Roush To Consider Letting Busch Jump Early To Penske In ‘06

Roush Contemplating Letting Busch Out Of Contract Early

Roush Racing Owner Jack Roush will “consider letting” NASCAR Nextel Cup driver Kurt Busch out of the final year of his contract in ‘06 so he could drive for Penske Racing South, according to Pete Iacobelli of the AP. Roush: “We’ve got to consider ... the interests of our sponsors and the commitments we’ve made to our sponsors and to our people within the organization ... to see how it all fits together if we decide to have Kurt drive the number 97 car. Right now, the presumption is that he’ll be in the car in 2006 because that’s a commitment he’s made to me and I’ve made commitments to others around that.” Roush Racing signed Jamie McMurray to replace Mark Martin in ’07 and does not have anyone to drive the No. 6 car next year, but Roush said, “I don’t want Jamie McMurray to drive for me in 2006. I want him to do exactly for Chip Ganassi what he’s agreed to do and I don’t want to interfere with that. There’s no circumstance under which I would consider a bargain or try to make a deal for that to happen” (AP, 8/15).

CHANGING TIMES: Roush Racing President Geoff Smith said that all future driver deals will be “a minimum of three years to placate sponsors.” Smith: “You’re not going to see owners go year to year anymore. There’s so many opportunities for discontent. Anytime your driver is in the paper saying, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing next year,’ that ripples throughout all the marketing that the sponsors are doing in a very negative way” (RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH, 8/16). In Toronto, Dean McNulty writes of drivers signing with other teams before their current contracts expire, “NASCAR has always prided itself as being the final bastion in professional sports where its athletes didn’t come across as money grubbing mercenaries, but all that is about to come to an end.” NASCAR, like other pro sports, “is not that far off from its drivers holding out at the start of the season for more money. If it wants to avoid that, it had better squash this problem now” (TORONTO SUN, 8/16).