is concerned I don't see any improvement as long as she stays where she is at; the team just doesn't have the money to put good cars under her. If I was handling her I would try to talk MLM into putting her into the Truck Series. The Truck Series is soft on top ten trucks. We could buy two races in the Truck Series for each Nationwide race. If she runs in the top ten the exposure is huge compared to what she currently gets running 27th in Nationwide. If she won in the Truck Series it would open a bunch of sponsor doors. The time to have done that would have been this year, the Truck bodies are changing next year and that will increase the cost in the near term. It could still be done with a good part time plan and cherry picking the best tracks to run her at, but I don't see it happening.

One of the things that prevents a move is that MLM racing is only staying afloat because of the purse money in Nationwide. Moving to the Truck Series would mean losing money. You can sustain a team in Nationwide and Cup on purse money you can't do that in the Truck Series. So the hard sell from a driver management standpoint is to get the owner to take a risk of loss in the short term for a chance at better sponsorship in the future. Most owners don't see the future they just see todays bills. Personally I think MLM is kind of using Long right now; I don't think that they even understand that they are holding Johanna's career up. Johanna is also to blame, but at this point in her career Johanna is just happy to be driving anything and thinks that MLM is doing her a favor, but see needs to get some forward vision on where this is all going. The reality is that if she stays at MLM too long she will fade out of the sport unless they change course. Take Care.