July 17, 2008
By Doug Demmons
Imagine that you work for a company that doesn’t need you to do anything except show up each morning and then go home.
You aren’t qualified to do the work the rest of the staff does, but the company needs you around to keep the payroll slot from becoming vacant. So they pay you a token salary to hang around for a little while.
It would be easy money -- as long as you had no pride.
That’s the situation most weeks in the Nationwide Series with a group of regulars called Start and Parkers.
In many Nationwide races there is a clot of half a dozen or so drivers who start the race at the back, run a few laps and then take it to the garage. They have no hope of winning or even running up front. They are not there to compete. They are not there to race.
They are there for the money NASCAR doles out even if you only run one lap.
At the Nationwide race in New Hampshire, for instance, the last seven finishers ran a total of 83 laps -- an average of about 12 laps each. Three of them didn’t make it past the fourth lap. In NASCAR’s official results, the reasons for them quitting the race are listed as: rear end, parked, electrical, vibration, engine, transmission and brakes.
For their efforts they received about $15,500 each.
If you go to the track with the intention of competing, $15,500 doesn’t cover much. It won’t cover the costs of fuel, tires, salaries for a full crew, etc. And you won’t be raking in the sponsorship bucks running five laps and finishing 43rd. You’d be bankrupt before long.
But if you go to the track with a skeleton crew, just enough tires and don’t run enough laps to burn much fuel, you can get by on that $15,500 and maybe some minimal sponsorship. In fact, there isn’t much financial incentive to do any more than that.
In the New Hampshire race, Justin Ashburn won $15,497 for finishing 43rd and running two laps. Clint Bowyer finished ninth and won $18,600. The total purse of the race was $1.2 million.
For teams like Childress and Gibbs, the prize money is almost beside the point. They are there to compete, to win, to gain more track time for their drivers and to maximize their sponsorship opportunities.
The situation rocks along like this because Nationwide races allow a field of 43 drivers and without the Start and Parkers they wouldn’t have a full field. There just aren’t enough competitive teams that show up. For many races all a Start and Park driver has to do is run a lap in qualifying and he’s in.
The Chicagoland Nationwide race was a rare exception. Fifty drivers attempted to qualify with seven going home, but not because there was a sudden influx of competitive teams. There were enough Start and Park teams there to start a convention.
The Start and Parkers do generally try to stay out of everybody’s way and make sure they bring the car back to the garage in one piece.
But consider the No. 91 car of MSRP Motorsports. It was driven by Larry Gunselman at the Nationwide race in Talladega in late April. Gunselman is the driver who T-boned Dario Franchitti, breaking his ankle. A few days after the wreck Gunselman was fired by the team and replaced by Kenny Hendrick.
Thomas Bowles at Frontstretch quoted some radio communication for the team at a recent race:
“With one lap to go before the start of the race: The spotter radios to Kenny, ‘Just don’t go on the green flag. Let them get a straightaway ahead of you.’
“Less than 10 laps in: ‘We’re going to need some help pushing in the pit cart.’
“When Hendrick got within 10 lengths of the field: Spotter radios in again. ‘Back off, don’t get any closer.’
“When Hendrick got within 5 lengths of Eric McClure a short time later: Spotter sends a nervous alarm. ‘Don’t get any closer … I don’t trust that guy.’ ”
Hendrick has since moved on to a new team. Can you blame him?
He has run nine races this year and has yet to finish more than 31 laps. In six of those races the car was parked due to “vibration.” Gunselman has had 11 starts this year and averages 18 laps per start.
It’s time for NASCAR to do something about this weekly parade of charades. I see three possible fixes.
- 1. Increase the purse at Nationwide races so that there is a greater incentive for these small teams to run deeper into the race, or at least redistribute the purse so that the difference between 43rd and, say, 30th is much greater.
- 2. Reduce the field to 36.
- 3. Set a minimum number of laps that a driver must complete to continue to compete. For instance, if a team has not finished at least a third of the laps in the races in which it was entered by midseason, it is ineligible for the second half.
NASCAR bills the Nationwide Series as the No. 2 racing series in the country. If that’s truly the case, then it’s past time to thin the herd of those who are not there to compete.
Doug Demmons is a writer and editor for the Birmingham News ~ he writes weekly auto racing columns ranging from NASCAR to open wheel to Formula One, local tracks and more... you can read Doug's columns online at Blog of Tommorow
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