I officially feel badly for Bobby Labonte

Bobby Labonte is in the latter part of his career no doubt, but he definitely has the talent to run at least top 20 in most races, top 15 or better in others.

He has to be kicking himself if he really had the opportunity to run a 4th Childress car and passed that up to run for Yates, which is barely a step above the start and park organizations.

I see him at places like Pocono, where he has won multiple races in the past (3 or 4 I believe) and he's struggling to even stay on the lead lap. Labonte didn't just forget how to drive from last year to this year - we (Yates) are putting him in substandard equipment without the right setups off the truck.

I don't feel badly for Paul Menard, who to be honest is probably just happy to have a ride, but I do feel terrible for Bobby.

Since I'm would guess both Yates or Jones sold you a bill of goods that they haven't been able to deliver, and since I doubt neither is stand up enough to come out and publicly to apologize for the mess they've created, I will do it for them.

Bobby, it's a shame that you have had to spend this year driving for our substandard organization. Please accept my apology on behalf of the Yates fan-base and please, though I enjoyed seeing you in one of our rides, run for dear life at the conclusion of this season. As a race team, we are going no where fast. If we can't put guys like you and Jarrett in the winners circle, what in God's name did we expect to do with talents like Gilliand and Menard?

When David Ragan wrecked Bobby yesterday, he was starting to run a little better. I think he was up to 15th or so.

Bobby turned down the Childress ride to stay loyal to the Petty's, but that didn't work out...

ya- see where loyalty got him.....

Yeah, you KNOW things are bad at Yates Racing when an accomplished driver and past champion like Bobby Labonte can't even finish well with them.

Staying with Newman-Haas couldn't be any worse than what we have with Roush. I mean, he gets Yates horsepower, but what are we getting back on the engineering side?

I will give him some credit, last year (but not this year), he helped us with sponsorship. However, there's no way he gives us as much support as Hendrick, Childress and Gibbs have given their satellite teams.

With guys like Menard, Gilliland, Kvapil, you could make the case that they just aren't all that talented and you wouldn't get an argument from me. But, if you put Labonte in a decent car, he can be competitive. The fact that he isn't is more indicative of how far off Yates has fallen rather than how bad Labonte is.

I'm not sure what the deal is. Hendrick has always supplied stuff to Haas Racing, but it didn't show until Tony and Ryan came to the team this year...

Maybe if they got someone like Matt Kenseth or Carl Edwards at Yates (which isn't going to happen, at least not next year), maybe things will get better.

I'm not sure what the issue is. You can't blame it completely on Roush for not helping Yates, though. Two of Roush's cars (6 & 26) are running just as crappy as the Yates cars. No Fords are good. It's not all on Roush right now, IMO.

I'm not sure I want to get into this discussion but as far as I'm concerned Bobby just didn't read the witting on the wall. When Rudd came back in 07 thinking he could help get them back on track and failed, that should have been a hugh message how far behind they were. We all expect that a driver like Bobby should be able to get results but in this day of racing a driver is only as good as his car. I find it hard to believe but maybe Bobby is content with doing laps at this stage of his career. idk?

Back to Andrew's Hendrick comment .... My guess why Tony/Teams is doing so well is that he has dropped a load of $$$ getting the right people hired. I guess that's what it takes.

DeeDee wrote:

I find it hard to believe but maybe Bobby is content with doing laps at this stage of his career. idk?

A lot of people have said that, but I'm not going to agree with it until he IS given a shot with a good team and performs the same. Yates is one of the worst teams in the garage right now.

DeeDee wrote:

Back to Andrew's Hendrick comment .... My guess why Tony/Teams is doing so well is that he has dropped a load of $$$ getting the right people hired. I guess that's what it takes.

the right people????? maybe on Tony's team, but I wouldn't have hired Gibson- imho he's not the right person (and the whole 2008 8 team)

So far the #39 team hasn't seemed to suffer from it.

I agreee with RD, Tony Gibson has done a fine job at Stewart Haas Racing. Tony has certainly put all the right people in all the right places...