NASCAR: It's All about Sponsorships

From ESPN: Richard Petty said the reason Kurt Busch wasn't hired to drive his famous No. 43 was "personality."
"Sponsorships," Petty said during a break in Thursday's test session at Daytona International Speedway. "Nobody at the time wanted to pay the bill for him. That's how simple it was."
Busch, who was released from Penske Racing after a tumultuous 2011 season that led the 2004 Cup champion to seek professional help for anger issues, ultimately signed with Phoenix Racing.
Richard Petty Motorsports signed Aric Almirola from JR Motorsports' Nationwide Series team after AJ Allmendinger left to replace Busch at Penske Racing -- even though RPM executive Robbie Loomis said he would mortgage his house to sign Busch.
Petty said Smithfield Foods, which he introduced Thursday as a primary sponsor for the No. 43 car he drove to a record 200 victories and seven Cup championships, was among those that wouldn't come on board if Busch was involved.
"Everybody has to protect their brand," Petty said. "Smithfield has a pretty laid-back, pretty good down-home persona in the general public. If they had taken him on, it would have changed their ... they just didn't like the personality."
http://espn.go.com/racing/nascar/cup/story/_/id/7455466/sponsors-wary-kurt-busch-personality-richard-petty-says
In most sports, the very best athletes are out on the field competing for one team or another.
But in NASCAR and most motorsports, it's the sponsors who decide which athletes are out on the field/track. Not the best drivers, mind you, but what the sponsors want.
What if Jeff Gordon did something stupid and the sponsors abandoned him. Would he still have a driving job? Probably not unless he had his own NASCAR team. But Jeff Gordon is one of the best drivers in NASCAR.
Kurt and Kyle Busch are a month the best of the best of NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers, but there was a real strong chance that neither one of them would be driving this season. Kurt was fired from Penske and finally got a job driving for a minor league Sprint team.
Kyle darn near was fired from his ride after he intentionally wrecked a truck in the Camping World truck series and had a few other incidents this past season. Because of Kyle's actions, he no longer will drive in the Truck and Nationwide series this next season. Who benefits from that? The fans? Nope. sponsors? Yep.
This season, right now, David Regan, Brian Vickers and couple other good, high quality drivers don't have rides this year. Not because they don't have the talent- they do, but because of sponsorships, which rule the sport.
So, in another month or so, when the Daytona races begin, we won't have the best drivers on the track, we will have the drivers that sponsors want on the track.
NAsCAR has really began to stink.