Here it is 2009 and Petty Enterprises is about to disappear. This is indicative of the trouble that NASCAR is facing. Most of the top teams have sold their souls to “businessmen” to raise funds to improve these teams. The problem seems to be that these business people don’t have racing in their blood. This is a business to them, and it needs to pay its way, racers that build teams do it because they want to race and win, they live for the race, not for the check. Now that the economy is starting to tank, and sponsorships are starting to disappear, the businessmen do what businessmen do when times are tough, they pull back because they’re not going to put their own money on the line. The racers will pull in their horns, sell something, do anything to avoid having to hurt their race team.
Look at Petty Enterprises as an example, they have a history as long as NASCAR, and up until the last ten years, they’ve been consistent winners. Petty was family owned, and the team garages and offices were on the Petty home site. Everyone in the family had a job on the team, fathers, sons, cousins, and others all worked with the team. In the first decade of the 2000’s Petty started to drop behind, as other teams began hiring engineers, scientists, and building wind tunnels, and computerized simulators. The Petty’s thought they could just work harder and keep up, that didn’t happen and they further behind, they stopped winning, the sponsors started falling by the wayside, which made development tougher, they fell further behind, and the spiral continued. Petty had to infuse capital to catch up, and the only source was Boston Ventures. They knew nothing about racing and didn’t care to learn, they thought they could make money on racing. They might have, except for the recession. Now they want out, and that leaves Petty with no choice but to sell out. It’s got to be very painful. He’s had to fire his own son as a driver, and manager of the company, all that’s left of the Petty’s is their name. Now it looks as though they’ll have to sell that to another team to save themselves.
Most of the teams who have brought on business partners from outside racing are running in to problems. The teams are being run by the business people and they don’t have racing in their blood. This is frustrating the racing people who make the teams work, and they are starting to bail out. Look at Ray Evernham, he was the crew chief who made Jeff Gordon who he is today. Ray opened his own team and brought Dodge back to NASCAR, but he too sold out, in this case to George Gillet, and now Ray has sold out and left the team. He’s starting to look around to go back to being a crew chief for someone else, and his team will continue to go downhill as the business people are in charge.
Racing has always been a passion, not a business. No racing team in the 70’s ever raced to get rich; they raced to prove they were the smartest and the fastest. NASCAR will need to go back to that, or they’re headed for disaster.
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