Series aims to keep team costs down

Thursday, March 4, 2004 | 9:51 a.m.

With sponsorship dollars continuing to dwindle, it may be only a matter of time before you flip on the TV some Sunday afternoon and a NASCAR Nextel Cup Series race takes the green flag without the traditional 43 cars.

It won't happen Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where there are 45 cars on the preliminary entry list for the seventh annual UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400. The last time fewer than 43 cars started a Cup race was the 2001 season-ending race at New Hampshire International Speedway -- which had been postponed in September because of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington -- when 42 started.

Although there are only 37 full-time Nextel Cup teams, there are currently eight part-time teams coming to Las Vegas this weekend and competing for the remaining six spots in the field for Sunday's race.

Among the part-time Nextel Cup drivers attempting to make the race are Bill Elliott, Johnny Benson, Morgan Shepherd, Dave Blaney, Carl Long and Las Vegas native Kyle Busch. The race is one of seven Nextel Cup races Busch, a full-time Busch Series driver, is attempting this season.

NASCAR officials maintain that the possibility of a short field is not a concern. George Pyne, NASCAR's chief operating officer, has been quoted as saying that NASCAR is not actively pursuing part-time teams -- also known by the pejorative term "field-fillers." In fact, NASCAR has no rule that states 43 cars must start a race, only that no more than 43 may do so.

NASCAR chairman Brian France said earlier this year that he is not bothered by the prospect of short fields in the Nextel Cup Series this season.

"The quality of competition is unmistakably as good as I've seen in a long, long time," France said. "This whole car-count issue, there's another side of it, too, because (at times) we had too many cars and we were sending home, oftentimes, quality teams, quality sponsors -- and that's a bad situation.

"Most importantly, you want to have the quality of the whole field as opposed to the quantity of more cars. It's sort of a fine line but I think we've got the quality (aspect) perfect."

France said making racing more affordable for teams by containing costs is one of NASCAR's top priorities after safety issues, but acknowledged that the sanctioning body can only do so much.

"Safety is the first thing we focus on, but a close second is cost containment," he said. "We (have) a team of people who are going to tackle cost containment 24 hours a day and I think you'll see a continuation of good ideas to save our teams money and bring the cost down as much as possible.

"But there is a labor issue that we can never control; if somebody wants to pay an engineer, a driver or anybody else, it's a free market. There are a lot of things we can do, there are some things we can't and we're going to do everything we can."

Andy Belmont, a former NASCAR competitor who attempted to make field for the most recent Nextel Cup race at North Carolina Speedway, said it doesn't take a $15 million or $20 million budget to operate a Nextel Cup team.

"Maybe just maybe, guys will have to figure out that there are companies out there who want to play at the motor sports top levels, but don't want to spend twenty million a year to do it," Belmont, a regular in the ARCA series, wrote in a column posted on his website. "Can it be done for less? Of course. It is all relative. If you can sell it for fifteen or twenty million, more power to you. Then you have to figure out how to spend all of that money. You know, airplanes and motor coaches and whatever.

"A small team like ours ... we can go a whole lot further on a buck because we waste less. Every dollar counts in my checkbook. Not so at some of the other 'bigger teams.' "

As long as he has access to a car that can meet NASCAR's requirements, Belmont said he would continue to pursue his dream of making it back to the big time.

"There are lots of racers just like me all over this country that would give their grandmother's eye teeth just to race at the Cup -- guys doing their best to bring the best they can come up with to get over on that side of the fence," Belmont wrote.

"It is amusing when all the fuss is made about short fields. My vantage point is totally different; to me it is an opportunity."