It is no secret that the current economic crisis is taking a heavy toll on the state of NASCAR. Everywhere you look, teams are hurting for sponsorships and the almighty racing dollar.
And no one seems to be safe.
The large teams are scaling back, the medium-sized teams are laying off workers in large numbers, and a lot of the once-novel one-car teams are struggling to find the money to get their driver in the field from week to week.
Chrysler and General Motors are in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings, and Ford isn’t far behind. Toyota, who had seemed to be one of the safer bets for race teams thus far, has even been speculated to be dropping its financial support of the NASCAR Nationwide and Camping World Series while keeping is engineering support of the two series, just like the American Big Three.
So where does this leave the Sprint Cup Series?
No one seems to know, and for good reason.
NASCAR was once able to survive and thrive on the grassroots philosophy. It’s what made NASCAR unique. But with an economy in a situation never seen before to many people today, anything can happen, and it comes down to simple mathematics.
NASCAR needs money, and it needs sponsors and automaker support to make everything go.
It’s a safe bet to say that NASCAR officials are working on an emergency plan, seeking alternatives should things keep spiraling out of control as they seem to be now. They’re reportedly already looking to foreign automakers to fill some of the void left in the wake of the American automaker fallout. There will never be a shortage of good drivers out there looking to fill the seats of cars, and there will never be a shortage of fans looking to attend races.
But somehow, somewhere, NASCAR and its teams are going to need to come up with something to right the financial ship in a hurry. A lack of financial support from automakers could just be what spins NASCAR into the proverbial outer wall of financial ruins that could be apocalyptic.
The racing Web sites and blogs have an abundance of misery making up the story count in recent weeks, and here is a look at some of the bigger stories flying around the internet:
MikeMullhern.net reported this week, as earlier stated, that talk around the garage area last weekend at Infineon Raceway has Toyota getting ready to withdraw if financial support of its NASCAR Truck and Nationwide teams, adding to similar announcements made by GM, Ford and Chrysler in recent weeks. The Web site had a statement from Lee White, head of Toyota racing development operations stating that “Toyota and TRD have been in the process for over a year of adapting our series support for the Truck/Nationwide programs to be appropriate to the value of each series. Our process in the future will not be determined by other manufacturer’s actions but by the value delivers by each series. At this point there is no plan to change our involvement for the remainder of this season. As always we will re-evaluate each series over the winter and could make appropriate adjustments.”
ESPN.com reported last week NASCAR Chairman Brian France said that NASCAR officials are in the process of talking with a number of foreign-based automakers that have manufacturing plants in the U.S. about the possibility of working their way into the sport in some capacity. France seemed to be playing it close to the vest when pressed by the Web site about what automakers have been contacted, but did say that certain companies “are interested in particular in developing the North American market as robustly as they can.” ESPN.com’s story lists Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, BMW and Mercedes-Benz as some of the foreign automakers with plants in the U.S.
MikeMulhern.net also reported that there is possibility that Richard Childress Racing may be forced to cut back to a two-team operation next season if it can’t find a way to renew its sponsorship deals with Shell (Kevin Harvick) and Jack Daniels (Casey Mears). Childress told the Web site that he still intends to field a four-team operation next season but added that sponsorship issues must still be taken care of.
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Rank…Driver … Points … Behind
1. … Tony Stewart … 2364 … ---
2. … Jeff Gordon … 2280 … 84
3. … Jimmie Johnson … 2207 … 157
4. … Kurt Busch … 2084 … 280
5. … Carl Edwards … 2051 … 313
6. … Ryan Newman … 2046 … 318
7. … Denny Hamlin … 2009 … 335
8. … Greg Biffle … 1992 … 372
9. … Kyle Busch … 1962 … 402
10. … Matt Kenseth … 1957 … 407
11. … Mark Martin … 1926 … 438
12. … Juan Montoya … 1917 … 447
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