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Slowdown May Not Be All Bad for NASCAR
Alan Kulwicki won NASCAR's title in 1992 on a budget of less than $2 million.
(By John Bazemore -- Associated Press)
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Meantime, Dale Earnhardt Jr., whose departure from DEI exacerbated the company's struggles, has had to cut roughly 20 percent of his staff (17 people) at the Nationwide team he owns.
"We were employing more people than we necessarily needed to do the job that we were trying to do," Earnhardt Jr. told reporters earlier this month. "A lot of us in the sport live in excess as far as that goes."
But not all NASCAR teams' excess is in payrolls. It can be found in lavish motor homes and Learjets.
"Greed has become a big problem in NASCAR," Spencer said, "and that includes me, working for TV. I want every damn thing I can get! But all of us need to start realizing we're spending too much."
NASCAR President Brian France took a step in that direction by banning testing in 2009, which could save teams as much as $1 million each. But he ruled out two other potential cost-saving measures: trimming the 36-race season and shortening the length of the races themselves.
"We have contracts in place and historically important events," France said, defending the February-through-November schedule. Shortening races, he added, would be more symbolic than substantive.
According to Andrew Zimbalist, a noted sports economist and professor at Smith College, it's unrealistic to assume that NASCAR's competition won't be negatively affected if revenue goes away. The reason: The teams that field three and four cars, such as Gibbs and Hendrick, will have more leverage and be even more attractive to the sponsors, while single-car teams will struggle more.
Says McReynolds: "The bottom line is, it doesn't matter what rule you make: The strong are still gonna be strong, and the weak are still gonna be weak."
