by Darrell Waltrip

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Nonetheless, I've been looking forward to this weekend's Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, anticipating how ESPN will come out of the box, what they're going to bring to the table and how they're going to cover the race. While I await the race, what's really piqued my interest is this DEI-Ginn merger.

One day, we may look back and say, "Max Siegel may not have known the nuts and bolts of a race car, but he sure knew how to put together a deal." Nearly three months ago when Dale Earnhardt Jr. announced that he was leaving Dale Earnhardt Inc., I had a chance to interview Junior, and I also had a chance to talk with Max for a good 30 minutes or so. One of the first things I asked him was his reported interest in buying Robert Yates Racing. Ford and Chevy didn't make sense to me. It didn't make a lot of sense to him either, but they had outgrown DEI and needed a facility to branch out.

When Dale Earnhardt built his shop — known as the Garage Mahal — it was the latest and greatest of everything, but I don't think that he ever envisioned that he would need four race teams one day. He had the little deer shop with all of his deer heads mounted over the years. That's where they kept the Busch car. They had the new big shop for the No. 1 car. Down the street, they had another little Busch and Truck shop, and I think Dale always figured that was as biggest as DEI ever needed to be.

Things have changed, and Max and I talked about the limited amount of space they had. If they were going to grow the company and have three or four teams under one roof, they needed a bigger facility. They were out looking around, seeing what was available, and Yates' deal was one of them. I haven't talked with Max since that day, but the deal that DEI put together with Ginn makes the most sense of anything that I've seen in racing in a long time.

I have a bunch of favorite expressions that I've learned through the years from car owners and characters. One of my favorites is: "Your two and my two equal five." You don't find situations like that very often. Most of the time when you take two from one organization and pair it up with two from another organization, you end up with four. But if two extraordinary people put their twos together, you could end up with five. That's what's happened here.

Bobby Ginn showed up on the scene as a sponsor on the side of a race car and got bitten by the bug. The next thing you know, he was saying to himself, "Man, I'm spending this kind of money just to sponsor a car. I might as well own a car." MB2 and Nelson Bowers had pretty much done all they could do with what they had to work with so they made Ginn an offer that he couldn't refuse. They sold the teams, and Ginn — being the entrepreneur that he is — said, "We've got to upgrade and improve everything. We've got to take this thing to the next level."

I've seen so many people come and go in this business through the years. They're great visionaries and have great ideas that are going to change the way racing and teams are run. But I don't think anybody in their wildest dreams can ever imagine how much money we're talking about. The problem is cash flow. It takes so much cash per month to operate one of these race teams. It doesn't come into the shop all at once through a pipe either. It trickles in with a few sponsorship dollars here and some purse money there. Plus, it's going out a whole lot faster than it's coming in. Take it from somebody who has had a race team and knows what he's talking about.

It takes big sponsorship dollars, and it takes owners with big pockets. But it takes both. I have yet to see any person come into this sport and operate a team out of his or her pocket. If they try, they're not going to last very long. They're going to go out as fast as they came in. That's probably what happened with Bobby Ginn. When he built a new facility, I don't think he knew how much it was going to cost or — it was built — how much it was going to cost to equip it with state-of-the-art equipment like the shaker machine and all of the other tools that these teams need to be successful today. After you build a building, you've got to inventory it. It takes a lot of money, and you've got to pay as you go in this business.

Look at what Max, Bobby and Teresa Earnhardt have been able to do. Why would they keep Mark Martin? He's a great driver, but the No. 01 is sponsored by the U.S. Army so they've got a sponsor. They had to cut loose Sterling Marlin and Joe Nemechek because they don't have a sponsor. Ginn and Siegel have said that they were evaluating Sterling and Joe's contracts, and they would do what was ethical and the right thing. I believe that Bobby and Max are men of their word, will take care of those two guys and help them any way they can. Joe and Sterling may not be happy, but I believe they'll be fine and taken care of.

A few weeks ago, I told you that Paul Menard was getting antsy and thinking about taking his money and going somewhere else because he wasn't locked into the top 35 and was missing races. Giving the No. 14 car's points to the No. 15 solves that problem. The No. 1 car just signed a deal with Bass Pro Shops, and Budweiser's sponsorship of the No. 8 is up in the air. Who knows what they're going to do? But it makes a lot of sense for Kyle Busch to fit into that Budweiser ride.

A few weeks ago, I thought DEI was at a crossroads, and Teresa was going to have to make some decisions about the company's future. Since DEI was doing a deal with Richard Childress Racing's engine program, I thought she might get out of the race car business and just take care of Dale's legacy. This Ginn deal is exactly what she needed. With Ginn's Jay Frye, Max and others running the racing operation, she can go about her business of running Dale's foundation and let the boys go off and run their race cars. I think that's really what she wanted to do, and I think this deal will allow her to do it in fine fashion.

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Merging with Childress to do the engines is a win-win for Ginn who was getting engines from Hendrick Motorsports at a cost of probably $10-12 million a year for those three cars. Now, Ginn is affiliated with a company that has its own engine program, and Childress can build engines for seven Cup teams and Busch teams. All of the sudden, you can see why Childress has to build a facility to house the engine program because it's going to be massive. Chevrolet's two big engine producers are going to be Hendrick and Childress, and each will service about half of the Bowtie Brigade.

So they've got the new facility with all the latest and greatest equipment and solidified their engine program, justifying the expense of having it. They've got sponsored cars that are all in the top 35. Ginn obviously needed to do something to stop the bleeding, and DEI needed something to help them grow and be more competitive into the future. Dale Jr.'s happy as he goes to drive for Rick Hendrick. Other than Joe and Sterling kind of being left out to dry and some other ramifications that I may not be aware of, this story seems to have a happy ending. In racing, you don't have very many happy endings. Congratulations to Max, Teresa and Bobby. They pulled off a great deal.

Oh by the way

It sounds like my favorite racetrack is going to be OK. I was worried about the resurfacing job that they did at Bristol Motor Speedway, but apparently all the drivers like what they've done to the track. You'll still see the Bristol stomp. You've got to run the bottom, and I guarantee the tires will be a little too hard. There haven't been enough cars testing yet to know what it's really going to do. Once they get the Busch and Cup cars there on the same weekend, it's going to be hot and slick. But it's going to be a typical Bristol race. The sparks will fly, and the tempers will flare.

Oh by the way, too

Carl Edwards got hurt driving a dirt car last Sunday night, and people are saying, "Oh, they've got to stop these drivers from doing that." Of course, we had a situation with Dale Jr. getting burned in 2004, and that was certainly serious. But you can't lock these drivers in a cage. Drivers love to drive and race. They love the challenge of going to a dirt track or trying something new and different. It breaks up the monotony of doing the same thing every week. Drivers are aware that they can't get into situations where they're going to be injured or knocked out of driving a Cup car. They make their living on Sunday, but they've got to have some fun in the process as well. Are you going to tell Carl or any of these other drivers not to shave anymore because they might cut themselves? If they just use some common sense, everything will be fine.