#33 General Mills Team

2009 Daytona 500 118 

THIS FROM THE “WHERE DID HE COME FROM” CATEGORY????????? 

This off season Richard Childress Racing started up a fourth Cup team.  It was decided that Clint Bowyer would move over from the #07 Jack Daniels team to drive  for the new team.  Part of that transformation was at the behest of General Mills.  You see RCR had just signed young Casey Mears to be part of that new team, however having been sponsored by Kelloggs at Hendrick Motorsports, General Mills thought that Mears would be kind of a conflict of interest as a driver. 

 

So Richard Childress had the chore of assembling this new team in a short amount of time.  Fortunately with the economy failing and mergers in the NASCAR world leaving a few unemployed, Childress had the opportunity to hire some quality people to start this project off on the right foot!  So his first step was to find a good experienced crew chief to head up this #33 General Mills Chevy, fortunately Shane Wilson was available!  Shane has worked for several NASCAR teams over the past few years, most notable Petty Enterprises

 

Needless to say, Clint Bowyer was reluctant to buy into this new deal.  Afterall, he was just getting comfortable with the #07 Jack Daniels team, wininng a couple of races, and being a top 10 team in 2008.  Now he was being asked by his boss to leave the comforts of his present team and be a part of a start up team, not a warm and fuzzy feeling!!  But, nonetheless he agreed to become part of the #33 General Mills?Cheerios/Hambuarger Helper Chevy team.

 

So in eight weeks this teams is put together.  This year there was no preseason testing to try to get all the pieces of this team to gel together before Daytona.  So you would expect a brand new team to have some  “growing pains”.  But if you look at the standings, you will see just where this new team sits so far in 2009, no apparent growing pains with this team!!  That is right the #33 General Mills Chevy sits in the second place in the Cup standings after 6 races.  That is a really an accomplishment!!!!

 

So where did he come from so quickly???????????????????

REMEMBER, I LOOKERD IT UP SO THAT YOU WOULDN’T HAVE TO!!