Pro Sports
Email
Print
Cost-cutting is the order of the day in NASCAR
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: November 17, 2008
HOMESTEAD, Fla.
Black Monday is looming, and NASCAR crewmen are awaiting expected widespread job cuts this week, now that the stock-car season is finally over.
So here's veteran crew chief Brad Parrott with a suggestion: "I'm going on the record and say the drivers make too much money. They need to feed some of that money back to the team owners so they can pay the people that are out of jobs, because without the teams the drivers wouldn't be anything.
"I know the driver does a good job, and he does hard work in the car. But if you look at his pay compared to the average crew member…..
"If one driver can give up 10 percent of his salary, that would keep a lot of people in jobs.
"I know drivers don't want to hear that, but I think there are some drivers out there who understand that."
Hard times are hitting NASCAR like an economic hurricane, and
NASCAR's new total testing ban has car owners and crewmen scratching their heads about what to do next.
First, the offseason suddenly became a lot shorter, and December may be filled with unexpected testing, as teams rush to get in laps before the ban becomes effective on Jan. 1.
Toyota's field boss Lee White said he is in favor of the testing ban: "Given the global circumstances, given the economy, NASCAR had to do something dramatic.
"Even if it's just for effect, they had to do something dramatic, and this is dramatic. No testing at Daytona? That's pretty dramatic. We all figured even if they banned testing, they'd still have testing at Daytona, because it's the kickoff to the season, it's the Super Bowl.
"That tells me they mean business.
"But the beauty of this is the mystery: What is really going to happen?"
NASCAR's new testing ban may just be the start of something bigger in the way of cutting costs. So how about this as food for thought: While NASCAR is considering cost-cutting rules, why not limit teams to five race cars, instead of the 15-to-20-car fleets they carry?
That, said White, might help close the gap in this sport a little between the haves and have-nots.
White said that during midseason discussions about how to handle the planned Nationwide tour winged car (the introduction of which has been pushed back to probably 2010), the issue of limiting teams to five cars was raised: "NASCAR is already putting holograms on the frame rails of every car, so just tell the teams ‘You only get five cars. And when you start testing, design a car that can be adjustable to running speedways, intermediate tracks, short-tracks and road courses,'" White said.
"And I think that process would probably work on the Cup side, too.
"Now I'm not the crew chief, and they're going to say ‘I can't do Texas and Phoenix back-to-back, or California and Vegas back-to-back, and still get back to Atlanta if I only have five cars ... and we're criss-crossing the country.
"So five might not be the number. But I don't think 20 is the number either. It's somewhere in between. Seven, eight or 10.
"But you know these teams: if they can get by with 50 people, they'll have 100. If they can get by with five cars, they'll have 15.
"If the owners don't say ‘no.' "
Now, will NASCAR's moves dramatically change any dynamics in this sport? Probably not. The haves will still usually outperform the have-nots. But maybe, through random acts of overachievement, some of the have-nots might be able to pick off a win or two.
That NASCAR is making moves to cut costs sits well with Len Wood, who said he's happier today than he's been in a while. "I feel OK about our direction for next year," Wood said with a smile.
First, Bill Elliott, who just can't stay retired, said he might be back next year to help the Woods out again.
Second, Wood, who runs one of NASCAR's smallest operations, though one of the sport's most legendary, said that NASCAR's decision to cut testing is a good one for teams like his single-car operation.
Wood remembers when the Wood brothers, then one of the top teams on the NASCAR tour, ran their whole operation with just a handful of crewmen, basically all family: Glen and Leonard, Len and Eddie, Delano, Clay….
Dale Earnhardt and Richard Childress won a lot of championships with a seven-man crew.
The sport of NASCAR racing has expanded so much the past few years that 100-man teams are almost the standard, and four-car teams carry 400-plus on their roster.
Running a major NASCAR Cup team today requires an annual budget of $20-$30 million, with maybe half a dozen teams in the $30-million range, and at least one well over that.
In perspective, Alan Kulwicki won the 1992 NASCAR Cup championship on a budget of $1.8 million, admittedly an underdog then, up against teams with budgets of $5 million or so.
NASCAR CEO Brian France said he would like to open up the opportunity for a new Alan Kulwicki.
Budgets of $30 million a Cup team? Six teams like that? "That's probably a fair statement," Wood said.
But how much should one of these Cup teams really cost to run, competitively?
"There are a lot of variables, like how much your driver costs, how much your crew chief costs, but just assume it takes in the neighborhood of $20 million," Wood said.
"But then look at Major League Baseball. The Arizona Diamondbacks have a payroll around $46 million ... while the New York Yankees have a payroll of $230 million. How does that balance out?"
The hotly debated testing ban could help here, Wood said: "As long as they cut testing out, it's fair for everybody.
"Originally we had 15 days of official testing, and then we'd also go to, say, Nashville and Iowa and Memphis and Milwaukee, and we'd end up doing 22 or 23 days.
"But most of that was two-day testing.
"Then when they started talking (during this past summer) about expanding it (in 2009) to 24 days, then it became like 24 tests ... and the travel all of sudden went through the roof -- instead of seven travels, we were all looking at 24 travels.
"And then if you're making it just a single-day test, you're in more of a hurry, and you're trying to pack more in, and you get in a hurry to get more miles in, with more tires, and more everything….
"Two single-day tests are more than just two days of testing.
"All that, plus the way the economy is going, I think NASCAR is making the right decision to step in and say ‘You can't do this.'
"And NASCAR has done a good job of defining what they want.
"We'll still use simulation programs, and Ford has a seven-post-rig we have access to, and that's what we'll be doing more with. It doesn't involve nearly as many people, not nearly as many tires, and not near the travel.
"I think it's time to save some money.
"Yes, we can still go to Caraway and Rockingham, and I think Andy Hillenburg's stock (he owns the Rockingham track) just went up.
"North Wilkesboro? Well, I don't know about testing there, because I don't remember that track having grip even when we were there racing."
Besides, testing, Wood said, can be highly overrated: "We've tested at places like Kentucky Speedway and leave wondering just what you'd really learned. It didn't help.
"For us this year, most of our on-track testing was done in the first half of the year ... and we performed at our worst.
"Then we brought David Hyder back in as crew chief, and we started spending more shop time fixing our cars like they needed to be, and did less testing. And our performance, though it hasn't been stellar, has clearly been better the second half of the year.
"We needed to get our cars better prepared, and it didn't require track testing to do that.
"It's not the end-all not to have testing.
"But in this sport, it's monkey-see, monkey-do."
Email
Print
