It’s an annual rite of winter in motorsports. When the motors turn off for the season, the rumor mill fires up.
The Hill Enterprises 79 Whelen Modified Tour car (Photo: Corey Sipkin/NASCAR)
And that rumor mill is something getting on the nerves these days of NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour team owner David Hill.
The hot rumor spreading across the scene over the past few weeks was that Hill was looking to put Cole Powell in his Hill Enterprises ride for the 2014 season.
Not true at all Hill said Thursday.
Hill spent last weekend working with Powell’s team at the North-South Shootout at Caraway Speedway in Sophia, N.C. He said that fact only seemed to intensify the spreading rumor that Powell would be in his car in 2014.
“It just doesn’t help when people are saying that,” Hill said. “I’m talking to people on the phone and they’re telling me that they’ve heard Cole Powell is with me for next year. I was at the North-South Shootout and people were coming up to me saying ‘I’m glad you’ve got a deal together to keep the operation going.” I was like “I don’t have any deals, what are you talking about?’”
Hill recently took over ownership of the Hill Enterprises team from his mother Sandra, but in October he announced that he had to shut the team down unless more financing could be found to get the organization back to operational for the 2014 season.
And Hill isn’t giving up hope on that dream. He’s hoping to find a driver that can bring a sponsorship package to the table that will get the Westfield, N.C. based team back to where it can be operational again.
“I’m still at square one trying to find something,” Hill said. “There’s people doing a little bit of talking with me, but I think the deal with going to help Cole Powell really hurt me because a lot of people think he’s in my car now.
“I want to run the North tour. I just love the racing there so much better. I really just want to race. I’ve got all my guys waiting on me. [Crew chief] Chris Kopec and my guys in Connecticut are waiting on me to get something thing. We all want to keep this thing going.”
Hill said he was “pumped up” by the news two weeks ago that Woody Pitkat landed in the Buzz Chew Racing seat for the 2014 season on the Whelen Modified Tour. Pitkat ran part of the 2012 season and all of the 2013 season for Hill Enterprises.
“I’m really excited for him,” Hill said. “That was why I let him know ahead of time what we were doing with the team, so he could start looking. I didn’t want to tell him in March that I couldn’t come up with anything and we wouldn’t be able to race. I’m glad that he got a ride, and got a really good ride too.”
Blewett and Hirshman are still out there.
go with powell
O Canada, My home and Native Land….True patriot love in all my sons command.
The Reg!!
Fuller? Only sponsor on that tour. He works harder than his crew at the track from what we saw at Thompson. Probably ready for a change.
get a troyer car and put t.c in it ..you will win races
Dam! TC won with the push works car for them . I don’t see him driving the 79 . David should get Eddie back
All your ideas are great and all but you’re missing the point, he needs sponsor money. I don’t know of any available drivers that come with a sponsor, they get snatched up pretty quickly.
the fuel bill coming from va is a ton alone