This is something that no one saw coming.

On Saturday afternoon, Don Prudhomme Racing, Inc. announced that his Top Fuel dragster team is for sale and that he will begin accepting offers immediately, according to its president Don Prudhomme. Prudhomme’s dragster is sponsored by U.S. Smokeless.

Prudhomme’s team will begin to field inquiries from parties interested in purchasing or investing in the team, with any potential sale to be finalized upon the completion of the 2009 NHRA season. In the event that an investor or sale is not complete by the end of the calendar year, the Snake Racing Top Fuel dragster team will not compete in 2010.

Rookie Spencer Massey is driving Prudhomme’s dragster. Massey is seventh in the points standings, and has one win at the NHRA Route 66 Nationals in June in Joliet, Ill. Massey will remain under contract with U.S. Smokeless through the 2010 season.

This is something that no one saw coming.

On Saturday afternoon, Don Prudhomme Racing, Inc. announced that the Top Fuel dragster team asset of its business is for sale and that it will begin accepting offers immediately, according to its president Don Prudhomme. Prudhomme’s dragster is sponsored by U.S. Smokeless.

Prudhomme’s team will begin to field inquiries from parties interested in purchasing or investing in the team, with any potential sale to be finalized upon the completion of the 2009 NHRA season. In the event that an investor or sale is not complete by the end of the calendar year, the Snake Racing Top Fuel dragster team will not compete in 2010.

Rookie Spencer Massey is driving Prudhomme’s dragster. Massey is seventh in the points standings, and has one win at the NHRA Route 66 Nationals in June in Joliet, Ill. Massey will remain under contract to Prudhomme. 

Moments after Prudhomme started his press conference he received an ironic call on his cell phone from Gary Darcy, NHRA’s director of marketing.

“It’s Gary Darcy,” said Prudhomme to the audience. “I’m in the press room, come on in. Come on over, all right. I’m making an announcement.”

Following a short pause in his conversation with Darcy, Snake said, “Jesus Christ.” Then Snake said, “You’re a little late buddy. Later.”

After his conversation with Darcy, Snake said the following: “What the hell is he going to do anyhow? “Sh**, he can’t find a sponsor himself.”

Following his short phone conversation/rant, Prudhomme addressed his team’s plight.

“I haven’t been thinking about this (making this announcement), not at all,” Prudhomme said. “As you all know we’ve been with U.S. Smokeless for 20 years or so, and had a fine relationship. The company was taken over by Phillip Morris some months back, as you all know, they’re very involved with Penske and so on and we pretty much had plans to carry on and we had the go-ahead pretty much. I don’t want to get into all the details and all kind of legal angles and everything, but they notified us that they were not going to do it (sponsor the team). They were very generous, I must say, in the way they handled it. It just happened here the other day. If any of you read the papers, Obama and some of things they’ve signed with the FDA and all that, and the tobacco laws, it really put a real crimp on what we were doing out here and I suspect that’s is the case in all forms of motorsports.”

Prudhomme admitted that he was blind-sided by U.S. Smokeless’ decision.

“It kind of caught us off-guard to say the least,” Prudhomme said. “We thought it was best to tell everybody that there’s a possibility that we may not be out here (in 2010). The ideal thing would be for us to be able to bring a sponsor or an investor into the team, because it’s so expensive to do now. Most companies have a hard time keeping up with it, because the economy is so rough. With this late of a start, and finding all this out, this is going to be a difficult chore, but we’re going to work on it.”

Prudhomme, who has owned and operated professional race teams for 47 seasons, also was realistic about his situation.

“There’s a possibility that we will not be back next year,” Prudhomme said. “I had one year, that I didn’t have a sponsor and I didn’t race the car. In saying that, we just parked the car, and didn’t run. That’s what I’m planning on doing this time. I’m not going to come out here and run and use up every dime I have to do this. You just can’t do it.”

Actually, Prudhomme was in the preliminary stages of expanding his team before all this happened.

“We were talking to some sponsors about another car even, and we were putting together a deal because this car was secure,” Prudhomme said. “Then, they just dropped this bomb on us. It’s like your boss walking into work one day and saying ‘guess what, your fired.’ That’s how it went with us, exactly the same way. There’s possibility that this might be my last US Nationals. I hate to see that, but in this economy it’s pretty rough out there right now. A lot of these cars, a lot of the guys that own them, put a lot of their own cash into them, with some sponsor dough, and we don’t have that. We have to run with sponsor money. We’re going to run out the rest of the year, and obviously, we’re still in the chase, and we’re funded to do all that. Right after that, we would pull the plug on the operation for sure and give everybody a chance to get a job and do some other things.”

The circumstances at hand, did cause Snake to reflect on his own career.

“I’m sure not too many people feel sorry for me, but I’ve been doing this a long time and I’ve been really blessed and fortune and to have had sponsors for 47 odd years. So, I’m ahead of the game, but at the same time, I don’t want to piss away everything I’ve made and put it back into the car and run the car for nothing. If we don’t get a sponsor by next year, I would doubt it very much that we would come back. I haven’t thought that far down the road yet. Things would have to look very promising to carry things on as far as Jan. 1. It has happened before with us, so it’s not like it can’t happen. I just didn’t want to keep this in my gut for my team and everybody else, that we were just fine, because we’re not fine. The sport is an expensive thing to do out here, and I didn’t see it getting any cheaper.” 


 

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