NASCAR Team Layoffs Start to Pile On

Joe Nemechek and the Furniture Row Racing team were the latest NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team to see some significant cutbacks as the sport heads into what could be the most anxious and interesting off-season it has ever seen.

Nemecheck, driver of the No. 78 Chevrolet who won the April pole at Talladega Superspeedway, was notified that his team is looking at the high-probability chance of not competing in 2009 -- just days after the team owner indicated the team would compete but with a reduced schedule.

Aside from Nemechek and Furniture Row Racing's situation that very likely saw a number of the team's employees at the shop located in Colorado get laid off this week, NASCAR teams have been letting team members go left and right in the past week.

We saw last week that Dale Earnhardt Inc., and Chip Ganassi Racing merged to a four-car operation and eliminated 116 jobs from the new Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing operation and the news continued in full force after the season-finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway last Sunday.

The Frontstretch has compiled a list of the team who have let workers go this season, and it's not too pretty:

Layoffs

DEI -- 116 Employees
Ganassi -- 71 (from shutdown of the No. 40 team in June)
Petty -- 23
Wood Brothers -- 22
Stewart-Haas -- 16
Hendrick -- 12
Hall of Fame -- Unknown
Yates -- Unknown Bill Davis -- Unknown, but down to bare bones staff at shop

Right there alone, without the numbers from Furniture Row factored in or the numbers from other teams who will also be laying more employees off in the near future, the NASCAR team world is looking at close to 300 job losses in 2008.

Those numbers don't apply completely to the Nationwide Series (Frontstretch says Fitz Motorsports might close entirely) or to the Camping World Truck Series where a ton of manufacturer support has already been pulled. Plus, each of these race teams has vendors and suppliers for many parts of their racing operation, and you can sure bet that those providers have felt an impact as well.

It's certainly not an easy time to be an employee in NASCAR at the moment, but hopefully, the sport can weather the poor economy in a good fashion.