Team size limits

[JohnMickish]

I'm kind of wodering what you guys think about this new rule that will be coming up. Hendrick started the whole multicar team things many, many years ago and he and Jack Roush probably took it to far. What do you think the number of teams should be? Should the teams be forced to sell off one or more teams? How will they police the technology sharing? DEI and Hendrick supply alot of engines, should that be cut out too?

I'm not really in favor of this and don't think it will make it easier for minorities or small teams to compete. Money still buys the best people and like your and my work, the better the people the better the product.

Just my 2 cents.

[LMITOUT]

I'd have to say I'm in favor of it. BTW, they currently do have a limit on the number of cars on a team, but they circumvent it by putting the cars in different owner names.

I look at it like Walmart vs. your local mom and pop store....they can't compete against the super stores with their unlimited resources.

Will it make the single car teams competitive with the multi-car teams, probably not. But, it should help the guys that have two car teams. Teams with 4 or 5 cars have a lot more testing time available to help the entire organization while the other guys burn up their tests and still may not find the setup to compete well on Sunday. It's become out of hand, IMO. I'm sure they will find a way to work around the new rule too, so I doubt it'll have much effect in the long run. If they don't do something now, where is it going to end?

[JohnMickish]

I agree that the big teams have advantages, but they changed the testing rules for next year to elliminate the advantage. All teams will get to test at the same 6 tracks. I know Daytona and Indy are two of the tracks. With those rules it really dosen't matter how many teams you have you have to do it all at the same place at the same time.

[LMITOUT]

Ahh. Do you mean "All teams will HAVE to test, or GET to test"? Thus, a mandatory use of one of their tests I'm guessing is NASCAR's intention.

Testing is just one of many advantages of a mega-car team that I was pointing out. Even with that new rule, there is a lot of sponsorship money that gets spread around to all of the teams under the same roof. It's almost a snowball effect for the big teams....they just grow and grow because of the resources available while the little teams are stuck due to their smaller budgets. What's the saying? Gotta spend money to make money. And don't forget the manufacturer support the big teams get. They receive a lot more attention and help than the smaller guys too, but rightfully so as they want to get their brand into victory lane.

[JohnMickish]

I really wonder about the engines. All 8 Ford teams get their engines from the same place. So is that one big team, 8 little ones or 3 teams? The Wood Brothers get their engines out of the Yates/Roush camp and get their chassis and engineering help from Roush, but it's considered a single car team. I personally feel it's just a Roush R&D car.

I don't like this rule but I'm probably wrong. It's probably going to be better in the long run, but I see alot of grey areas that will get explored along the way.

[VMS]

What I would like to see is somehow limiting the $$ that each team can receive through owner, sponsorship, etc in a manner that does not allow for a multicar teams to have more inflow of $$ than the smaller single car teams. In theory, this would eliminate the extra money that can be spent on one team over another in a multicar company, and eliminate more money being spent overall that the single car owners do not have. Heck...if you limit the amount of spending for every owner to the point that all owners have the same limits(again set up to be reachable by the single car teams) we might get closer yet.

I'd also like to see those teams with multiple car owners running out of the same shop, to be forced to have different shops on top of the limited $$ spent. For example, take the Kenseth's car (I believe owned by Mark Martin) out of the rouch stable and force it to be a team run by Mark Martin...not Jack rouch. They might still swap notes, etc..but with teams in different shops, they will potentially have less to do with each other...

It's a thought...

[OUTDOORNUT]

VMS,

So is the end product something similar to IROC? I would hate for that to happen. NASCAR is trying to cut back on the amount of $$ it take to run in the series (one engine rule, impound races, common templates, etc.) Making teams add another shop, crew, equipment is just not an option.

I think the manufactures are already looking at the entire team aspect. I know Ford hired Martin's old crew chief and made him a Team Ford Racing employee, his job is with R&D and working with each Ford team to get them on an open notebook. This talk about multicar teams is just another feel good excerise by NASCAR. There was never any talk about any of this when Hendrick dominated the sport for years with his multicar teams. But he is a Chevy team and they always get what they want!

[VMS]

I guess my theory was not to look at it as that extreme, but if you think about it, that seems to be the way NASCAR is going. What was it...just last year the teams all had to go to the same templates for certain aspects of the car? About the only thing left is the money issue.

I'd also hope it would not go as far as supplying the same cars with same engines to all teams...that will end NASCAR as we know it. But..if you eliminate the excess money that some owners are able to commit to their teams, we may see a bit more competetive wins by the smaller teams going on rather than a bunch of Multicar team wins. I do have to admit, I don't like watching racs that are dominated by multicar operations (happens to be rouch this year overall), nor do I like watching a single driver win a whole bunch of races (like Neumann did last year..or the year before...I don't remember right off hand). I know that now and then a car will dominate a race, but that even gets old, unless other cars are really battling out there.

I will say that I feel things are fairly equal right now in terms of set up (except for those teams...er..a...most teams at some point that decide to try pull something over on the Officials with something not approved).

I just think it is too easy to have multicar teams dominate because of money flow.

Steve