Haillie Deegan to race for AM Racing

[ron.brown11]

It's been out there for a little while now, that Haillie is going to drive the Xfinity car for them in 2024. I wasn't surprised that AM Racing added an Xfinity team this past offseason, but I was surprised that Austin Wayne Self wasn't going to drive it. Their truck team seems to now be a rental, which isn't a bad thing, as it helps generate funding for the Xfinity start up. I haven't seen AWS behind the wheel much in the last 18 months it seems. Moffitt has done a decent job so far this season, considering that it's basically a start up team in its 1st season, in a new series.

I know that Deegan is a contracted Ford driver, and they need a seat to put her in. But in 3 seasons in the trucks, and 2 in ARCA, she hasn't been "all that". Yes, she has 2 wins in ARCA, but she wrecked the leader on the last lap in both. In the truck series, her best seasonal finish was 17th, in her 1st season, and 21st in her second. If she tracks out the rest of the season as she did in the first part of it, she'll finish maybe 19th. I get that she is marketable, but so was Danica. Look at how many bad races & temper tantrums that brought. Hell, I'd love to see a really good/great female driver make it big, because it will be great for racing. I've seen nearly 6 years of Hailie's career, and great talent hasn't shone through unfortunately. What I truly worry about is this. If Haillie fails too, will teams and sponsors stop looking at female drivers? I hope not, but that's a real concern. As most drivers/teams at any level know, without sponsors the wheels stop turning. After Danica left Cup, Go Daddy seemed to drop off TV. It wasn't until about 5 months ago that they started showing up on TV again. And it isn't on a race car either. When trying to attract sponsors, drivers/teams usually face 2 obstacles. First is trying to show them how you can help them. If they've never looked at motorsports as a way to market, you have to make it very clear for them the benefits. Second, if it's a company that has been a sponsor in the past in motorsports, have they been burned by previous drivers/teams? When you look at the amount of money that Ford has spent on Haillie, there has been very little return on investment. ROI is the biggest concern that companies have when spending their marketing dollars.

There are a couple of female drivers that I've been watching for the last couple years. First is Katie Hettinger. She has been very good in late models, and is sitting 2nd in the CARS Tour Pro Late Model series. She's very fast, wins, and doesn't tear up equipment. She's good enough that she's already in Chevy's driver pipeline, and she just turned 16. The other is Isabella Robusto. She's in Toyota's driver pipeline, and even in their TV commercials for TRD. Unfortunately she suffered a bad concussion going for the win, running a CARS Tour Late Model Stock race back in April. She hasn't made another start in the series since. Hopefully she'll be back soon. She too is fast, wins, and doesn't tear up equipment. There's a couple more that I've been watching, but the sample size has been limited. They aren't running full time, so time will tell if they can get funding to run full time. 

Ford doesn't really have a good driver pipeline system in place. Unfortunately they just let their best lower tier driver, Zane Smith walk. I think that will turn out to be a big mistake for them. He's fast, he wins, and he doesn't tear up equipment. Sound familiar? We shall see..