Without a ridebuyer another XFINITY team shuttered

Without ridebuyer money to grab, the NASCAR truck and Xfinity Series do not make sense financially

After three years of existence and 18 races later, Richard Gdovic, owner of Precision Performance Motorsports has decided to close the doors on an XFINITY Series entry because he cannot find ridebuyers to prop up his team financially.

Heading into the 2017 season, Gdovic had set out to run the entire 33-race schedule, kicking it off with a 22nd-place finish at Daytona with Anthony Kumpen. Quin Houff recorded a pair of top-15 finishes at Bristol Motor Speedway (15th) and Iowa Speedway (12th) before Parker Kligerman picked up the organization’s lone top-10 finish in its existence at Road America in August. The team competed in just 10 races last year, failing to qualify at Kentucky Speedway and the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Gdovic confirmed to Frontstretch that over the off-season the team is moving in a different direction with son, Brandon Gdovic.

“We have shut down the XFINITY program and have sold about half of our cars and related parts and equipment to date," Gdovic said. “We enjoyed our time in NASCAR, he [Brandon] has presented me with a business plan for Sports Cars that makes more sense financially and also supports his passion for sports cars and representing Lamborghini."

In 18 career starts in the XFINITY Series, PPM had six top-20 finishes, four of which came in 2017.

“I actually sold the team through an investment broker at the beginning of 2017, but unfortunately their investors fell through," he said. “It was the right time to exit NASCAR for our team. It is a difficult business model even though we enjoyed some success with drivers paying us to drive our cars in 2017."

Gdovic admitted that the rest of the garage knows that the team has good equipment, so the selling process hasn’t been difficult. He also mentioned that he has no desire to re-enter one of NASCAR’s top three series, as his focus has turned to his son’s career.

“NASCAR is similar to any other successful business that continues to change with the times," Gdovic said. “We enjoyed our time there, but are dedicated to the Sports Car path for the foreseeable future and do not see re-entering the upper tiers of NASCAR anytime soon."

Over the years, NASCAR has become more heavily dependent on sponsorship dollars year after year. For PPM, it was no different, thus why the team competed in only a limited amount of races over three years.

“I don’t think people realize from the outside looking in the ongoing challenging model it is because there’s not enough money that you’re going to win that’s going to offset your cost to race, especially if you’re trying to win," Gdovic said of NASCAR’s business model. “It looks good when the payout is $100,000 to win, but the amount of money you have to spend and infrastructure to win that amount of money makes for a tough model if you don’t have significant outside sponsors."