{"id":5307,"date":"2021-01-10T00:50:55","date_gmt":"2021-01-10T00:50:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/?p=5307"},"modified":"2021-01-10T18:28:43","modified_gmt":"2021-01-10T18:28:43","slug":"rahal-letterman-to-quit-irl-unless-a-sponsor-steps-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/?p=5307","title":{"rendered":"Rahal-Letterman to quit IRL unless a sponsor steps up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>Click for a gallery of shots from the 2008 Detroit Grand Prix<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Roger Penske once said &#8220;the quickest way to make a small fortune in racing is to start with a large fortune.&#8221; Bobby Rahal is a racer, but he&#x27;s no fool, and he appears to be taking Penske&#x27;s sage words to heart. Unless a company steps up in the next couple of months with a truck-load of cash, Rahal-Letterman Racing won&#x27;t be fielding a car in the 2009 IRL season. Rahal has seen plenty of other teams soldier on without a sponsor over the years only to finish at the back of the pack (if they finish at all) until they go bust. Rahal doesn&#x27;t plan to be in that spot now that the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/tag\/ethanol\/\">ethanol<\/a> company that sponsored his IndyCar team has pulled out. He and his partner David Letterman want to run in IndyCar, but if no one steps up before the the season opener on April 5, they won&#x27;t be fielding a team. Rahal is confident the crew can at least line up something for the Indy 500 and the firm plans to remain in business regardless of what happens on the IRL front. The team has operations in Indy Lights, Formula <a href=\"https:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/bmw\/\">BMW<\/a> Americas and its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2009\/01\/27\/acura-lmp1-and-bmw-gt2-cars-take-sebring-testing-by-storm\/\">factory ALMS GT2 program with the new BMW M3.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2009\/01\/30\/rahal-letterman-to-quit-irl-unless-a-sponsor-steps-up\/<\/p>\n<p>2009-01-30T08:31:00+00:00<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Click for a gallery of shots from the 2008 Detroit Grand Prix<br \/>\nRoger Penske once said &#8220;the quickest way to make a small fortune in racing is to start with a large fortune.&#8221; Bobby Rahal is a racer, but he&#x27;s no fool, and he appears to be taking Penske&#x27;s\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autoblog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10074,"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5307\/revisions\/10074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}