Wayne: Rousch Racing from 5 Teams to 4 Teams, no choice, to conform to the NASCAR mandate that the maximum number of Teams with one owner is 4. Believe their reasoning was to potentially reduce the influence on competition of the high dollar Teams. Realistically, could also be that NASCAR did not want any one dominant Team in a position to challenge the race series rules.
IRL/Champ Car merger: The Indy 500 would also regain some of the past prestige, within the last few years, only 33 cars were available, some at the last moment, for the race. Qualifying was not a concern, missing was the suspense of being on the bubble
NASCAR: With all the cons and dislikes, still remains the dominant race series in the US. Why would Speed have programmed ,with sponsors, 100 hours of coverage for the Daytona Speed Week events ?
Business conditions, marketing reasons and financial concerns change for the race series business sponsors , Craftsman is dropping the sponsorship for the Truck series next year. Anyone's guess whether there will ever again be a sponsor that remained as long as Winston. As much as I enjoy ALMS, the series has a long way to go to have 100,000 + or - fans attend the races and on-going TV coverage by any of the 4 major networks. This year the Rolex 24 had 6+ hours of caution laps, 25% of the race
Included with the specs of the COT is an attempt to level the playing field, time will tell. Joe Nemechek qualified 3rd for the 500 as a single car Team based in OK or NE using a Hendrick engine, sponsored by Furniture Row. Mentioned was their Team had a permanent staff of 4. Robby Gordon is another single car Team, uses Everham engines. After the practice wrecks, Teams were using for this past weekend Saturday night race, their medium/short track cars at Daytona, which would not have been possible with the race cars prior to COT. Johnson's # 48 started at the back and finished 3rd, with a non-super speedway car. Maybe there is some logic that the COT approach will either reduce or stabilize the cost to build a car. But, Teams are also utilizing experts which adds to cost. Michael Waltrip has a PhD aeronautical engineer on his staff to determine the settings of the front splitter and rear wing.
Baseball had it's down times, but recovered, even in Boston which has one of the highest ticket prices of any baseball Team. With Dale JR's win Saturday night, the NASCAR's
PR and Marketing Dept's must have been elated.
Will be interesting to revisit the topic in November. Kyle Petty struggled to make it to the top 35, but supports NASCAR's direction to reward those making a commitment to run the entire race series.