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Joe,
I saw the interview on Inside NASCAR this morning. Here is my guess as to why he is talking this way. There was an article on Jayski's today, Felix Sabatis is acting as an adviser to Ganassi, as well as the minority owner of the team. The article was an interview with Sabatis. In it he said that he had already told Ganassi several things when they were in Indy for the Brickyard 400. One was this, "Chip, you won the race here in May, guess what, nobody in this garage area cares. To them, it doesn't mean anything."
He also told him, "Chip, you've won the last four cart championships, thats great. In this garage area, they don't care what you've done in those other series, it doesn't mean a thing here!" "I told him that if he wants to be accepted here, the best thing you can do is be yourself, and lay low, basicly stay out of the picture." He went on to say that "Cal Wells has made it very difficult for any open-wheel guys to come to NASCAR. At the start of this year, Wells was walking around like he was going to kick everyone's ass! He very underhandedly stole the McDonalds sponsorship from under Bill Elliott, then he very underhandedly stole the Tide sponsorship out from under Ricky Rudd." Now, nobody in this garage area trusts open-wheel owners!" There has been alot of argurments on the different forums that I have read as to wheather or not Wells stole the two sponsorships. I look at it like this, Sabatis is an insider, you can't be much more of an insider in NASCAR than to be a multi-car team owner in the Winston Cup Series! I think Wells stole the sponsors, and has spent all the rest of this year trying to justify what he did by lying and telling everyone that he didn't steal them! Sadly, the one caught in the middle, and it isn't his fault, is Scott Pruett! Wells has caused a hugh creditability gap for any other open-wheel owners who might want to get into NASCAR in the ownership roll! This might be why Ganassi is being so complimentry of NASCAR!
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