[openwheelKT]

To me, this is how you have to look at “ride buyers”. People complain all the time that they take rides away from other drivers. It’s really not true. If the “ride buyer” didn’t come along, the car would be parked and NOBODY would be in it in a lot of cases. Technically when you look at it by definition, Graham Rahal is a “ride buyer”. He is the one who did a lot of the work to get Service Central on board (major props to him for all the work he did on that, that’s how it works today). Without that sponsorship, there would be no 2nd team with Ganassi. I think we can agree that he belongs in a car. He understands how it works and went to work on finding a sponsor. Very few drivers any more just bring the helmet bag. Most of us long for that era, but it’s gone. Look at Buddy Rice. It’s ridiculous that an Indy 500 winner in his prime has sat on the sidelines the last few years (glad he’s back with Panther this year), but the rides he might have landed needed a budget to be able to run. There wasn’t sponsorship to do that with him, so the team had to move on to someone else or just stay parked. Just a different time now... Fittipaldi brought Marlboro to IndyCar, is he a ride buyer?

Look at Keith Kunz, the sprint cars are parked right now because there is no budget to run them. He said in Sprint and Midget that it’s getting harder to find a budget to run. There isn’t anything right now to help with that so they are parked. DD ran some races last year and then it had to be parked because of $. If someone had come along with a budget, Keith might have got it up and running again. Would that have taken the seat away from DD? No, because it was parked otherwise. Same thing.

I will say that I think some teams (IndyCar) have gotten a little lazy when trying to find sponsorship. It’s very hard to find it, but I do think some have just been relying more on the driver bringing it. It used to be the team found the backing and then hired the driver. The successful teams still do that. There are some that want the driver to bring it, I think some rely on that too much.

Not saying I would root for this guy because I wouldn't. Don't know anything about him and can't relate to him. Just don't get all bent on these guys, have to be good enough to make the race no matter your backing.