Amanda Vincent: Race season’s long, but silly season’s even longer

It seems like it wasn’t all that long ago that NASCAR’s silly season—the time period during which drivers moved to new teams to prepare for the upcoming season—was basically the NASCAR offseason. The racing season went from mid-February to mid-November, and silly season was mid-November to sometime in January. The race season still runs February to November, but silly season seems to be a nearly year-around phenomenon anymore.

Nowadays, it’s not at all unusual for a driver to make an “official” announcement around midseason that he’ll be going elsewhere the following year. When a team knows that a driver’s not going to be around much longer, does his impending departure and/or the team’s uncertain future make for a distraction for the remainder of the current season? Does a driver just kind of slack off or not really put his heart into it for the remainder of the current year, because he knows he’ll be heading out the door come season’s end?

If knowing a driver is on his way out is, indeed, a distraction to a race team, possibly no team is feeling the pain more than Richard Petty Motorsports. After all, of the team’s current stable of four drivers, only one—A.J. Allmendinger—will be back for 2011.

The move of officially announcing a new racing home during one season for the next season also seems to create a dilemma for team owners. It’s no secret that teams start looking ahead to next season before the current season is over—finding things that’ll make the cars go faster next year, etc. This is especially true for Sprint Cup Series teams that find themselves on the outside looking in when it comes to the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Do owners of these teams worry that the new information discovered during the latter part of the season in preparation for next year will travel with the outgoing driver to his new team?

The latter isn’t just an issue with drivers jumping ship and heading to what they think are greener pastures. This situation seems to be an even bigger concern when it comes to migrating crew chiefs. This worry was probably illustrated best by Penske Racing last year when it was announced that Pat Tryson was going to leave the team for a gig at Michael Waltrip Racing for the 2010 season.

Upon the announcement, Tryson was banned from team meetings and was hardly allowed inside the Penske shop. I’m sure that didn’t help driver Kurt Busch and his No. 2 team’s quest for a title last year. The situation was remedied though, when Tryson went ahead and packed his bags and departed the Penske organization before season’s end.

Drivers, owners, and other team members often contend publicly during press conferences announcing such changes that the move won’t affect the team’s outlook, goals, and overall performance for the duration of the current season, but it’s hard to believe that such is the case.

But then again, would it be a benefit to drivers and teams to limit the musical chairs to the short offseason? Probably not. After all, the offseason is only about three months long. If a driver up and leaves, that doesn’t give a team much time to wait and see what other drivers are available and then look for a sponsor to back him up financially. Also, it doesn’t leave much time for an ousted driver to check out the rides available and find a new, suitable home.

Kind of seems like a situation of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” doesn’t it?