NASCAR grapples with economic downturn
Even top teams struggle to make financial deals
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – As Jimmie Johnson closes in on history at Homestead-Miami Speedway, NASCAR is being ravaged by economic heartache, and perhaps the strongest indicator of the sport’s financial woes is its most famous car number.
After 35 years in which the No. 43 made famous by Richard Petty had season-long sponsorship continuity with either STP (1973-2000) or General Mills (2000-08), a scorecard might be necessary to keep track of the car’s paint schemes in 2009.
Petty Enterprises chief marketing officer Mike Bartelli said five or six companies will share primary sponsorship, and space has been sold for more than half the 36-race season. Bartelli said though sponsor opportunities remain available on the car, the team (shored up financially from its acquisition by private equity firm Boston Ventures) will field the No. 43 for the full season regardless.
“Here you have the most iconic number in the sport’s history, and it’s not that we’re losing deals to others,” said Bartelli, who added Petty is ”substantially” far away from cobbling together the millions needed to run its No. 45 Dodge full time in ’09. “It’s that deals aren’t there. We had a deal done two weeks ago, and the CEO reversed the decision after blessing it and indicated the company was going to make hundreds of millions in cuts.”
Johnson can clinch his third consecutive championship in Sunday’s Ford 400, but the economy’s impact on a sport whose lifeblood is corporate America was the hot topic Thursday in a news conference to promote the Chase for the Sprint Cup finale.
The Big Three manufacturers are reeling, sponsorless multicar teams are pooling resources to remain in business, and smaller, less successful teams such as Petty seem to be feeling the biggest squeeze. Wood Brothers Racing, a NASCAR mainstay for more than 50 years, was the latest casualty, losing its Air Force sponsorship to Gillett Evernham Motorsports.
Fox analyst Darrell Waltrip cautions many might not survive the downturn.
“There’s tracks we abandoned because they couldn’t keep up with seating capacity, attendance and purse,” Waltrip said. “We’re all in this government mentality that NASCAR is supposed to bail out those who can’t make it. You have to compete at a high level. If you can’t, you get left behind.”