NASCAR Can Afford to Tighten Belt More

During the NASCAR offseason - November to February - as the U.S. and world economies headed deeper into the tank, we heard a lot of gloom and doom about the future of America's most popular motor sport. Corporate sponsorship, the lifeblood of racing, is currently hard to come by and the '09 season opened with an unhealthy number of cars lacking high-dollar logos on their hoods.

Though I am no economist, I have, through all the naysaying, remained bullish on stock car racing. Harvard MBAs, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe when there is less money to spend, a wise strategy is to spend less money. And at risk of curmudgeonry, I believe the stock car economy, bloated through more than two decades of runaway success, has plenty of room to tighten the old belt.

Start at the top. NASCAR made Daytona's France family billionaires, and deservedly so, but that leads me to believe the sanctioning body has some financial wiggle room in times of dire emergency.

Consider the teams, which somehow manage to spend $20 million per entry racing tube frame cars with carburetors and push rods. Trust me, if times get really tough, there are ways to roll out 43 decent cars on Sunday for a good bit less than that (more on that in a moment).

Star drivers already feel the pinch; Jeff Gordon recently parked the Gulfstream (or whatever) and flew commercial. Imagine a Sprint Cup hero removing his shoes at the same security checkpoint as the rest of us. Good for Gordo. Now ask yourself, would the NASCAR world stop turning if, even for a little while, everybody from the driver to the jack man flew on a major airline or - heaven forbid - drove to the races?

Don't get me wrong. I don't begrudge anyone in the NASCAR world the fruits of their success. But I also know that the lucre of contemporary stock car racing is an anomaly. Throughout most of the motorsports world, regardless of whether Fortune 500 stocks are up or down, financial hardship is a way of life. Away from the NASCAR gravy train, 99.9% of those who race never have enough money.

I know too that a significant number of those currently living large as a result of NASCAR's long-running boom came from more humble roots. If they didn't personally experience driving all night and sleeping four-to-a-room in order to afford to go racing, they can certainly remember dad telling them about it. These folks hail from rugged stock and can go back to roughing it if they have to.

Meantime, the money crunch has opened a window of opportunity for those not addicted to expensive habits. Last year NASCAR adopted new car specs, in part to enable team owners to reduce the size of their racing fleets and thus save money. But the owners, creatures of habit or perhaps bowing to the advice of spoiled crew chiefs who like having specific cars for all the different tracks, were slow to downsize.

Against the backdrop of big teams building dozens of cars for a 36-race season, consider the case of car owner Kevin Buckler, a successful sports car racer who has now turned his sights toward NASCAR. Buckler's driver, David Gilliland, tackled this year's first four races with – count them – two cars. Organized just 15 days before the season opener, Buckler's team failed to qualify for the Daytona 500 but has since made five straight races, finishing 33rd, 14th, 24th, 36th and 36th. That was good enough to put them 34th in car owner points, earning one of the precious guaranteed starting spots reserved for the top 35, before falling to 36th following last weekend's race at Martinsville Speedway.

Buckler's approach - buying used cars from other owners and hiring crew members laid off as big teams cut back - probably won't trigger a paradigm shift in NASCAR economics but he has made clear that a smart guy surrounded with dedicated people can do more with less. That lesson will not be lost on his peers. I'll say it again; with a little Buckler-esque attention to how the money is being spent, the big wheels of NASCAR will continue to roll through the current economic storm.

Dave Despain, a veteran motorsports journalist, is the host of Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain on SPEED. A self-proclaimed failed motorcycle racer, Despain spent 10 years in American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) public relations and publishing and made his first television appearance on ABC Wide World of Sports as an analyst for the Daytona 200. He emerged on the NASCAR scene in the early 1970s when he joined Motor Racing Network (MRN) and was named host of Motorweek Illustrated on TBS in 1980. In addition to his on-air accomplishments, Despain served on the AMA Pro Racing Board in the 1990s and became a promoter in 1998 when he inaugurated the Dirt Track Hall of Fame Race in Springfield, Illinois, a race that paid a record $100,000 purse. He joined then-Speedvision in 2001 as the host of the weekly programs Bike Week and Motorcyclist. Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain on SPEED was born in 2003 and has become one of the network's most popular programs. For more information on Despain or SPEED's NASCAR programming, please visit www.speedtv.com.