The two biggest racing series in the world, Formula 1 and NASCAR, don’t have much in common. NASCAR’s big, bulky stock cars pale in comparison to F1’s open-wheel marvels of engineering precision, with the wind tunnel meaning just as much to a team’s finish as the driver in the cockpit.
With side-by-side racing difficult in F1, there are more lead changes in one stock car race than there are in one-third of an F1 season.
But off the track, the two series share a common bond of multi-car team organizations that threaten to dominate their sport. It’s a hot-button issue in a tough economy, and NASCAR should take note of the tumult that swept F1 this month.
This week’s agreement by FOTA and the FIA to come together for the 2010 season not only preserved the future of the open-wheel series but also allowed for an important measure: cost-cutting. For the first time, the series’ biggest organizations—Ferrari, McLaren and Toyota among them—came together on a plan to curb spending. Sure, it wasn’t exactly what FIA President Max Mosley had in mind—he couldn’t get everyone to commit to a hard cap of $60 million—but there were still enough concessions to ensure the 2010 season will be a cheaper one.
Three new teams will still be entering the sport next year, and now the cost of staying involved will be low enough to keep the old ones from dipping in the red. That means while other series are struggling to attract new owners to the grid, the F1 series will actually expand next year by as many as half-a-dozen cars.
What does all that have to do with NASCAR? While series head Brian France has done his best to cut costs in recent years (see: no testing, the Car of Tomorrow), it hasn’t been enough to attract successful new owners during this latest recession. As I documented two weeks ago, start and parkers continue to dominate the back end of the garage due to an inability to make money and remain competitive at the same time. The sport is struggling to fill its fields, and when it does, the cars that show up rarely have the cash flow and the intentions of running an entire race.
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