Saturday, March 04, 2006

Mexico And NASCAR's Disconnect

NASCAR's second annual Busch Series road race in Mexico transpired the first weekend of March, but in doing so it has raised new questions about its viability and also questions about NASCAR's support series.

The first running of this race occurred in 2005, and while it went off well, it has not lived up to what was expected of it in drawing sponsorships, and it is exceedingly difficult to see where it can ever do so, especially since, according to the AP, the crowd was smaller than in the 2005 running. This nonetheless has not stopped some from advocating removing a date from Martinsville to run a Nextel Cup race on a proposed short track near Mexico City. And just as Tony Stewart recklessly played the death card in griping about push-drafting at Daytona, so an advocate of a points race in Mexico is using the card of the end of the sport's growth if Mexico is kept off the Nextel Cup schedule.

The Busch race's lack of Nextel Cup stars, unusual for most BGN events nowadays, contributes to the disconnect involved here. Being a bye week for the Winston Cup guys, the Mexican race would be a natural venue for the biggest names in the sport. But they didn't show up last year and there seems no prospect for them to show up in future years, and one can expect a similar disconnect between hype and reality if the Busch Series races in Montreal as is expected in 2007 or '08. It is hard to see Canadian corporations forking over the $20-plus million per year now required for a Winston/Nextel Cup effort, even with Toyota involvement.

The present general disconnect in BGN is touched on extensively by Greg Pollex, owner of PPC Racing. As a follower of NASCAR's northeast-based Busch North and Whelen Modified Series, I've seen the disconnect between NASCAR's glittery facade and the economic crunch of its support series more directly - the indelible comment on this disconnect was by the late Tom Baldwin Sr. when he noted in 2002, "We need to get NASCAR out of the Modified Tour."

The prospect of Nextel Cup in Mexico is bound not to be popular with anyone - not raceteams for the costs involved, and not fans who have felt betrayed by the sport's loss of tracks like Rockingham and North Wilkesboro. And given the failure to attract new sponsors from Mexico, one strains to find a reason for such a venture.

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An additional comment -

The recently-settled strife in the NFL over a new Collective Bargaining Agreement has some relevence for NASCAR. Team owners have long agitated for a bigger slice of NASCAR's TV revenue because of the absurd costs that NASCAR has never succeeded in reducing - one wonders how hard NASCAR has truly tried to reduce costs. No one ever thought a CBA fight would ever develop in the NFL, the sports league considered the strongest and the one with the best plan for labor peace. That a CBA fight developed in the NFL is a sign that NASCAR should not be so smug as to assume something like that, or something like the 2005 USGP fiasco, can't happen in the top series. Of course the NFL got their act together and got their CBA done - if NASCAR faces a fight like that, what will they do?

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