Frustrated Mears sits out

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Casey Mears will never be the best driver in NASCAR, and chances are slim that he’ll ever be a championship contender.

Still, he’s got talent and charm and a rich family history in the sport — all qualities that should have him racing each week.

Instead, he found himself standing in the garage in street clothes for a third straight weekend as his friends raced on without him at Las Vegas. Mears is racing for Keyed-Up Motorsports, a team with old cars, underpowered motors and very little financial support.

Team owner Raymond Key only committed to run the first two months of the season when he signed Mears, but the driver didn’t have many choices. Sponsorship cutbacks cost him his job at Richard Childress Racing, which is not fielding the car Mears drove to a 21st-place finish in the 2009 final standings.

“You look around at what’s out there, and you have some hard decisions to make,” Mears said. “Do you go to the Trucks or the Nationwide Series? Sure, if it’s in competitive equipment. But you can’t just take a ride to take a ride and make yourself look bad every week.”

With Keyed-Up, though, most everyone knows what Mears is working with: Very little.

The team bought out-of-use cars from Dale Earnhardt Inc., and instead of entering into a leasing program with a well-established engine company, owner Raymond Key bought his own motors. Maintaining them, tuning them and getting them ready to make races has likely been far more challenging than Key could have imagined.

Because it’s a new team, the No. 90 Chevrolet was not automatically qualified for the season-opening Daytona 500. Mears had to race his way into the field, and came up short when he had to lift off the gas late to avoid wrecking with a loose car in front of him.

It meant Mears, nephew of four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Rick Mears and a member of one of racing’s most famous families, missed the Daytona 500 for the first time in eight years.

Then he missed making the race at California, and again last week at Las Vegas.

Still, he roams the garage, watching practice and talking to as many people as he could.

His next plan?

“We’ll just keep trying to make races,” Mears said. “But we can’t afford to be off, that’s for sure. If we’re gonna go, we need to get some current stuff and go racing hard. It’s just really frustrating right now because you want to be in the race, you’d do anything to be in the race, and we’re coming up just short.”

Mears has driven for top teams and has shown to be at least one of the top 20 drivers. He was 14th in the 2006 standings with Chip Ganassi, then moved to Hendrick Motorsports and won the Coca-Cola 600 in 2007.

HMS let Mears go at the end of 2008 when the team signed Mark Martin, and Mears landed at RCR. In 252 starts, he has one win and 46 top-10s, but has not finished lower than 22nd in the standings since his second season of full-time Cup racing.