Team owner Jack Roush is among those optimistic about the future of NASCAR. (Photo: Getty Images)

The bottom line? The U.S. economy is getting better, but race teams and NASCAR itself are having to work harder than ever, often for lower returns.

“We’re not just a race team anymore,” said Ty Norris, executive vice president at Michael Waltrip Racing. “We have to be a marketing arm, we have to be a PR arm. We have to be a sales and a business-to-business company. We have to do all that not only to attain sponsors but to retain sponsors.”

It’s not like it was in the go-go 1990s.

“The number of sponsors and what they’re willing to pay are maybe fewer,” said Norris. “We used to have options of two or three sponsors to choose from. Sponsors used to come to the race track and try to find a team. Teams now have to go out and really smoke out the sponsors.”

Roush Fenway’s Newmark agreed that sponsors are returning.

“I think what you’re going to see over the next year or two is a lot of these folks dip their toes in and actually come on in with a full-bore program,” he said. “I think we’re all experiencing that.”

Asked if he thought 2011 would be a year of recovery for NASCAR, Lee White smiled.

“Well, wouldn’t that be great?” said White, who is president and general manager of Toyota’s United States racing arm, TRD, U.S.A. “I think everyone in the auto industry is looking at a pretty strong recovery in 2011. Everything’s certainly headed in that direction. For a sport, which is inherently joined at the hip with the auto industry, if we’re able to celebrate a revolutionary change of the audience coming back and the TV audience coming back, that’s great for all of us and certainly helps explain why we’re in this sport.”

Still, there is work to do.

“The challenge for all of us — every team owner in the sport and all the drivers — is to help their teams identify new sponsors that can bring new energy in and celebrate NASCAR’s bright future so they can benefit from the enthusiasm that goes with NASCAR’s brand-loyal fans for both the Nationwide, the Truck Series and the Cup Series,” said Roush.

My SPEED is devoted to the passionate fans who celebrate motorcycles, motorsports and the automotive lifestyle.

And that’s what Roush Fenway and every other major team in NASCAR is doing.

“We offer a unique marketing platform,” Newmark said. “When you get involved with our sport, you become part of our brand. Your brand becomes part of our team.”

NASCAR is, too.

“Every sport is going to have periods where, for lots of reasons, you're in a peak or a valley,” said NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France. “But over the long term we're very confident that we've got the right partners, our collaboration with our teams, we're setting ourselves up to work through any issues that we have, take the sport in a smart direction over many, many years and make sure the business models for all of the NASCAR community work properly. That's an important thing.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.