Catchfence

January is time for the annual NASCAR Media Tour, and with no testing at Daytona it’s likely getting a little more ink and attention than normal, and certainly some controversy has already appeared in a few areas, notably from – who else? – Bruton Smith, who seems to stir up controversy wherever he talks.

But it’s another item that warrants examination, and that is the recent commentary from Geoff Smith, president of the Roush-Fenway Racing empire. NASCAR has a rule limiting teams to no more than four cars fielded on the racetrack; Roush-Fenway has five, grandfathered in when NASCAR announced the limit in November 2005. Roush has through the end of this season to keep five cars; after that one of his cars has to be disbanded.

Geoff Smith is lobbying against that, and in his comments during the Media Tour he reiterated reasons why he feels his organization should be allowed to own five cars. He cited the economy and the recent recession and the enormity of the costs of racing; he asserted that multicar teams have increased the competitive depth of the sport even with fewer owners; he cited the recent mania of mergers that includes Chip Ganassi and Teresa Earnhardt, Petty Enterprises and Gillett Motorsports, and before that DEI’s absorption of Ginn Racing. He and Roush cited potential difficulty with filling out full fields and claimed that a sponsor might quit the sport instead of switching from a soon-to-disband Roush team to another team.

As a result, Smith is lobbying NASCAR to rescind the car limit or at least delay it.

The problem is Geoff Smith’s argument remains fundamentally wrong.

The growth of the sport in the three decades that ended the 20th century was not brought about by multicar teams. With R.J Reynolds providing sponsorship and promotion to the sport it had never seen before – and with an aplomb not duplicated since – it helped new car owners and existing ones were able to bring more revenue into the sport, it began growing in popularity. Multicar teams were not successful in the 1980s and early 1990s; indeed, after expanding to three cars in 1987, Rick Hendrick added a fourth car in 1990, then contracted back to two in 1991.

Where multicar teams took off was in the 1990s, and not because team owners figured out the supposed fundamental benefits of the concept – they took off because NASCAR restricted testing. Multicar teams became the ONLY way for teams to test and develop cars, and even then it wasn’t enough, as in the 1990s multi-team alliances began forming – Pontiac teams began working together to improve their cars, then the teams of RCR, Andy Petree, and DEI formed an alliance in 1998. The idea that multicar teams rose because of some fundamental superiority of the concept is nonsensical because the circumstances of the worst rule change in NASCAR history are what made them viable – single-car teams would still dominate in the 1990s if NASCAR had left testing alone.

The rise of multicar teams is portrayed by Smith and Roush as a fundamental benefit to the sport in raising the competitive depth of race fields, but the premise here is ridiculous. The sport has gone two of the last five seasons without a new winning driver and has gone six seasons without a new winning team. The depth of race fields would not be substantially different under a rules and economic model where multicar teams were not allowed to dominate.

Often cited is “economy of scale,” yet while there may be benefits internally from such, they’re not reflected in an economic model where costs jumped from $2 million per car in 1990 to $10 million per car by 1996 and are in the $25 million per car range today. Also cited by Smith is the notion that a sponsor might quit the sport instead of going to another car, never mind that on-track performance is not the sole – or often primary – reason sponsors stay with certain teams. It simply is not true that there would be some kind of sponsor exodus if NASCAR cracked down on multicar teams.

The blunt truth of the matter is Roush is as guilty of pricing the sport beyond all reason as Rick Hendrick is, and where NASCAR deserves to be savaged is not on limiting teams to four cars but for allowing that many cars and NOT forcing the immediate disbanding of cars by multicar outfits like Roush. Two of Roush’s cars should not even be on the racetrack come Speedweeks; one of Rick Hendrick’s cars should not be out there; any team with four racecars should not be allowed to field a fourth car. The EIRI clause need not apply here.

The sport needs far more owners than just Roush, Hendrick, and whatever is left of a field decimated this decade by costs and absurd policies from manufacturers, the sanctioning body, and the like. Roush and Geoff Smith can win races without five cars; it’s long past time that someone else be allowed to field those two extra cars Geoff Smith is lobbying to keep.