There's Still Hope At Morgan-McClure

(Originally published on Feb. 28, 2008)

Give credit to Larry McClure for retaining his sense of humor.

"Kind of scare one up up there in Long Island," the co-owner of Morgan-McClure Motorsports implored me when the subject of a sponsor came up, prompting laughter on both ends of the phone. "There's some big bucks up there."

According to McClure, some folks with big bucks are coming through his Virginia race shop, allowing him to hold out hope that his team will return to Sprint Cup action.

In January, the company-which has visited Victory Lane three times at the Daytona 500-announced that it was ceasing operations due to lack of sponsorship. But McClure said Thursday that two Fortune 500 companies and one Latino group are considering sponsoring the No. 4 Chevy.

One of those potential suitors, who McClure said he's been in contact with on three separate occasions, will be visiting his Abingdon complex next week.

McClure added that he could have secured one-off sponsorship to attempt to make the Daytona 500, but that scratching by isn't the company's objective anymore.

"Here's what we kind of decided as a group: You've got to have a pretty good staff of people who are here all the time and have bought into the program," McClure said. "You can't do this stuff, pardon my expression, half-a**, and we've had to do that the past [few] years."

Kodak left as the team's primary sponsor after the 2003 season, and the sponsorship situation has been shaky, at best, since.

[The potential sponsors] can afford to do this, and that's the big thing," McClure said. "A lot of people want to do it, and then, that's what's happened to us the last four or five years. We've gotten with people, but they were more wannabes than could-be's. And then we ended up paying the price for it."

McClure said he has six COTs at the shop raring to go, and that with sponsorship his team can be more competitive than in the past for a couple of reasons. Before funding fell through, he said MMM had an agreement to be a satellite team for one of the "big three" Chevy operations in Cup for 2008. These kinds of pacts, most recently exhibited when Robby Gordon Motorsports switched from Ford to Dodge to partner with Gillett-Evernham Motorsports, give a single-car owner some of the benefits of a multiple-car shop. McClure said a return to racing would be contingent on having that kind of alliance and seemed confident that that opportunity would still be there.

In addition, McClure said the team had purchased engines from a team that was switching brands. ("You can imagine who that was," McClure said.) Joe Gibbs Racing switched from Chevy to Toyota for the 2008 season.

"We made a large investment to go really fast," McClure said.

The owner added that a realistic goal would be for the team to return at the midway part of the season if things go well. In the meantime, the few people left at the shop have been refurbishing the car that won the 1995 Daytona 500, the second of Sterling Marlin's consecutive wins.

McClure couldn't stop stressing that MMM won't return unless similar success is possible.

"If I do this again, and we're sitting here with our pistol cocked and loaded and ready to go, if I do it again I want to be able to do it and it work and be competitive."