NASCAR's Open-Wheelers Slowly Fading

Dario Franchitti is done with NASCAR, and if you're surprised, then, well, you shouldn't be.

Franchitti announced Tuesday that he'd be heading back to life in the IRL IndyCar Series with the same owner who drove for in NASCAR, Chip Ganassi. The move was a little puzzling especially knowing that Franchitti would be replacing Dan Wheldon -- one of the series' top drivers.

But more telling of Franchitti's move was how quickly the idea by NASCAR owners to bring open-wheel talent to NASCAR's Sprint Cup Series with limited stock car experience at best became a bust.

Franchitti is the third driver to take the reins in NASCAR with intentions of making a long-term career move at the beginning of 2008 to succumb to the economics of NASCAR. In other words, open-wheel drivers with limited experience struggle early in their stock car careers and sponsors just don't want to spend money and time on such a move.

That list includes Franchitti, Jacques Villenueve and Patrick Carpentier, and leaves just one question.

Who's next?
Villeneuve departed from his intentions to become a full-time NASCAR driver nearly as quickly as he started when he failed to qualify for the season-opening Daytona 500 in February.

Carpentier, as we mentioned last week, was unofficially cut from his No. 10 car after 2008 thanks to Gillett-Evernham Motorsports signing Reed Sorenson and placing Carpentier into the group of "we'll race you if we get a sponsor, but you're not a priority with us."

The former open-wheel drivers who haven't made the cut list include A.J. Allmendinger, Sam Hornish Jr., Juan Pablo Montoya and, if you're really digging deep, Casey Mears. Mears, however, has been in Sprint Cup for six years now and has made a name for himself only because of his stock car exploits, despite getting into racing via open wheel.

Allmendinger has likely shown the most overall improvement from the point at which he started in NASCAR with Red Bull Racing until now (so much so that I was inclined to write about how Red Bull would be simply stupid not to re-sign the guy in 2009), and he'll undoubtedly have a future in NASCAR no matter where he ends up.

Hornish Jr. appeared to come in to NASCAR much like Franchitti -- on the back of a team owner with previous IRL ties (Penske Racing) that saw his raw talent and wanted to adapt it to the more prestigious Sprint Cup. Hornish has been able to maintain sponsorship on his No. 77 car despite having a mediocre season in 2008, though there have been flashes of brilliance. And much like Franchitti, Hornish isn't exactly driving for NASCAR's best teams and has done what he can.

And for Montoya -- driving for the same team Franchitti did -- his career took off like a rocket in 2007 with some wins in both the Nationwide Series and Sprint Cup Series. Combine that with his brash personality, F1 experience, and ability to market to the hispanic NASCAR audience and you've got a poster child for how the open-wheel experiment should work.

But the statistics don't lie, and when three of the six open-wheel aces are already exiting NASCAR less than a year after their arrival, the story is quite telling about the simplicity of NASCAR.

Or, in other words, NASCAR isn't quite as easy as some people give it credit for, and when drivers come in with high aspirations because life has been easy in everything else they've raced, they seemingly get a punch in the gut when they find learning the stock car craft takes time and effort -- especially when they are thrown into the meanest of the NASCAR wolves in the Sprint Cup Series.