Full Throttle

Bill Davis Racing (BDR) long rumored to be on the block, first to Jacques Villeneuve and his partner/con-man/agent Craig Pollock, has been sold to Marty Gaunt a vice president at BDR and Mike Held.

Gaunt and Held both have experience as NASCAR team owners, and Gaunt most recently was vice president at BDR. Held also owns Co-Pilott LLC, a marketing company that services a number of clients in the motorsports arena such as Sony and Menards.

Gaunt, a former owner of Red Horse Racing, worked with Held and his marketing company while an executive at Penske Racing and Red Bull Racing.

“Everything comes full circle,” Held said. “It used to be that everybody got their chassis from [suppliers]. … With the lack of sponsorship out there, teams have less revenue, so they’re going to be forced to look at the bottom line and where they can go out and [obtain] contract service work. Our goal is to be one of the top contract service providers.”

BDR competed in NASCAR for more than 20 years, and Jeff Gordon won the 1991 rookie title for the team in what is now the Nationwide Series. BDR first competed in Cup in 1993 and has five wins, including the 2002 Daytona 500 with Ward Burton.

In 2008, BDR operated one full-time Cup team with Dave Blaney and has operated a successful program in trucks with Johnny Benson, Jr.Mike Skinner and others. It lost sponsor Caterpillar for its Cup car to Richard Childress Racing for 2009.