Wall Street is where many of racing’s top corporate sponsors, in all shapes and sizes, do business on a daily basis via a company’s publicly traded stocks and bonds.
Compared to the state of racing, things are currently much worse on Wall Street.
However, racing and Wall Street are, in many instances, married to each other and the success of one depends on the success of the other.
Concurrently, I have this impending feeling that if the corporate Wall Street types keep screwing up as they have been, racing will become an expendable afterthought and some major sponsor monies will disappear quickly, regardless of contract durations.
On Wall Street, the pros have a way of getting out of financial messes by utilizing other people’s money (i.e.: average Joe loses money while the white-collar thug makes money). Just ask shareholders of stocks like Washington Mutual, AIG or Fannie Mae, the latter which last traded Friday at 74 cents a share, down from a yearly high of $68.60 for the exact same share of stock. Better yet, ask an employee who has money taken from his check every week for his 401K plan how he or she’s been doing lately. You probably won’t get a good response. 
In professional motorsports, teams use sponsoring company monies for a three-fold purpose: first, to deliver a consumer message to the fan/viewer and move product; second, to compete in a popular major league spectator sport for prize money; and third, to gainfully employ thousands of great people both on and off the track.
High performance and racing also produce a great business- oriented trump card, specifically, our multi-billion dollar hardcore racing aftermarket. (Just visit PRI’s Trade Show in December in Orlando, and you’ll see firsthand who we are under one gigantic roof.)
However, to participate with the big boys, Wall Street types many times come into play. And, when $20-million deals are signed, there’s sometimes a downside called the Wall Street- trained PR (public relations/marketing) person who comes along with the deal to help interact.
These people right away know more than Childress, Hendrick, Petty, Economaki, Wheeler and Roush.
Most have much bigger egos than the drivers they represent, although the pro race teams smartly employ their own PR people who learn to meld or train these inept individuals. Granted, when big money is involved, a fair amount of brown nosing comes with the deal.
Still, most feel it’s worth the downside of dealing with some of these people, as racing is still the most exciting sport of all. I don’t care if you’re running a John Force Mustang Funny Car, Jack Roush 3M Cup car, Steve Lewis Toyota midget or a Tony Stewart Chevy sprint car, it’s all great to this scribe.
Wall Street, meanwhile, needs to adapt racing’s all time adage, “when the green flag drops, the BS stops,” and see what happens. Wall Street types simply can’t keep putting chewing gum fixes into the gigantic cracking financial dam they themselves created.
These pros may wear different uniforms, ala corporate COO, New York agency executive or company investment advisor, but when it comes to who they answer to, it’s usually the Wall Street-trained CEO who runs the company.
In ending, Wall Street mismanagement and market manipulation will one day come home to roost. Granted, Fortune 500 companies want to deliver consumer impressions at the cheapest cost per thousand, and racing indeed delivers in spades.
The downside is the fact that modern day race teams are now gigantic, money-addicted operations in search of the next cash fix, usually from the one and the same publicly owned company run by the Wall Street pros we’ve come to distrust.