Kevin Harvick: Teams need to adjust their thinking in slow economy
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Kevin Harvick sees the impact of the downturn in the U.S. economy more than many in NASCAR, as he’s both a driver and team owner.
And for Harvick, who will run one Nationwide Series team and two Camping World Truck Series teams for Kevin Harvick Inc. this year, the struggling economy isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“In the end I think it's going to be something that's good for our sport,” Harvick said. “I think it's going to be good for our country and for everybody involved to tighten that belt, get rid of the fat, run your teams more efficiently. Everybody is looking at every piece of their business right now to make it better, and I think you're seeing ticket prices go down, you're seeing sponsorship values go down, you're seeing team costs go down.
“… The bottom line is we have to keep up with the world as a sport, and in order to do that you have to make adjustments. Every major company in the world makes adjustments to whatever that particular economy is. If the economy is really good for somebody, it's really bad for somebody else, even when we're in good times.”
As Harvick’s marketing people complained about the difficulty of finding sponsorship in this economy, the team owner had to step in and readjust their thinking.
There are companies that are doing well, Harvick told them, so go find them.
“About every three to five years you see a cycle of sponsors come in and you see some go out,” Harvick said. “We're in a fortunate position where we've tightened the belts, we've lowered our sponsorship dollars to run our company for less dollars than what we did before without taking anything away from the cars, by realigning people and doing some things different, and hotel costs are coming down, travel costs are coming down.
“So there's a lot of things that are changing, and it's just a matter of keeping up with that evolution as the economy, hopefully, gets stabilized.”
Harvick acknowledges that NASCAR has suffered because of the slower economy, but nearly every sector of the economy has also suffered.
“I mean, you look at the NFL playoffs games, it's easy to watch in Pittsburgh … but those bright yellow seats stick out like a sore thumb when there's nobody sitting in them and everybody is in black coats,” Harvick said. “It's not just our sport, and I think NASCAR is doing a good job of trying to make the teams realize, ‘Hey, we're not testing for a reason, and don't come to me and tell me that you want to test now and then come to me two weeks later and start complaining about how much it costs to run the sport,’ because that's not fair. I mean, how do you fix that problem?
“So it's tough from an owner's side, and it's tough from a sanctioning body's side, so it's tough from a lot of different aspects. But instead of complaining about it, I wish everybody would just keep doing what they're doing and take a different direction, and I think for the most part everybody is.”
