Casey Mears was dropped from the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series RCR drivers roster after the withdrawal of Jack Daniels sponsorship. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
While Richard Childress Racing continued to look for sponsorship for its No. 07 Chevrolet, Casey Mears didn’t let worries over his job situation consume him during the off-season. He had other things to worry about – such as getting married.
Mears returned from his wedding earlier this month still without a ride, but a six-race deal came together in the last week with Keyed-Up Motorsports, a new team owned by Raymond Key with veteran Doug Richert as its crew chief.
“I’ve been in the sport long enough to know that it’s easy to let the off-season consume you,” Mears said Friday in a phone interview. “I’ve had off-seasons before where you don’t know what’s going on and if you think about it the whole time, you’ll go absolutely crazy.
“I kind of was obviously upset with the way things had gone on, but in my heart felt like when I got back, I’ll get on my feet here and we’ll find out what we’ve got to do to go racing. It was good to get those couple of weeks away and enjoy the time and (I) didn’t think about it a whole lot because so much was going on personally.”
The 31-year-old Mears lost his ride with RCR when sponsorship could not be found to replace Jack Daniel’s, leaving the driver who finished 21st in the 2009 Sprint Cup standings without a ride.
“We really were trying hard to make something work over there at RCR, and kind of stuck it out all the way to the end,” said Mears, who has 252 career starts and one victory in the Cup series. “Obviously with all that going away, you start looking at what's out there, what you can do to get to Daytona.”
For Mears, the Keyed-Up team was the best alternative. It’s a start-up team, but the Key brothers have spent time in the Nationwide Series and they have no plans to start and park. For Daytona, they bought a car from Dale Earnhardt Inc. that Paul Menard put on the pole there in July 2008. The team will get its engines from Earnhardt Childress Racing Technologies.
