Sponsorship To Dictate Remaining Pastrana-Waltrip Racing Schedule

Pastrana-Waltrip Racing said today that sponsorship support will dictate its participation in the remaining 2011 NASCAR Nationwide Series schedule.

The No. 99 PWR team will race at Chicagoland Speedway with rookie Ryan Truex on Saturday night before limiting its schedule for the remainder of the season.

Blake Bechtel, PWR co-owner and executive vice president, said the team prefers to race full-time but only has contractual commitments for eight of the final 20 races.  The first of seven scheduled races with action sports legend Travis Pastrana is July 30 at Lucas Oil Raceway in Indianapolis. Patrick Carpentier will race the No. 99 at Montreal on Aug. 20.

“This isn’t a performance decision, it is an economic decision,” said Bechtel, who co-owns PWR with his father Gary Bechtel, Michael Waltrip Racing and Travis Pastrana.  “We started the year with a 10-race commitment to Ryan Truex, a seven race commitment to Travis and the race in Montreal with Patrick.  We believed we could fill in the open races but it is now time to make the very difficult decision to limit the liabilities.

“We have a great partner with Michael Waltrip Racing and our employees will be redeployed in other areas of the company while PWR is not racing.  The other silver lining is that we know we are going to race in 2012 with Travis, so this is a transitional period.

“Ryan is really starting to mature in the seat and the team is starting to jell with great runs at Richmond and Dover.  He deserves to run every week so that he can keep getting that valuable experience.  We will entertain and pursue other opportunities so that we may race more than the existing commitments.”

NAPA AUTO PARTS will serve as primary sponsor for Carpentier in Montreal.

Boost Mobile, Samsung Mobile and KMC Wheels will sponsor Pastrana in the NASCAR races he enters in 2011. In addition to Indianapolis, Pastrana plans to race the No. 99 in the following Nationwide Series races:

Sept. 9 – Richmond, Va.

Oct. 1 – Dover, Del.

Oct. 8 – Kansas

Nov. 5 – Fort Worth, Texas

Nov. 12 – Phoenix

Nov. 19 – Homestead-Miami

Pastrana-Waltrip Racing PR