Our sources indicate the NHRA's marketing department is encouraging the folks at UPS to stay on board as a different kind of official shipper for the sanctioning body. Apparently, this status allows them to navigate around their self-imposed (and not fully enforced rule) of requiring official sponsors of the NHRA to also sponsor a race team. Our sources indicate that Bob Vandergriff Jr., the introductor of the UPS program to the NHRA, has discouraged the sanctioning body from taking this route. The NHRA, we are told, just isn't realizing the impression this creates could be a public relations mistake.

Could the NHRA be pushing another team to step in at a greatly reduced rate to circumvent the potential issue?