NASCAR: Are Dueling Agendas An Impossible Balancing Act?

Randy Sartin-USA TODAY Sports

Owners

Task: Give your team everything they need to succeed, but control costs as much as possible.

More so than perhaps any of the groups mentioned at the beginning of this article, the owners are constantly facing rules and regulations to protect them from their own worst enemy — themselves. We have testing bans in 2015 to help control costs.  We have rules that stipulate a team can only run one engine per weekend to help control costs. Many of the sport’s top owners last year formed the Race Team Alliance (RTA) to, among other things, control costs common to each team. But you cannot tell an owner how much money they can procure from sponsors, nor can you tell them how they can and cannot spend what they have. Winning races brings in even more cash.

Chip Ganassi once said, “Do you know how you can make a little money racing for a living?” The answer was to start out with a lot of money and choose racing for a living. Each owner in the garage, even the ones who sometimes don’t qualify and have to go home, is a wealthy individual. They have to be to some extent, or they wouldn’t be here. Millionaires don’t exactly take too well to being told what to do. However, the financial difference between the elite owners and those at the back is probably the greatest within this group.