The Great EqualizerHow did the sport evolve from one where winners often idled well above the pack, such as during Jarrett's heyday, to one where virtually any driver on the track is capable of winning?
Two correlating factors have contributed to getting stock car racing to this point. One, sponsorship dollars have given teams the tools to build better, faster, more durable cars. When Winston Cup's modern era began in 1972, so, too, began an influx of marketing and promotional activity that brought major corporate sponsorships into the sport. Teams eventually had more money to invest in equipment over the course of a season, so cars became more reliable as parts were swapped out more frequently and put under less stress.
Two, over the past three decades teams have used that money to continually invest in personnel and build teams capable of making technological advances within the industry. This has been especially true in the past decade.
Sponsorship packages of $10 million and up help support mechanics, shock specialists, a number of engine builders, engineers, fabricators, trips to wind tunnels, team managers, research and development staffs, and so on.
"The technology we have today-for materials, for engines-lets the cars run all day and finish races," says Richard Childress, a six-time Winston Cup champion team owner. "That's a big thing. Just the technology alone has done away with a lot of the DNFs we were seeing before. You're able to do so much more with the parts and pieces.
"What comes along with technology, the second thing and the major player, is sponsorship. Back in the '70s you had four teams, basically, that had major sponsors. Back then major sponsors were a key to those four or five teams that were winning all the races. Today you've got 30-some, almost 40 cars that have major sponsors. I think the major sponsors that have come into the sport are the main reason for the parity, because today everybody, all the teams, can afford to be able to be competitive, where in the past you only had five or six teams that could be competitive."
A growth spurt fueled by sponsorship money and encompassing both personnel and technology has helped reshape the sport. Focus has shifted to areas of the car previously overlooked-such as shocks, brakes, even exhaust systems-and duties among team members have evolved since the time Childress began fielding a car he drove on the circuit back in the early '70s.
"I think what you see is a rise in the caliber of people, with specialists in all the different areas," Childress says. "Today a crew chief has a car chief. The crew chiefs do very little work on the cars any more. They're there concentrating on what to do to make the cars go faster, keeping the teams going. It's a whole different group of people in the crew chief area.
"The crew chiefs today are totally different than crew chiefs were 10 years ago. Ten years ago the crew chief was out there setting the car up and doing things. Today the crew chief has his car chief and the crew chief tries to do the thinking and keeping the team going, keeping it together. He's almost become, instead of a crew chief, almost more of a team manager. He makes the calls on the car, what to do chassis-wise and stuff, but he still has somebody else in there doing (the work) for him."
Childress says the number of specialists is what costs so much to be competitive. Success depends on putting the right team of specialists together. He pinpoints the time when the explosion in personnel and technology began.
"I have to look back in the '80s, when we started a lot of the wind tunnel work," Childress says. "After gathering all the different technology that's out there, at that point it took specialty people, engineers and other people, to read that data. Then NASCAR has done a good job policing and trying to keep the teams as equal as possible."