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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
SPENCER: Spring-Cleaning, NASCAR Style
We’re undergoing a restructuring in the same fashion many businesses are and that's not to say this transition and rebuilding period will be easy...
Jimmy Spencer  |  Posted January 16, 2009   Charlotte, NC
Jimmy Spencer co-hosts NASCAR RaceDay and NASCAR Victory Lane. (Image: SPEED)

The sport of NASCAR is going through a much-needed and long overdue cleansing this season. We had gotten too big and costly, so this deep recession and its repercussions are bringing everything back into line, although painfully.

We’re undergoing a restructuring in the same fashion many businesses are. Not to say this transition and rebuilding period will be easy, but I am convinced NASCAR will survive and one day be stronger, in a competition sense, than before.

I’ve been saying for more than a year that the sport is on a downhill decline. NASCAR boasted for years about its monumental growth and explosive popularity but the industry isn’t growing anymore and its popularity is waning.

Additionally, the sport relies on sponsorship dollars to exist, while NFL and NBA teams, while franchised, don’t need sponsors just to make it to game day. We can’t even start a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team without a sponsor anymore and certainly can’t last an entire season without one. That’s how outrageously expensive NASCAR racing has become – upwards of $15 to $25 million a year per primary sponsor.

While the strong will continue to strengthen, the weak are merging just to survive. It’s a sad day in NASCAR and will be an extremely tough year across the board, but I applaud NASCAR and the owners for the measures they’re taking to stick it out. I truly think the competition amongst the teams will be better now that excesses are being trimmed.

One reason these teams are in dire straits and so desperate for scarce sponsor dollars is that driver and crew member salaries have become so pricey. Most crew members are paid very well, which is fine, but many large teams are paying 350 to 400 employees fairly well. The owners can’t keep up with the salary pressures of their crew members, much less the drivers.

Hundreds of jobs have been lost in NASCAR in the past two or three months and layoffs continue. To their credit, several crew members have taken pay cuts in recent days to offset or lessen these layoffs. Some drivers have also offered to take a hit in the wallet.

But this has been coming for a while although the nation’s economic conditions compounded these problems tenfold, creating a sudden scarcity of sponsors. But many of our drivers are overpaid and fly from track to track in their jets to spend the night in their $1 million motor homes. Heck, many of the drivers today make more money in one year than the Winston Cup drivers years ago made in their entire career.

NASCAR has done a great job of promoting its drivers but drivers should get back to meeting fans and signing autographs more often. They’re not giving back to the sponsors and fans as much as they should. It’s an inconvenience for drivers to sign autographs nowadays, and as a result, they’ve alienated themselves from the fans. It’s time to get back to the way Richard Petty, Bobby Allison and Dale Earnhardt Sr. treated the fans.

Drivers, especially the new generation, and the sport as a whole have lost sight of how much we depend on the fans. But those fans also are hurting financially and won’t be able to spend as much money at the tracks this year, so we should give them a reason to return. I remember hearing Richard Petty say he used to stay two or three hours after a race to shake fans’ hands and sign autographs. We will need the fans to be able to weather this economic crisis and transition period in the sport.

And NASCAR will weather this gloomy season because these mergers, no matter how gut-wrenching and depressing, are a sign of survival. NASCAR is doing everything it can to guide the teams and themselves through this and we’ll trudge through. I’ve known the leaders of NASCAR from Bill France on down to Brian France and Mike Helton and they’re survivors and will have a plan for this time.

The good news is that Richard Petty is still around, although not in the role he’d like to be, and DEI still exists, although with a different name and face. But it still greatly saddens me to see what Earnhardt built reduced to another merger headline.

Time eventually will fix this colossal mess but I think we’ve all learned some valuable and painful lessons from it.

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or Speed Channel

Jimmy Spencer calls it like he sees it as an analyst on NASCAR RaceDay and NASCAR Victory Lane on SPEED. He retired from driving with two NASCAR Sprint Cup, 12 NASCAR Nationwide and one NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series victory, putting him in an elite group of drivers who have logged wins in all three of NASCAR’s premier divisions. In 478 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series starts, Spencer amassed 28 top-five and 80 top-10 finishes. He won back-to-back NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour championships in 1986 and 1987 on the heels of 15 victories, becoming the first driver ever to earn consecutive titles in the series. He earned the nickname “Mr. Excitement” for his flamboyant and aggressive driving style early in his racing career.

NASCAR 39/10: Reviewing the 60th SeasonNASCAR 39/10: Reviewing the 60th Season A unique and comprehensive look at a historic season in the annals of stock car racing. For the first time ever, NASCAR fans will be able to relive the entire 2008 Sprint Cup Season, over the course of a 30-hour anthology. From Preseason Testing in Daytona, to the Postseason Banquet in New York, viewers will relive NASCAR’s 60th season, and one of the most important years in the sport’s history.
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