Rising fuel prices hurting teams, tracks
By Bob Pockrass - Associate Editor
Thursday, June 05, 2008
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SCENE ON THE CIRCUIT
While race fans have to reach deeper into their pockets for extra cash to drive to races, team owners and others in the industry also are feeling a financial crunch as gas prices creep past $4 a gallon nationally.
With diesel and jet fuel costs on the rise, teams estimate fuel budgets have increased 30 to 45 percent this year.
“You can’t anticipate that much of an increase,” team owner Richard Childress said. “The cost of diesel for our transporters on the road, [the cost of] jet fuel to get the teams to and from the track, it’s just really gotten expensive. But it’s no different for us than it is for anyone who has a business, big or small. It’s affecting everyone right now.”
Teams are having to evaluate how and how much they travel.
“In the past, if there was something going on, you might not have a full plane and send it. Now you make sure you have a full plane,” Joe Gibbs Racing President J.D. Gibbs said. “We use commercial [airlines] more.”
Childress and Gibbs own multicar operations with multiple sponsors and their ability to handle such increases likely is easier than for smaller teams.
“Your budget for three or four different cars, you have some more [money] to move around,” said Hall of Fame Racing General Manager Tyler Epp, whose organization owns just one team. “You may be able to take away two tests. If we take away two tests, it impacts our program a lot.”
The rise in fuel prices increases the costs for virtually all equipment that needs to be shipped to teams.
Furniture Row Racing, which is based in Colorado, obviously has seen a more significant increase than other teams because it travels further to and from races. General Manager Joe Garone estimated his fuel budget has increased 33 percent.
But Epp said there isn’t much difference between driving and flying as far as fuel costs.
“It hurts me more as a company to tell my guys to drive to Talladega because ... we’re a single-car team that takes care of our guys,” Epp said. “We can do that a lot differently just because we’re smaller and more personal. If I start telling them we have to drive, it makes us look like we’re not ready for the big-league level.”
Teams obviously aren’t the only ones affected. Attendance has been flat or soft at several events this year.
“It has a significant impact on our fans that drive further, stay longer,” NASCAR Chairman Brian France said. “It’s a significant issue.”
During race week at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in May, more fans stayed for longer periods, opting to spend their off days camping at the track rather than taking day trips to other places, said former LMS President H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler.
“The people further away are buying tickets. Those people are your really hard-core race fans. They want to get their fix at three or four races a year, whatever they go to,” Wheeler said.
“Where we are all running into a challenge is more local – local meaning within 150 miles – because these are your more casual fans that don’t necessarily have to be there.”
Motorsports Authentics CEO Mark Dyer said that with television ratings up, fans are still engaged. The merchandise company already had scaled back the number of souvenir haulers it sends to tracks, but the fuel cost per hauler has increased. The company also has significant shipping costs.
“We’re in this environment where people’s disposable income, after you deduct gas expenses, has gone down, but expenses for all of us is going up,” Dyer said. “Anything transportation-oriented is going up. The fans are still coming to a great extent but it looks like they’re spending a little less money when they get there. … It’s all a big challenge, and nobody knows where the gas ceiling is going to go.
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