Are Chrysler, Ford and GM pulling out of NASCAR?

[Ghoste]

Or is it just a rumour?

[68RT4ME]

Where did you hear something like that? I was listening to NASCAR on Sirius today and they were reporting that NASCAR had announced no plans to change their business model for the 2009 season. They feel it's not their problem to help teams in NASCAR to get sponsors or bail them out if they are near folding. I found it a little odd they don't think they need to change things up a little with the economy they way it is. I have to think that attendance is down allot and Corp sponsors have to be hard to come by.

[Ghoste]

A few guys at work were crying about it but I haven't seen anything about it anywhwere else.  I don't follow NASCAR at all but I would something like that would even qualify for the mainstream news?

[Aero426]

Overall, I think the sport would do fine with reduced manufacturer support.  No doubt that the manufacturers help the teams with things like engineering support, but as I see it, the larger problem is the lack of full time sponsorship going forward.

In Cup, you have something like 12 cars that are not funded for 2009.     If you want to drive for DEI,  bring 12 million with you and they will listen.     Casey Mears got the ride at Childress for 2009 not necessarily because of talent, but also because he brought 5 million in sponsorship with him.   

I think you will see less manufacturer involvement as time goes along, although maybe not a wholesale pull out.  The Dodge program is funded by the dealers.  They have already announced they would not support the truck series in 2009.    GM announced funding cuts in terms of sponsorship of races and at track hospitality, and that was months ago before it was apparent how bad things are.   Ford is going to concentrate on the Cup series. 

You have Dodge teams talking to Chevy teams about consolidation.    Rumors about Petty, Ganassi and DEI are swirling about some kind of affiliation between a combination of two of those teams.    Bill Davis is likely gone.   DEI has four cars with only one full time sponsor.   Ganassi has lost Havoline as they are leaving the sport.   The 43 car has no sponsor.    Kyle Petty has Wells Fargo in his back pocket, but since the Petty team has told him he does not have a seat for next year, it's not clear whether he will take that money somewhere else or not.   It's nuts right now, and the teams are backed into a corner because their overhead is so BIG.   

[Ghoste]

I thought the Petty name had been sold to some kind of corporate investment firm or something like that?
But let me ask you this, feeling that the sport could be improved with less mfg support, do you feel it's any different to turn it over to corporations looking for billboards?

[Silver R/T]

thats bs, if they would do that who else would do NASCAR...toyota? I don't think there will be many viewers lol

[Mike DC]

As non-stock as those cars are now, maybe NASCAR should be the one paying the companies to use their brand names these days. 

[Ghoste]

I think you're right Mike.  The only thing stopping the cars from being the same is the engine and they even forced the Big Three to share engine development with Toyota to bring them up to speed so what the hell.  We have the COT, might as well go for true "parity" and have a single engine program too.

[PocketThunder]

I think you're right Mike.  The only thing stopping the cars from being the same is the engine and they even forced the Big Three to share engine development with Toyota to bring them up to speed so what the hell.  We have the COT, might as well go for true "parity" and have a single engine program too.

Then it will be like going to the go-kart track with your friends and just hoping in any car available.   

[Ghoste]

Isn't that what France always wanted, a drivers race?

[Mike DC]

 
I don't think France ever originally thought that far. 

The move to favor stock cars was made because they assumed that's where the audience interest would be highest.  France didn't have the hindsight to know that he could get mass audiences to watch stock-bodied cars that weren't stock.



Originally he was picturing something a lot less evolved than that.  He was picturing Suburban Dad (well, Rural Dad at least) pulling up in the family truckster, dropping the wife & kids off in the stands, and competing in the race to see if he could win back the price of the trip. 

Probably the biggest early motivation to keep the cars stock was to keep it from being totally dominated by moonshiners (both in terms of competitors and spectator appeal).    France probably wouldn't have given a sh*t about whether the cars were stock or not under the skin, if the entire direction of the sport hadn't hinged on the issue in the early days.  People were already familiar with moonshiner derbies in the 1940s, and they were rough dangerous disorganized events.  France was trying to separate his league from those and make it cleaner cut.  He outlawed whiskey-running car setups because it put a leash on the influence of the whiskey-running crowd itself. 




 
And nobody, but NOBODY, would have ever predicted that they could fill the grandstands with 200,000 people once even the spectators all realized that the race cars bore no relation to the stockers. 

If you told Bill France that idea in 1946 he probably would have laughed his ass off.  He'd probably have said, "There's already a race for that.  It's in Indiannapolis."