NASCAR start-and-park team previews for 2013

Not a single person in racing wants to see a start-and-park team in an event. Besides wasting a spot for a team that could actually be running a full race, the small, underfunded teams also basically steals the money from NASCAR after running just one fuel run.

There were plenty of start-and-park teams over the course of the 2012 season. It’s safe to say that not all of them were “stealing money” per-say, but they were attempting to save up enough money to run at least one full race over the 36-race schedule. One team even attempted to make the Richmond race right before the Chase for the Sprint Cup and was roughly two seconds off the pace during qualifying, imagine if they made the race, what a joke that would have been.

However, there are some start-and-park teams that have slowly increased the amount of races they complete each season. The highest ranked of those teams? Tommy Baldwin Racing. They started from scratch a few years ago and after they received a small, one race deal from Golden Corral, the team ended up expanding to a two-car operation in 2012. Even though it was basically a failed effort considering it took away several full-races for Dave Blaney who is the reason why the team is still competing to this day, they were able to expand their brand and had several sponsors jump aboard during 2012. Blaney was only able to race 15-races in 2012, but that number should go up in 2013 as long as the team doesn’t run a second car. Also expect the possibility of seeing his son, Ryan Blaney, make his Sprint Cup Series debut with the team, but with support from Penske Racing.

Leavine Family Racing wasn’t meant to race in NASCAR at first. They didn’t have close to the amount of the resources to compete inside of the top-35 on a weekly basis. However, when Scott Speed joined the team, they began to commit to their racing program and the results proved just that. Speed missed only one race after missing his first attempt of the year at Bristol in March. In 2013, the team will run at least 20-races which is up from 17-races last season. Expect the team to continue to start-and-park unless a miracle happens considering the team has sponsors from just small companies.

NEMCO Motorsports has been one of the most consistent start-and-park teams in NASCAR. The team is owned by the highly respected Joe Nemechek, who started the team after getting the boot from Ginn Racing when it randomly shut its doors mid-way through the 2007 season and started the team in 2009. Even though Nemechek always runs the full-schedule, his team has run a total of seven full races in four seasons which probably kills him on the inside. After all of his hard work, Nemechek has finally been able to receive minimal sponsorship from AM/FM Energy Pellet And Wood Stoves over the past two seasons and competed in the Daytona 500 as well as the race at Watkins Glen. Expect Nemechek to have a roughly similar schedule in 2013 with possibly running all of the super speedway races just to make more revenue considering he has a chance to run in the top-20 at those tracks. Oh by the way, Nemecheck is just two 43rd place finishes away from tying J.D. McDuffie’s record of most last place finishes at 32.

Next up is the Front Row Motorsports No. 26 team of Josh Wise. Wise proved that he had the talent to compete in NASCAR while at JR Motorsports. However, he was stuck with taking a start-and-park ride with this team. He was somehow capable of qualifying inside of the top-30 seven times in 2012 as a development team for David Ragan and David Gilliland. Wise returns to the organization in 2013 with expectations higher this season. The team claims that they will enable him to run more full races this season which is what he’s worked for after only missing four races in such bad equipment.

Phil Parsons Racing won’t do much in 2013. Michael McDowell will be returning to the organization with sponsorship from K-LOVE. During the 2012 season, the team enabled him to run two more races than he did in 2012 which showed an increase in the team’s confidence in him. The team will likely run more full-races in 2013 as long as they have sponsorship for some races especially the short tracks considering they finished 23rd at Bristol in August. Expect the team to run around five-ten races in 2013 with the evening out of competition.

Finally, there’s the newly formed Swan Racing. Formerly Inception Motorsports, the team refuses to start-and-park in 2013, but wouldn’t be surprising if they have to resort to it once every few races. The team will run the Daytona 500 with Michael Waltrip and will continue the rest of the schedule with David Stremme who started the team. They were able to race five full races in 2012 with a best finish of 24th at Indianapolis which shows that they have the equipment, just not experience to run competitively.

Joseph Wolkin can be followed on Twitter at @JosephNASCAR.