General Motors cuts take effect immediately, but engine-support programs continue
Team owner Richard Childress says his organization continues to support General Motors. // Mark Sluder, NASCAR Scene
SONOMA, Calif. – General Motors' cuts to NASCAR Sprint Cup teams will be effective immediately, but the manufacturer hopes to continue to support two organizations with engine programs, team owners and a Chevrolet official said Friday at Infineon Raceway.
Team owners Tony Stewart and Richard Childress addressed the situations for their organizations but would not say exactly how much has been cut. Childress said he expects the Earnhardt Childress Racing Technologies (ECRT) engine program he co-owns to continue.
According to documents filed in the General Motors bankruptcy case in federal court, GM had a $2,538,750 payment due to "RCR Enterprises, LLC, and its affiliates, collectively RCR" last Monday. Childress declined to verify whether he got that payment – “that’s kind of personal, I didn’t ask you if you got your paycheck this week,” he said.
“It’s not going to affect our performance at RCR,” Childress vowed. “It’s not going to affect our technology.”
Stewart confirmed that the cuts are effective “immediately” as GM is transforming into a new company through Chapter 11 reorganization.
“We’ll make it through the year, for sure,” Stewart said. “We’re supportive of what Chevy had to do. There’s a lot of people that don’t even have jobs. We just got our budget cut percentage-wise.
“We’re still [getting] support from Chevy and we’re proud of that. … It’s a hard situation for them. You can see it in their eyes when they came to the shop, it’s not a meeting they wanted to have. They didn’t want to tell us that we’d have to take a cut.”
Stewart gets his engine and technological support from Hendrick Motorsports, and sources indicated that the cuts to their organizations were not as drastic as to RCR and Earnhardt Ganassi Racing.
“We’ll be working with [Chevrolet] on a lot of different stuff just like we have in the past,” Childress said. “All business numbers and business deals [are personal]. … Our deal here is GM, we talked about a lot of different things and we are very supportive of them on the track and off the track.”
Chevrolet NASCAR program manager Pat Suhy wouldn’t go into specifics about the talks with the teams or whether the cutbacks were in cash or technology or both.
“When you talk about adjustments, it really affects everything,” Suhy said. “It’s between us and them how they choose to allocate it as far as the different options. … What we do for them is one big package of support.”
It is important to have two groups – RCR and Hendrick – doing engine development and having separate engine programs, Suhy said.
“It’s very important to have more than one group working on parts – body parts, sheet-metal parts, engine parts, because if we don’t have that, you get into a scenario where one guy thinks he’s got the best idea and you don’t have anyone to balance that,” Suhy said. “You don’t have any checks and balances.”
Childress said he didn’t know how he would handle the cuts or if there would be layoffs, but he stressed he plans to keep all four Sprint Cup cars, his Nationwide program and his engine shop.
“Right now, we plan on going forward,” Childress said. “Everything is intact to go forward with [engine shop] ECR for next year and hopefully if everything works out, we should have plenty of business there besides RCR and the Earnhardt Ganassi. … ECR has its own budget and its own group of people.”
Hendrick Motorsports driver Mark Martin said the teams will be able to accommodate for the cutbacks.
“I think I know the level or the round-about area that [a] manufacturer’s involvement is in a race team's overall budget and for most race teams, I don’t think it will put them out of business, if you know what I mean,” Martin said. “I don’t want to minimize it.
“I’ll say that everybody is feeling pain and all the race teams are having to – right now we’re experiencing a correction just as the stock market or just like your average citizen, many of the people that are fortunate enough to be keeping their jobs may have to take a cut in pay – [and] this is kind of the same thing.”
As far as all the cuts, at least one competitor doesn’t expect to see a big difference on the track.
“I think that it’s just a money factor that’s going to be cut back from those teams,” said Joe Gibbs Racing driver Kyle Busch, who drives a Toyota. “The money that Chevrolet will write a check to the teams [for] may be smaller or may be none. The teams still get all their research and development.”
