Columnists
Email
Print
Top Dogs: NASCAR's big teams dominate
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: June 29, 2008
Summertime blues? Well, maybe in some stock-car racing camps, as team owners try to please corporate sponsors increasingly worried about their NASCAR ROI (return on investment). With as much as $30 million a team at stake, this is a legitimate concern, particularly with the sport dominated by a Big Four: Hendrick, Roush, Gibbs and Childress.
Every other team owner is fair game for speculation about 2009.
Now NASCAR, with rising TV ratings and those big-bucks network contracts firmly in place for the next few years, certainly isn't in the doldrums, although ticket sales are clearly off. And NASCAR CEO Brian France has been out doing some heavy-hitting promotion of his own, such as last week's blunt pitch to the nation's newspaper sports editors at their annual convention to beef up their NASCAR coverage, with a pledge to provide whatever support he can to that changing business, because "our customers are your customers."
But down in the trenches, car owner Doug Yates is warning about sponsorship issues looming that could prove fateful for some teams. After all, this is a performance-based business: "It's only a sport for four hours on Sunday," Kyle Petty said. "It's a business the other six days a week."
It's an increasingly tough business, with soaring costs for team owners. The car-of-tomorrow project that NASCAR forced on these teams triggered a new high-tech war between teams, a multi-million dollar war that has pushed Detroit carmakers to up their stake, too. It is a war that cash-rich Toyota appears to be winning at the moment, with leader Kyle Busch going for his sixth Sprint Cup tour win this afternoon at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon.
The other side of the business appears to be doing rather well, considering the anemic state of the American economy. NASCAR's resurgence this season may be clearest in Los Angeles, where Gillian Zucker's work as boss of California Speedway — oops, Auto Club Speedway — is paying off with dramatically higher TV ratings in that market, the second largest in the U.S.
But for team owners, the name of the NASCAR game right now, in this economy, is star power: If you've got a big name and a good reputation for delivering, you've got the playing field. And if you don't, well, you could be toast.
The rich get richer.
So the big NASCAR story this weekend is the possible Tony Stewart-to-Rick Hendrick scenario for 2009, which Stewart is now talking up enthusiastically. It's a scenario first heard late last summer, when General Motors executives laid out their big-picture pitch for Stewart's return to the Chevrolet camp as part of the Hendrick package. (The Journal first revealed that game plan in early September, noting the sheer audaciousness of GM trying to put Stewart, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson all on the same team.)
Sponsorships scarce
The possible Hendrick-Stewart deal morphed early this season into a potential Stewart buy-in into the struggling Gene Haas-Joe Custer operation, which has been backed with Hendrick engineering since it was formed in 2002. And for the past three months the news there has been Stewart's maneuvering to find a new driver-teammate and sponsors for that move.
There have been roadblocks, apparently, however, on both points, and the ragged U.S. economy hasn't made things any easier.
Among the names mentioned as potential teammates for Stewart, if he were to take the Haas-Custer project: Martin Truex Jr. and Ryan Newman.
Truex has been quietly trying to move on from DEI, but Teresa Earnhardt seemingly wants to hold him to the last year of his contract, in part to keep Bass Pro Shops on that car.
Newman, once one of NASCAR's top drivers and not at all pleased at the decline of fortunes at Penske Racing (keyed perhaps with Don Miller's retirement), has been trying to move on, despite his Daytona 500 upset victory.
But then any team owner trying to put together driver-sponsor deals this season has a tough row to hoe.
Yates said he wouldn't be surprised if half a dozen NASCAR teams fold up shop at the end of the season.
Even Jack Roush and Geoff Smith had to work their tails off to put together a three-year sponsorship for Greg Biffle, with negotiations that took more than a year. And Mark Martin may find no more sponsorship for his part-time racing ventures; DEI looks as if it will put Aric Almirola full-time in that car, to keep U.S. Army on the quarterpanels. Where Martin might go next is unclear, though; he'll be 50 when he arrives at Daytona for next February's 500 (a race he lost in a photo finish just last year).
Casey Mears is now obviously out in the marketplace. He's just 30, with a good name, and a sponsor-pleasing approach to the marketing game. He could be penciled in at Childress' fourth team. Jeff Burton said that whoever Childress hires will have to mesh well with teammates Kevin Harvick, Clint Bowyer and himself, and Mears is a get-along kind of guy, rare in this sport.
Yates' own struggles are well documented: This is his first season as a full team owner, and only backing from Ford Motor Company and Roush is keeping his two-team operation afloat. Yates hints that he might not hang around for 2009 unless solid sponsorship materializes. And it's almost July, with no such white knights on the horizon.
Bill Davis is yet another struggling car owner, who just lost his prime sponsorship, Caterpillar, after 10 years, to Childress. Richard and Kyle Petty, likewise struggling, lost their prime sponsorship, General Mills, to Childress. And there have been rumors that Chip Ganassi is looking at doing something drastic with his NASCAR operation. Ganassi has only won one tour race since 2002. Juan Pablo Montoya has apparently been less than pleased with his team's performance.
Only the strong survive
So as the NASCAR tour approaches the midpoint of the season, this is the picture: Hendrick may be adding yet another star to his already well-stockpiled team: Stewart.
Stewart said he is now going to consider the straight-up Hendrick ride that Mears will be leaving at the end of the season.
Stewart has another year remaining on his contract with Gibbs, but Stewart has said that his future is up for debate, and he's been mulling over various options, generally with the idea of eventually returning to Chevrolet.
Gibbs wants to keep Stewart, but Gibbs has apparently been looking at potential new drivers. Montoya is one name that has popped up.
Stewart straight to Hendrick? That would give Hendrick Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Stewart…. a powerhouse lineup that might just be not that good for the sport.
If NASCAR's Billy France Jr. were still around running things, he might be giving Hendrick a call, saying, :"No way" to that unbalance of power. How France handles that remains to be seen.
Stewart said that any decision of his "may be pushed back even more now. We'll wait and see. It's however long it takes to make the right decision.
"I've still got two ARCA teams I'm talking to, a Truck team, and now the 5 car (the Mears Chevy) is available. So I still have a lot of work to do."
Stewart isn't letting much out of the bag: "I don't even know who I'm driving for yet, so it's hard to pick a sponsor: Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?
"There are a lot of variables to look at. The good news is we have time to look.
"But we're going to have to make a decision at some point."
And that's not all on Stewart's plate at the moment: "I always have a lot of stuff to deal with. I've got four open-wheel teams, and three racetracks, so there's always something that needs your attention, always something that needs done.
"That's the one thing I've learned from Joe Gibbs — put the right people around you and have good people in the right places. That helps take that weight off your shoulders and helps to let you do your job."
■ Mike Mulhern can be reached at mmulhern@wsjournal.com.
Email
Print
ADVERTISEMENT
See community events or add your own! Click here!
Advertisement
