Down in the Pits: Payout at Nashville disputed
What would NASCAR be without controversy?
This week’s biggest controversy is coming out of the Busch series, and it involves the purse to be paid out in Saturday night’s Nashville race.
Last year the Nashville Busch race paid $721,496. At that time it was implied, if not promised, that this year’s purse would exceed $1 million
Well, it didn’t.
This year’s payout will be $844,533, and many of the Busch regulars have registered their complaints. Randy LaJoie is the leader of the pack.
As usual, the NASCAR officials hemmed and hawed and tried to make excuses for their decision on keeping the payoff far below the expected $1 million. One of their excuses was that Nashville had stuck by the Busch series even when they had a small track and a small grandstand so they should be “given a break.” This didn’t fly too well with LaJoie and his motley crew.
Another excuse given was that this was a new track and they had to build a following for the Busch series. Neither one of these excuses seemed to fly with the guys who compete and draw the crowds.
When NASCAR was first formed by Bill France, it was done to protect the drivers from track promoters who didn’t pay out purses that reflected the portions that the participants felt that they should receive. In the old days some track owners guaranteed a big purse, but after the race they couldn’t even be found. NASCAR was founded on the idea that they would protect the drivers and car owners from unscrupulous track owners. Now it seems that NASCAR sets the purses so some of those same drivers and car owners now want to know who’s going to protect them from NASCAR.
Last year when Busch ran at the new track they put nearly 50,000 people in the stands. For some reason this year there will only be 40,000 seats. Only 25,000 of those seats are permanent. The other seats are set up on a temporary basis depending on what crowds that the track thinks they could attract.
With some NASCAR Winston Cup teams folding, several of the Busch owners are thinking about joining the Winston Cup series and dumping the Busch series altogether.
And who can blame them? Let’s face it: the Busch series is well-named because it’s “bush” league. The big money is in the cup series. As of now the cup series is still managing to fill a 43-car field. But as the year wears along, that may be harder and harder to do.
• This week’s Winston Cup race moves from rainy Texas back to a short track at Martinsville, Virginia. Many of the drivers are looking forward to dropping that speed down from the 190s to the 130-mile per hour range.
In reality most of the drivers enjoy the short tracks more than they do the super speedways for the simple reason that it seems like it’s taking them home. You’ve got to remember that virtually all of the drivers started their career on some quarter- or half-mile track, where a crowd of 5,000 was considered huge.
Martinsville will seat a lot more people than that and they always put on a good show. The track is pretty flat, but there’ll be a lot of fender-rubbing and hot tempers.
• Through the first seven Winston Cup races, there have been three Dodge wins, three Ford wins, and one Pontiac win. What’s missing from this picture? The Chevrolets. This has not gone unnoticed by NASCAR or the Chevrolet fans.
Recently NASCAR has given Chevrolet an opportunity to make some aerodynamic changes. It has also been announced that the Fords will have to run more spoilers at the Talladega race which in fact slows them down. If we want a real controversy, why don’t we just go ahead and give the Chevrolets a one lap head start and see if that can put them in victory lane?