Here’s Why NASCAR Racers Lack The Hunger
NASCAR has come a very long way from its beginnings in the latter 1940s. And
part of the package has been the stick-and-ball mentality of "how come
we’re not making more money?" even when millions are earned per season.
So is the stage set by Ken Berger’s December 8 "Gas Money" piece in
Newsday.1
Compared to football, baseball, hockey, and basketball players, NASCAR
drivers make substantially less money. Of 285 drivers in NASCAR’s superspeedway
divisions (WC, GN, and Trucks), the 25th-placed driver – Mike Skinner – earned
$1 million in salary plus $1.05 million share of winnings; the average salary
for Winston Cup is $1.17 million per year.
Which leads to the question – what is the controversy about? If anything, are
we asking the right question? Should we not ask if the millions drivers up and
down the points race earn are dulling the fire, the desire to go for the win?
We know from a wholly separate piece – USA Today’s examination of 2002’s
decline in wrecks
2 – that drivers point-race rather than go for the win, indicating no
real desire to win races among drivers. $1.17 million a year, by any standard,
is superb wealth – so much so that even asking for more ought to qualify as
getting greedy.
Which makes Ann Stacy’s angry puff-piece all the more puzzling.3
"NASCAR doesn’t seem to be reciprocating the loyalty back." Why?
Because of escalating ticket and hotel prices – never mind that such problems
are across the sports board. And just how is NASCAR supposed to solve such
problems?
Stacy goes bananas on NASCAR’s relationship with Int’l Speedway Corporation.
Stacy claims that the last five new Winston Cup dates went to tracks at least
partially owned by ISC, but a quick glance back shows this not to be true – the
last seven new dates went to Texas, Fontana, NHIS (a second date), Las Vegas,
Homestead, Kansas, and Chicagoland, only four of which have any connection to
ISC, and only two of which were even created with any connection with ISC –
Fontana was built by Penske Speedways, then a wholly independent entity; Las
Vegas was built, then purchased by Speedway Motorsports; Homestead was built by
Ralph Sanchez, then later sold to ISC.
And like almost everyone else, Ann Stacy ignores that only a handful of
tracks owned by ISC were ever built by it – Daytona, Talladega, Kansas, and
Chicagoland. All the others – Rockingham, Darlington, Michigan, Watkins Glen,
Richmond, Phoenix – were built by others, got their Winston Cup dates when they
were owned by others, and later sold to ISC; Rockingham in particular was an
important juncture in ISC’s fight with Speedway Motorsports, as SMI tried to buy
it and close it down for its Texas dates, and ISC wound up purchasing it from
Penske Speedways to keep it racing.
So where is the "nepotism?"
But Stacy won’t stop there – she bemoans that there is no pension plan for
drivers. So what? I read Junior Johnson’s quote about more drivers dying broke
and so forth, but that can’t exclusively or even primarily be blamed on purse
inequities or lack of a pension plan. And ESPECIALLY with the millions drivers
earn today, why do they even NEED a pension plan? They can form one of their
own, without NASCAR help – much as fellow drivers, feeling bad for Glenn
Dunnaway’s DQ at the very first Grand National race in 1948, pooled money for
him and he wound up getting more than he would have gotten if he’d won the race.
And race teams can also institute pension plans without NASCAR involvement, as
some probably do right now.
Stacy harps on how racetracks get 65% of the TV money and "only"
25% goes "to the men who put their lives and money on the line to race
every week." Given the enormity of what they earn, they – and Ms. Stacy –
have no grounds to complain.
If anything, teams should be structuring their payouts to drivers the way
Petty Enterprises does its "chicken money" deal – so the drivers have
all the more incentive to actually RACE for it. I’m sure Bobby Hamilton well
remembers Richard Petty’s $100,000 1997 bet to win a race before leaving the
team that year – Bobby suddenly exploded forward that September and wound up
winning the American 400 at Rockingham.
Stacy speculates that when the new TV deal must be negotiated for 2006-8,
there might be demand by young drivers for more of the pie. If they do, they
have no right to get it, because they get more than enough as it is. If they
want more, then go out there and start going for the win.
But Ann Stacy won’t stop there – then she gripes about NASCAR’s safety
division. "Have you heard anything from the division since its
inception?" Were we supposed to, Ms. Stacy? NASCAR "needs to stop
being reactionary and start being aggressive in their pursuit of safety."
Ann Stacy has it backwards – NASCAR has gone too far. Safety overkill has
drained much of the toughness from the sport, and has not caused any real
improvement in safety. People will harp about the HANS and so forth, but it
didn’t help David Pook or John Baker, and certainly would not have helped
Sterling Marlin or Dale Earnhardt or Adam Petty or Kenny Irwin or Tony Roper
anymore than they could have helped Friday Hassler or Tiny Lund or Harold Kite
or Talmadge Prince.
There really should not even be a centralized safety division, because the
decentralized approach of the past worked fine, plus the real safety (and
competition) problem remains unaffected – the speed and aero-cleanliness of the
racecars. NASCAR spends more than enough on these issues as it is, but still
will not slow the cars down and add aero-drag resistance to the bodies (and I
don’t mean big greenhouses, because that adds no real frontal resistance to the
cars; I mean aerodynamic anchorage, the kind that punches open so much air the
cars can’t go as fast as now, and which makes the draft much stronger), the
change that would genuinely improve safety as well as improve the quality of the
racing. It is here that NASCAR deserves criticism.
The drivers also deserve criticism if they speak out for more of the payout
than they presently get. $1 million a year is enough for them – if they want
more, then go for the race win.