Yates and Newman join forces

Robert Yates Racing on Friday became the third NASCAR Nextel Cup team this week to forge a business alliance aimed at making the team more competitive in stock-car racing’s premier series.

But Yates reached outside NASCAR for help, saying it formed a partnership with Newman-Haas-Lanigan Racing, the top team in the Champ Car World Series open-wheel racing circuit.

Newman-Haas-Lanigan, whose owners include actor and former racer Paul Newman, has won the Champ Car championship for the last three years with driver Sebastien Bourdais. Champ Car’s races include the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.

The announcement came two days after Dale Earnhardt Inc. and Ginn Racing merged their operations to keep pace with NASCAR’s most powerful teams, including Hendrick Motorsports and Roush Fenway Racing.

Robert Yates is one of NASCAR’s best-known owners and engine builders. His team has won 57 races since it was created in 1988, and it captured the 1999 championship with driver Dale Jarrett.

But the Ford team has struggled in recent years, and Yates had been pursuing potential investors and other partners to stay competitive. Yates’ current drivers include David Gilliland of Riverside and veteran Ricky Rudd, who are 27th and 30th in the points, respectively. Neither has won a race this year.

“We have picked out the right partner,” Yates said at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, site of Sunday’s Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.

“This gives us a clear vision how to get to the top.”

Haas, a previous Cup team owner, said his Champ Car team had been looking “to add other forms of racing” and the Yates partnership “was too good of an opportunity to pass up.”

The teams’ officials declined to disclose financial terms of the partnership. But the deal includes not only a cash investment by Newman-Haas-Lanigan in Yates’ operation, but also an exchange of engineering and marketing skills.

“NASCAR Nextel Cup racing is rapidly moving, technology-wise, to engineering areas that Newman-Haas-Lanigan has years of experience with already,” said Dan Davis, director of Ford Racing Technology.

The appearance of Newman, 82, at the news conference was notable because the longtime car owner hadn’t visited the speedway since a civil war in U.S. open-wheel racing divided the sport into two series in 1995.

The split occurred when Tony George, whose family owns the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, created the Indy Racing League. The remaining series is Champ Car, which Newman has supported.

The Yates deal “in no way lessens our commitment to open-wheel racing,” Newman said. “We want to broaden our horizons.”

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The DEI-Ginn merger raised the question of what happens to Ricky Carmichael, the off-road motorcycle racing champion who is trying to break into NASCAR as a development driver for Ginn.

Carmichael, with 15 supercross and motocross titles, is driving late-model stock cars in NASCAR’s minor leagues, with veteran Cup driver Mark Martin as his mentor.

The merger so far hasn’t affected Carmichael’s regimen, Martin said.

“We’re trying to get him more experience,” Martin said Friday. “As we move forward, DEI and I will evaluate what happens to Ricky in the future. Right now we’re going to race him as hard as we can go.”

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A steady drizzle washed out Brickyard 400 practice Friday. Qualifying is scheduled for today.

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james.peltz@latimes.com