Stayin' Alive

Some odds and ends for a Tuesday:

I have read a few columns and news articles lately that have suggested the messy marriages involving Gillett Evernham Motorsports and Petty Enterprises, as well as Dale Earnhardt Inc. with Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates, have been public relations nightmares.

Literally speaking, I suppose that’s true — driver, sponsor and crew chief lineups seem to change daily and one wonders if the proverbial right hand knows what the left hand is doing. In the carefully orchestrated NASCAR universe, these details do appear to be coming together on a somewhat haphazard basis.

But that totally misses the point. These marriages are happening at the last minute because the survival of the very teams is at stake and with them, hundreds and hundreds of jobs. One observer described it to me as “two swimmers who are drowning and hope that by holding on to each other they can float.”

These are shotgun marriages — think back a generation or two to what went on whenever teenagers “had to” get married — and by definition they are going to complicated and, at times, messy. As it is, a lot of jobs already have been lost. The folks at these four teams, and a whole bunch of others, are trying to save their companies and as many jobs as they can. To my mind, their respective efforts are to be lauded, not criticized because they are lacking from a P.R. standpoint. If you have 150 employees and no sponsors in January, P.R. is the least of your problems.

• Denny Hamlin said Joe Gibbs Racing will assign dedicated engineers to each of its three cars, rather than have a big engineering group oversee the team’s entire Sprint Cup operation. The reason? JGR was arguably the best team in NASCAR’s regular season last year, but tanked in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, a scenario they want to avoid this year.

“The 18 (Kyle Busch), 20 (Joey Logano) and 11 (Hamlin) will each have their own individual group of engineers they're going to work with, (to) personally deal with race issues as well as the issues they want to work on for the future,” Hamlin said. “That will definitely help our race team, for sure, with the week-to-week issues that we had, mechanical failures that we had last year, which were pretty much inexcusable. Those things will hopefully be reduced this year. We won't have those issues. If we do, we're going to have a team designated to fix them right away and not wait until another issue happens.”

• Now that he has Brad Keselowski’s No. 88 NASCAR Nationwide Series JR Motorsports Chevrolet fully sponsored, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is still looking for more sponsorship for his team’s other car, the No. 5. “I think that team is slated to run about six races,” Earnhardt said. “We need to run that team about 20, 21 races at the least. That's what I'd like to do at least. Those guys need to be at the racetrack working so they can be learning. They like to race. They need to race.”

• Country music star Dierks Bentley will perform before and after the 31st annual Budweiser Shootout Feb. 7 at Daytona International Speedway. It was just two years ago when NASCAR told track operators to not book country acts for races. Guess we’ll be seeing more of guys like Dierks and less of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Def Leppard trackside this year. Suits me fine.