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Would Chopping Teams to 10 Cars Make Sense?

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by Charlie Turner

I'm Charlie Turner co-host of the syndicated, mostly NASCAR radio show On Pit Row. Thanks for stopping by OnPitRow.com and the Bench Racing with Steve and Charlie blog. Oh yeah, Steve is an idiot.

November 20, 2008 11:53 pm CST 6 Comments

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NASCAR has banned testing on the Sprint Cup car that most drivers have called evil or worse and leaves their crew chiefs scratching heads or screaming into radios - “I already tried that!”. The ban will save money, the suits in Daytona claim. Most owners and their managers seem to agree. But is this move really more of a gesture than a real solution?

According to Mike Mulhern’s article on the subject of cost cutting in NASCAR, Toyota’s Lee White proposed something more radical - actually  limiting each team to as few as five cars.

“White says that during mid-season discussions the issue of limiting teams to just five cars was raised: “NASCAR is already putting holograms on the frame-rails of every car, so just tell the teams ‘You only get five cars. And when you start testing, design a car that can be adjustable to running speedways, intermediate tracks, short-tracks and road courses,’” White says.

OK, using the list above, one car each for plate tracks, intermediates, shorties and road courses leaves a team with one extra. That car would have to do multiple duty - hell all of these cars would. Damage your Bristol car in practice and what - break out the plate car? Remember when  - who was it Junior? Stewart?  - used his Bristol car at Daytona last year? And what about back to back to back cookie-cutter weekends like the Chase produces?

Then there is the travel complication. If you wreck your intermediate car at Fontana in February do you send it back to North Carolina to fix it before Atlanta and make do at Vegas with something makeshift? I could see mega-budget teams like Hendrick Motorsports and Roush-Fenway Racing  flying cars around - just as Formula One teams do -  to save time, using some of the dollars that NASCAR sees as savings. The small guys probably couldn’t do that.

Limiting the number of cars in a team seems like a legit way to cut investment and expenses. But five cars isn’t enough. With twenty unique cars being the norm right now, cutting to ten seems doable though. It’s the best idea that I’ve seen so far.

Photo credit: Icon Sports Media, Inc.

Filed under: It's Only Cheating if You Get Caught, NASCAR, NASCAR Bidness, NASCAR Rumors, NASCAR Tech, Sprint Cup Series, Testing news, Toyota 

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Comments

6 Responses to “Would Chopping Teams to 10 Cars Make Sense?”

  1. User Avatar Marc on November 21st, 2008 12:33 am

    Doug Demmons has an interesting suggestion.

    Start a luxury tax like the MLB.

    Allow the 3 and 4 teams all the testing they desire but tax them, each time they test no matter if it’s a “NASCAR Track” or not levy a fee.

    In turn NASCAR would use the cash generated to hold test sessions for the 1 and 2 cart teams at no cost to them.

  2. User Avatar Steve Wronkowicz on November 21st, 2008 7:40 am

    This is one of the best ideas I’ve seen to keep cost at bay. Everyone knows that teams will spend as much as they can. One of the fundamental axioms of the CoT was that it would hold down costs BECAUSE teams would need fewer cars due to the “re-use-ability”. That concept went the way of the wing tip driving shoe.

    How about this though; limit the teams to the 5 car limit. Mega teams would still have the advantage in that they would be able to “buy” cars from their team mates in the event of wading some up. If Roush has 5 cars per team, that is 20 cars for their supposed 4 team limit–more than enough steads to outfit the troops. Wouldn’t it be fun to see the alliances that are formed then? Single car teams would be hunting the garage to buy a replacement for a destroyed car.

    Kind of like “Lets Make a Deal” meets NASCAR.

  3. User Avatar Charlie Turner on November 22nd, 2008 12:56 pm

    I don’t think that NASCAR would allow teams to “buy” replacements for wadded up cars Steve. That defeats the purpose and intent of the rule. Fix ‘em or sunstitute your road-course car for the platey Junior wrecked. But I don’t think that five is enough, mostly because of travel.

  4. User Avatar Charlie Turner on November 22nd, 2008 1:05 pm

    This program really pisses me off sometimes. I just lost a well thought out and brilliantly written response to Marc - at least it was in my memory - and now it’s out there somewhere in the ether, gathering pixie dust.

    What I said was, the problem with luxury taxes - and you see it in baseball - is the top 3 or 4 teams will spend whatever they think they need to spend. Money is no object. But the tax collected is spread between 10 or more have-nots. It may help them some, competitively, but the policy doesn’t save anybody any real money.

    I may not have this thought out correctly though. I might just change my mind.

  5. User Avatar Matt Mercer on November 23rd, 2008 3:04 pm

    Here is my question: if teams are limited to 10 cars, are they supposed to be the same cars the entire year? Do teams report to NASCAR their 10 cars they’re using for the season, then can’t build any more? Or are teams allowed to discard or sell cars if they build new ones? I don’t see how that’s a cost limit, teams could still be building 20 cars a season and just rotating the 10 in the bunch.

  6. User Avatar Steve Wronkowicz on November 24th, 2008 6:44 am

    Wasn’t the original design premise of this car that it was “neutral” and therefore could be used for a variety of tracks Charlie? NASCAR wanted teams to use the same cars for different track types–thus reducing the number of cars that teams would build.

    The fact is that teams have not built less of these cars to outfit their teams–sooooo–NASCAR has to limit how many they can build. I stand by my original premise. Let the teams register the holograms of the two cars they have brought to the track that week. Once all the cars have been registered for the weekend; only those 86, 88, 90 ,or fewer qualified team cars are eligible to race.

    Everyone has a back car to start the weekend; but in the unlikely case that Joey Lagano wads up his two cars on Friday and/or Saturday, there are still plenty of JGR cars at the track for him to run on Sunday.

    What would the scenario have been in the past? The 20 team would have sent the urgent call to the race shop to ship out another car. My plan would eliminate that cost–and that is what we are trying to do isn’t it–reduce costs?

    “Substituting the road coarse car for the platey”

    wouldn’t reduce the cost of having the rcc shipped to the platey track Charlie. My plan would.

    If the car that was wadded up by Joey, was unrepairable then the team would have to get a new Chassis Verification Hologram (or as we would call them in the biz–CVH) from NASCAR to replace one of their five cars.

    I think my plan answers your questions Matt. Under my system no team can have more than five cars at any one time. Again, remember that this car is supposed to be able to be run at every track. The initial premise was that there was no longer a need to have a “road coarse car” and a “platey” and a “intermediate”. They were to be race cars, pure and simple–and interchangeable.

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