The newly merged Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates Team is keeping busy early in the offseason with the relocation of two of its cars to another shop.
The cars for Martin Truex Jr. and Aric Almirola's teams will be moving from the Dale Earnhardt, Inc. West shop to the Ganassi Racing shop in Concord, North Carolina.
"We've moved our equipment and we're going to run out of Ganassi's shop in Concord," Truex Jr. said. "Things are moving along. We'll just have to wait and see, but so far things have been going pretty well."
The move will combine the DEI teams with Ganassi's No. 41 team and No. 42 team, of Juan Pablo Montoya, in the state-of-the-art 183,000 square-foot facility, which opened its doors in 2003.
"Bono (Kevin Manion, Truex Jr's crew chief) and Juan Pablo's crew chief Brian Pattie are good friends, they've been for a long time and they're really excited to work together," Truex Jr. said. "I'm excited about that. So far everything seems to be going pretty smooth."
For Truex Jr., the move is something he's been used to since his Sprint Cup rookie season in 2006.
"You know last year we went through this same thing," Truex Jr. said. "Actually, the 1 team has been into a different shop I think every year since we started Cup racing. Between that and testing and building cars, and, you know even last year with building a new set of COT cars from the old car, it got really hectic and it seemed like we were always behind the eight ball.
"I'm real excited about my team being all together still. We hit on some things towards the end of the year that were working for us and hopefully we can carry that into this year. With the merge and the collaboration of two different teams there's two different ways of doing things. Hopefully, we can each bring something to the table that's going to help each other and it'll be even better yet."
Sponsorship still needs to be set for some of the cars, including Montoya's, which only has 19 races in place with the Wrigley Chewing Gum company. As for Almirola, the search for sponsorship is still on after the U.S. Army departed the team to head to Stewart-Hass Racing in 2009.
"We've got several sponsors that we've been talking to and we've been giving tours of the shop and wining and dining them," Almirola said. "We've got several people interested so that's good news, but, just nothing set in stone right yet."
The Ganassi cars will make the switch from Dodges to Chevrolets, which is the same manufacturer DEI has fielded since its existence. The team will still utilize engines from Earnhardt-Childress Technologies.
"We're continuing to get our motors from the Earnhardt-Childress Racing Technologies, which has been really, really awesome," Almirola said. "Our motors last year were really, really good every weekend. It's not very often you get a race car driver not complain that he wants more motor. We did not struggle for motor at all this past year."
