Full Throttle

Joe Gibbs is running out of viable reasons, and running out of time, for fielding a fourth Sprint Cup team in 2009.

I’ll make an assumption here and say running out of time equates to not enough time considering the current economic conditions and the various sponsorship difficulties teams are facing.

“You wouldn’t say never, but it doesn’t look right now that it will happen for us next year,” Gibbs told The Associated Press before the start of Sunday’s race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“I think we want to be real cautious, we always have been, we’ve gone slow and I think everything has to be in place,” he said. “I’d say right now everything is not in place. You’ve got to have the right driver, the right sponsor and I’d say we’re pretty close to not being able to do that in time for next year.”

With no forth team on the table I’m guessing that virtually assures the #20 will see The Phenom Joey Lagano in that seat next year.

I’ll also go out in a not-so-very-shaky-limb and state GEM and RCR won’t field additional Sprint Cup entries in 2009 either.