Several years ago, a friend who is involved in public relations for a NASCAR Nextel Cup team offered what I then thought to be an unlikely scenario.
It won’t be long, he said, before NASCAR is just 10 four-car teams. Sitting around the media center at Indianapolis before NASCAR’s Allstate 400, I realized he was spot on.
When Bobby Ginn’s team was thrown into the Dale Earnhardt, Inc. mix and the Paul Newman/Carl Hass/John Lanigan organization from Champ Car joined Robert Yates Racing, things began to fall into place.
Almost to a man, the principals in the latest deals cited the “NASCAR fact” that you had to have four cars to be competitive.
And the sponsorship dollars from four teams under one roof figure strongly into that competition level assessment.
Newman and Haas don’t have Nextel Cup cars in their possession, but it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility to expect that to change — in time for the 2008 season. They’re not likely to sit back and watch Robert Yates spend their money to go racing by himself.
Four seems to be the accepted level, since Jack Roush of Roush Fenway Racing has five and has been told by NASCAR to scale back to the magic number.
Not only is it “competitive,” it also gives each driver three “teammates” to race against, draft with, pit with, swap information with and, occasionally, to crash with and into.
Of course, there is the artful management feat of finding four major sponsorships that can hopefully co-exist under the same race-shop roof.
Given NASCAR’s recent penchant for innovative championship structuring, restructuring and tinkering, the team concept opens up new avenues.
Can you imagine four divisions of five teams each, just like the NFL, NHL, NBA and Major League Baseball? That paves the way for at least five separate races each weekend — an overall winner and four division winners, one each from the four competing divisions determined by finishing position in the overall finish.
If that isn’t enough, there could be a weekly team competition. Instead of having a 12-team Chase over the last 12 races to determine the Nextel Cup champion, the season-ending competition could be conducted in a playoff format.
The winning team from each division would enter a head-to-head playoff in a two-race performance. Or, if TV wanted a third week, the four winners and the four remaining cars with the best divisional records — wild-card style — could compete. Or NASCAR could seed the tournament and let them all compete. If there is still some interest, the current 10-race Chase could be conducted to determine an individual champion.
To make it easier for the TV viewer — a greater consideration as we progress in the development of handy video gadgets — is that the teams would be required to paint the cars in distinctive team color schemes.
Who, you might ask, would be asked to fill the three remaining spots in the currently favored 43-car lineup?
Obviously, it would have to come from the one-off and two- and three-car teams, if any, who haven’t been able to agree on merger partnerships. The best way would be to assign the final three spots based on owner points.
In the interest of parity, maybe NASCAR could institute a yearly draft, allowing each team to retain one or two “franchise” car/driver combinations. The rest would be available to other teams to draft, with the lowest-finishing teams getting priority. Presumably, not all of this and maybe none of this will come about. Even the 10 four-car teams won’t be a reality, but it appears to be headed that way.