The sport just lost a fan favorite with the retirement of Kevin Windham and now two race teams announced this week they will be shuttering their operations. On Thursday, L&Mc Racing said it will stop racing immediately while J-Star JDR Motorsports on Wednesday said it will shut down at the conclusion of the season if they are unable to find additional funding.

L&Mc Racing, owned by seven-time Supercross champion Jeremy McGrath and former racer and longtime team manager Larry Brooks was only three races into its second year of operation. In 2012 they launched as the L&Mc Racing/Supercross.com Honda team with one rider, Andrew Short.

Indications of financial struggle were evident when the team showed up to the 2012 Seattle Supercross in a Sprinter van instead of their official race hauler, a full semi-truck and trailer. Short won the race, his first, in what became the season's Cinderella story.

At the end of the 2012 season Supercross.com pulled out but Chaparral became the title sponsor for 2013. After only three races, the team issued a release that stated Brooks, McGrath and Short are, "committed to running a program with the utmost level of professionalism however, recent unforeseen events outside of the team's control have prevented that from occurring."

Brooks could not be reached by phone and McGrath declined to comment when reached via text. Short told XGames.com via phone that he would soon be announcing his plans for the rest of the season but declined to comment on the subject of his former team. Short sits in seventh place in the points standings of the 2013 Monster Energy Supercross championship through three rounds.

"We did our best to keep Andrew out on the track but forces out of our control dictated that we conclude the season much earlier than we anticipated or planned," McGrath said in the press release.

On Wednesday, J-Star JDR Motorsports, run by an Australian family, and which competes in the 250SX series in the United States, issued their news: "We at JDR have always sought to set high standards for ourselves and have endeavored to live up to these standards, which is why we are announcing our closure early. We had full intentions of seeing the year out but with the costs of running a professional team we cannot continue the cost personally. We have worked tirelessly on gaining the support of the much-needed sponsors but with the current economy this simply has not happened."

Malcolm Stewart, younger brother of two-time Supercross champion James Stewart is a rider on the JDR team.

In November, Jeff Ward Racing became the first race team casualty of the 2013 season, when they announced they would stop racing two months before the start of their second season. Rider Dean Wilson, who was featured in ESPN The Magazine's NEXT issue, was left without a ride.