Winston Cup
Ultra Motorsports began running Winston Cup in 1994, when P. J. Jones drove the #06 Ford Thunderbird at Phoenix, finishing 29th, nine laps down. The next season, Butch Gilliland ran the #38 Ford at Sonoma, but finished 42nd after an early engine failure. Ultra returned to Cup in 1999 with the #32. Mike Wallace qualified at Richmond International Raceway, finishing 24th.
Midway through 2000, Mattei Motorsports sold partial interest in the team to Ultra and Smith, who bought out Mattei one month later. Michael Waltrip became the team's driver for the remainder of the season and the team switched to Chevrolets (which Mattei was running), retaining NationsRent as the team sponsor. The team returned to the Ford marque for 2001 and also brought back Mike Wallace, who struggled and was replaced by Robby Gordon at Sears Point who had the team's best finish of second. Wallace left the team late in the season to replace Jeremy Mayfield at Penske Racing and Ultra signed Kevin Lepage, who had been driving the #4 Kodak car for Morgan-McClure Motorsports, to run the remainder of the schedule.
In 2002 Ultra Motorsports entered into an arrangement with Evernham Motorsports where the team would switch to Dodge Intrepids and Casey Atwood, who had been driving Evernham's #19 car and needed a ride once Mayfield became the team's second driver, would take over the car. The team briefly changed its name to Ultra-Evernham Motorsports and took Sirius Satellite Radio as its sponsor. However, the partnership dissolved after Smith decided to remove Atwood from the car with two races left in the season and replace him with his truck series driver, Jason Leffler. Despite this, Sirius stayed as sponsor, Dodge stayed as manufacturer, and Jimmy Spencer took over in 2003 and had four top ten finishes. Ultra even expanded to field a second car for Ted Musgrave in selected races, carrying Sirius sponsorship and #07. The team ran only two races in 2004 after struggling to find a sponsor.
In 2005 Robby Gordon purchased the team and named it Robby Gordon Motorsports.
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Famous quotes containing the word cup:
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