Time to Further Reduce Costs in NASCAR

Over the off-seasons NASCAR along with its many partners that include the driver’s council, television and track operators introduced several changes into the sport for 2017 that will take place across the national series.

One of the most prevalent is the stages of the races breaking them into three segments each and the recently announced damaged car policies of allowing teams five minutes to repair a car or if they go to the garage as a result of a crash it in effect ends their day.

While I am fine with the new crash policy as it has in the past has been a system of have’s and the have nots of racing. Teams with unlimited resources spend tons of money on crash carts and personnel and bring crew from teams to work on damaged car when a driver is in a pinch and needs to get back out to gain points. While others park it or maybe make that attempt and run at or below minimum speed without truly repairing the car until NASCAR parks them for the day.

So this will not eliminate costs in the garage of unlimited amounts of money spent on crash carts by teams to a more reasonable cost as NASCAR will define what can and cannot be replaced without going to the garage.

But I don’t think the policy goes far enough. I think it’s also time for NASCAR to rid teams of backup cars nearly half-million dollar machines sitting in wait in case something happens during practice or qualifying. I mean you can’t go to a backup mid race so what other purpose does that car serve. That only exception I can see to this is Speedweeks and the qualifying rules surrounding the Daytona 500 with the Duels. I will agree to one car per team would be allowable.

The second rule I think NASCAR needs to begin looking at is the engine rule and changing engines. In the modern era engines are more stable platforms than ever before. Rarely do they fail and when they do it’s usually under race conditions after qualifying and practice in which yet again you cannot change an engine during the middle of a race.

Organizations and engine builders bringing multiple backups to an event should be limited in comparison to the number of cars the organization has on the ground that weekend.

For example if an organization has four cars either engines in each car then an allowable rate of two backups for those four cars. Again the only exception would be Daytona as the current rules allow an engine change with no penalties and that’s more than sufficient.

For my final cost reduction goes to the stage races that will be implemented.

Looking at an event overall I think NASCAR is looking at changing events and giving them an overhaul and they did so. However simple tweaks would have reduced costs, allowed teams more time at home and given race fans some of what they have been asking for.

First let’s look at reducing some of the racing events down in length. At the beginning of NASCAR races were 150, 200 or so laps in length. Over time those increased and cost increased to owners and teams to build better cars to handle the endurance factor.

Should we go back to races of that length I don’t believe so but what I do think is some of the events today as Pocono has done reducing their races down also need to do the same. This will in turn reduce costs to teams on outside factors such as tires the teams have a required purchase on the weekend.

The second part of this is moving some of these shortened maybe even some night races to one day shows where just like short track events holding practice, qualifying and the race all in one day. There are some tracks such as Bristol, Richmond, Charlotte, Darlington, and now that Martinsville is adding lights might benefit from having all these events in one day will keep race fans at the track engaged.

It will then in turn also cut costs from multiple night hotel stays, meal costs, along with incidentals that come along with traveling from event to event.

While there is sure to be pushback on some of these items, sponsorship dollars to stay viable and continue to compete is ever important and teams sometimes need to make a sacrifice such as they have done with the new crash rules if they wish to continue to thrive at the top levels of NASCAR.