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Are layoffs an indication NASCAR teams must join the real world?
By admin | November 30, 2008
By Richard Allen
Recently, Jayski.com provided a list of unofficial layoffs that have taken place thus far among NASCAR teams. The number was in excess of 300 employees who have lost their jobs over the past few weeks.
Obviously, the layoffs are most devastating to those immediately affected, the employees who have lost jobs and those families. However, what these layoffs indicate in regard to the teams involved is that they are going to have to live like the rest of us, on a realistic budget.
For years, NASCAR Sprint Cup organizations have been able to spend money with reckless abandon. Sponsors have handed many of these teams virtual blank checks for placing their logos on cars. Now, with a faltering economy and a drop off in interest in the sport, sponsorship money is getting harder to come by.
Even powerhouse teams like Hendrick Motorsports(12 employees) and Roush Fenway Racing(35 employees) have felt the bite of the layoff bug. Stewart-Haas Racing(16 employees) has issued layoffs and has not even run a race in its new form. Stalwart organizations Wood Brothers Racing(25 employees) and Petty Enterprises(30 employees) have been forced to let people go as well.
With the loss of sponsorship money, teams will have to look for ways to save money rather than ways to spend it. NASCAR has helped in one way by eliminating on site testing and word has it that teams are voluntarily going to eliminate off site testing as well.
Aside from the elimination of testing, teams will have to cut back on their purchases of the latest and greatest pieces of equipment such as seven post shaker rigs and other devices which can run into the millions of dollars.
In recent years many teams have operated under the principal that if one engineer is good five would be better. Entire crews have been set aside for nothing but testing. Public Relations staffs and business offices as well as souvenir sales teams and show car carriers have been fully employed.
The unfortunate result of these layoffs and cut backs will probably be a greater widening of the gap between the haves and have-nots. Teams such as HMS and RFR can afford the personnel loses and other cuts more easily than smaller teams. The big teams will still have sponsorship money at their disposal, if not at the levels they have become accustomed to.
Now, NASCAR teams are having to tighten their belts and live on restricting budgets. Unfortunately, it is people, not machinery, who are being hurt by this initial round of tightening. That will not exactly make for a Merry Christmas around the Charlotte area.
Richard Allen is a member of the National Motorsports Press Association. His weekly column appears in The Mountain Press every Wednesday.
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