Manufacturers play a very public role in today’s NASCAR, supplying varying degrees of equipment, technical support, and cash to their affiliated race teams. They’re also closely tied with race tracks, many of which have sponsorship deals which manufacturers that involve money and vehicles changing hands in return for exclusive promotional rights. They advertise on event telecasts, sponsor races, sign on as official NASCAR sponsors, and in a few rare cases—such as with the Wood Brothers’ Motorcraft-backed car or the former Dodge-backed vehicle at Gillett Evernham Motorsports—sponsor race cars themselves.
It’s a symbiotic relationship, with the manufacturers supplying teams with some of the parts, money and technology that it takes to win on NASCAR’s national circuits. But what happens if one or more of those carmakers falls into bankruptcy? What happens if the president really does order them out of NASCAR? What happens if one disappears altogether? In such an unprecedented environment, no one is really sure. But that doesn’t mean teams aren’t bracing for the worst.
“I think the climate that we’re in today, it would be poor business to not look at the worst-case scenarios,” said Jeff Burton, who drives a Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing. “That’s not to say that we believe a worst-case scenario is coming, but if you turn the news on, you can’t help but notice that it needs to have attention paid to it. Not only from that standpoint, but from the entire company standpoint with all of its sponsors and all of its partners. Our sport is driven by sponsors and fans being able to participate, and when the economy gets bad, it gets harder for those two groups to participate. I think that throughout the company, we have to be looking at worst-case scenarios. I don’t think we have an option.”
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“From the standpoint of financially, I don’t see [manufacturer money] being the lifeblood of the teams,” said championship-winning car owner Rick Hendrick, who owns a number of car dealerships and fields four Chevrolet teams.
“I don’t think anybody in NASCAR is dependent 100 percent on the manufacturers. I don’t know anybody that’s totally a factory deal. Evernham Gillett, it had been sponsored by Dodge in races, but that’s kind of gone away. I don’t know anybody that’s totally looking to the manufacturer for all of their income by any stretch.”
“I think we will adjust,” added Hendrick, Gordon’s car owner. “We need them in the sport for a ton of reasons: technology, support, vehicles, it’s going to hurt if they’re not there. But I’ve raced when I had very little help from them, and there are some teams out there that get virtually nothing. It’s just going to be part of the adjustment the whole world is going to go through.”
As for the specter of bankruptcy? Not necessarily as bad as it sounds, Gossage points out.
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“I think GM and Chrysler are going to survive,” he said. “People have a misunderstanding about bankruptcy. It doesn’t mean that you vanish, necessarily. It could mean that, but they’re too big and important to vanish. It just means they’re going to reorganize and basically not pay their bills and get dispensation for it.”
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