JR Renoylds pulled out on their own accord, said they couldn't afford to be the series sponsor anymore. Which I believe with the big reduction in smoking in this country. I said at the time, what NASCAR should've done is buy the name Winston from them, I think it would've been benificial for long term stability of the sport to keep the name, rather than change the name every few years when the sponsorship changes. It could've easily been done, called the "Winston Cup sponsored by soandso". and NASCAR had a longtime ban on liquor sponsorships that was lifted fairly recently, our 8 year recession combined with that dictator France set NASCAR back about 10 years. It used to be damn near impossible to get tickets to the 160,000 seat Bristol races, these days they are lucky to fill half of it. NASCARs downfall started when they over reacted to Kenseth winning the championship without winning a race. Everyone knew it was possible, but no one seemed to care until it happened. And I really don't that many people were upset that it did happen. The following year is when we got "the chase" with 10 drivers in it, then a few years latter it was increased to 12 drivers when NASCARs poster boy didn't qualify with the 10.
