No, Rusty, You’re Not Deserving Of That Baseball and Football-type Money
What is the surest sign that racecar drivers are suffering the stick-and-ball
sport mentality? Rusty Wallace, one of the most famously determined race drivers
ever, says he deserves more money1.
"Compared to other sports, we’ve got a long way to go," Wallace
claims. "I think we’re perfect candidates for more money. That’s for
sure."
No, it isn’t for sure, Rusty. This sport is suffering from an acute case of
excess money – "If there is such a thing as excessive money, we had
it," Robert Yates once noted about his days with DiGard Racing, and it is a
situation the sport presently has.
"I think the sport brings so much excitement and joy to people that I do
think the people putting it on – the owners, the crew people, the drivers, and
everybody – I think we’re just as deserving of that baseball- and football-type
money."
No you aren’t, Rusty. While crew salaries may be in line for a mild upswing,
there is also a salary war among crews that was recently addressed in two
controversies – criticism of Joe Gibbs’ hiring of rival crewmen, and comments inadvertently
attributed to Jeff Burton recommending a salary cap for crews – Burton
subsequently noted that he had said a salary cap for drivers, not crews, but
even at the crew level, a salary cap may be necessary.
Certainly a salary cap for drivers is a good idea. Lou Larosa still has the
best comment on such a controversy – "Dale Earnhardt can deny it – they all
can deny it – but the T-shirt sales and the souvenirs are more important than
the race team. They say, ‘we want to win’ (but) where is the incentive when
you’re making $4 million racing and $40 million selling souvenirs?"
Racecar drivers risk their lives on the racetrack – indeed. But does that
make them deserving of multi-million-dollar annual salaries? No. It is well
known that a great many pro-sports players are grossly overpaid – one average I
read was that a typical MLB player makes $1.3 million a year, as if a salary of
about $650,000 a year is insufficient.
The more money you make, inevitably the more your incentive gets dulled, and
a crisis of dulled incentive is part of the reason for the inferior quality of
competition the sport has suffered. Drivers today whine that races are too long
or competition is too close and so forth. True, drivers like Cale Yarborough
made similar comments decades ago (most famously after winning a heat-stricken
1977 Old Dominion 500 at Martinsville) but he and others never really pressed
the issue – in part because of a well-deserved slam of drivers by Clay Earles
about the length of his races at that time.
Drivers of the past raced with far greater incentive than today’s drivers
generally do. Money has dulled driver incentive, helped drive up costs, and
hasn’t really helped matters. Costs need to come down, caps in salaries ought to
be seriously considered, and incentive needs to be re-fired. The attitude should
be, "I’m not going to worry about what might go wrong, I’m going out there
to win the race. The win is more important than what they’re paying for the
win."
Richmond is the fourth and final night race of the season, but a fifth will
be run next season when the National 500 moves to Saturday night. Jimmy Spencer
is a driver who enjoys night races and would apparently like to see more of them
on the Winston Cup schedule2.
Spencer notes how at night the cars are more visible than the track, and all
the other visual enhancements that nighttime brings to racing. But as always in
such matters, no consideration is being made toward the larger issues involved
in night Winston Cup racing.
Richmond’s night race will mean drastically reduced attendance at area short
tracks, a phenomenon that occurs at any area Winston Cup runs at night. It has
been discussed on occasion over the years in racing magazines but never given a
second thought in the sport’s inner circles. That in running Winston Cup at
night the series is "eating its young" by drawing too many away from
area short tracks that have Friday and Saturday nights and need them to maintain
themselves is a situation that never gets discussed in these big-press pieces on
Winston Cup’s night races.
And is the actual racing in Winston Cup better at night? In its time as a
night race, the World 600 has seen several memorable runnings, in 1993, 1995,
and 1998. Richmond’s September night race saw some good racing in 1997, ’98, and
2001. Overall, though, night races have not been better than day races at
NASCAR’s top levels, and certainly the competition level does not justify
draining area short tracks of their audiences.
The trend toward night races at the Winston Cup level is a trend that needs
to be reversed.
The Ricky Rudd soap opera keeps getting better. While Rudd says he has
smoothed over differences with Michael McSwain, he is quite upset over the
engines in his lame-duck #283.
"I haven’t seen Doug Yates (the team’s chief engine builder) around this
racecar since May," Rudd says. Now it should come as no real surprise – for
Doug Yates has been working on forming his own race team, a satellite of the
larger RYR organization. Robert Yates for his part has said, "It’s not like
we’re trying to hide technology or knowledge from each other."
Yet there may be something to the implication that Yates has abandoned the
#28 for the rest of the year. Since the formation of the DiGard Redux #88 –
complete with Yates engines and a member of the Parrott family as crew chief,
all shades of the original DiGard – the #28 has won six races but otherwise has
looked like a neglected stepchild. Rudd’s arrival after the two years wasted
with Kenny Irwin revived the #28 and brought it back to victory lane after four
years.
If anything, the recent success of the #28 makes the divorce between Yates
and Rudd all the more painful.
And so the Rudd soap opera proceeds – the only thing missing is the
prerequisite of soap operas: sex scenes.
When the NASCAR guys go to Talladega, the first driver to say "The big
one" had better be shown tape of Bobby Hamilton’s Richmond crash – and thus
see where the real risk lies. Hamilton suffered the first real injury of his big
league NASCAR career in a nasty ten-Truck melee on the final lap – a melee made
worse by the heavy separation between the Trucks, which as always meant greater
impact momentum.
It thus makes an already bad season for one of the most grossly undersold
drivers in NASCAR all the worst. Hamilton is a driver difficult to dislike, a
driver who can and has beaten the best in a variety of circumstances, and whose
driving hasn’t deteriorated despite the deterioration of his team this season.
We sure hope Hamilton comes back to the track soon.