of Fame Racing was formed in 2006 and their first driver in the Daytona 500 was Bobby’s older brother Terry. Also in 2001 both Bobby and Terry were inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. Who else was in that class? Troy Aikman.
Will this be the year for a nice rebound for Bobby? Only time will tell. I will certainly be pulling for him, Ford or not. For those of you who may not know Bobby Labonte won the Championship back in 2000 while driving for Joe Gibbs Racing. He is also the ONLY driver in NASCAR history to win both the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series Championships (2000 and 1991). For good measure he also won the IROC in 2001. IROC unfortunately went out of business in 2008 from lack of sponsorship. Sad indeed. The IROC took identically prepared cars that were built all by one team and invited a small number of drivers to race them at a few tracks each year. It was kind of like The Masters in golf. Check out the Wiki article to see past winners.
Looking forward to a very exciting 2009 season in the WORLDS GREATEST SPORT (now that the nfl season is over for me :))
Dodgefan's Blog 