By Bob Ellis

NASCAR Ranting and Raving Blog

When I went to the Canadian Motorsports Expo on the weekend I had an interesting conversation with a die-hard Dale Jr fan, he was worried about the economic state of NASCAR.

He asked me about my thoughts on the subject which I coincidentally had already shared with a friend of mine at work just days before.

Basically here is how I see it, we will see races without a full field of cars this year - most likely at the tracks that are further away from NASCAR’s epicentre, Charlotte N.C. The number of cars trying to qualify for a race will decrease proportionately with the increase in travel distance from the race shops in the Charlotte area.

Also, you will see a lot of low calibre cars trying to make races that have larger purses like the Daytona 500, The Coca Cola 600 at Lowes and the Allstate 400 at Indy. Just making the race and running one lap can mean a $50 000 plus payday for some struggling teams. Look for these cars to run one lap and then go to the garage area because of ‘mechanical problems’. ‘Mechanical problems’ meaning they only have one motor (probably leased from a big name team like Hendrick) and they can’t afford to loose it because they need it to qualify and the next high paying race.

In a way NASCAR is returning to its roots in that they will struggle to fill race fields and that there will be some low budget teams trying to get some quick cash to support their struggling racing programs. This happened in the early days in NASCAR as well as during periods of the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s so this is nothing new to NASCAR although this is something new to the ‘new’ NASCAR of the new century and it’s new fans who never experienced this in NASCAR before.

Hey I just had a thought, maybe Tommy Baldwin has foreseen this situation and that is why he is starting his own team to run full-time. Since there will be fewer cars trying to make each race then his start-up team should make more races and maybe even compete for a top 35 spot in the owner points. I did call him shrewd.

Anyway, to sort of confirm my thoughts about the upcoming year in NASCAR I came across this article over at John Daly’s blog about what DW had to say off camera about the number of cars coming out to each race this year. Looks like DW has the same opinion I do. Don’t bother going to the youtube link either it has been ‘removed’.