Originally Posted by DaveyFan28

^ J.J. Yeley had been driving the #18 ever since Bobby Labonte left the team until this year, and went nowhere with it. Kyle Busch comes along and wins 8 races, meanwhile Yeley gets worse in a Gibbs-satellite Toyota team. Doesn't sound to me like Yeley was much of a solution to anything in either ride. So the 96 team doesn't want to have a development driver. Understandable since Logano wasn't ever going to stay with that team anyway. Hopefully they can get with a driver who works well with them. IMO they never should have let Tony Raines go.

Great point about the #18... However all the hype around Lagano makes it sound like he should be able to jump into just about any ride and be at least a contender. Based on his Nationwide races he seems to be a good driver. He doesn't seem to be great in my opinion. Of course, he has a Nationwide win to his name, but other than that he seemed to be just hanging around the top ten in most of his other Nationwide starts I've seen. How does someone explain how Ken Schrader got into that #96 ride at Bristol and ran pretty darn good bringing home 21st, then here comes "Sliced Bread" and he runs 40th all day in 2 different races?

I just am not buying the whole Joey Lagano is the next best thing to come along in the series... I think the media has hurt him by tacking all that to his name.

I think he is being pushed too fast by being in the #20 Cup car next year. He might benefit more from running the full '09 Nationwide series and then a few cup starts.