Teams with money will find ways around it, teams without money will fail. Same as always.... Courtesy Speedtv.com NASCAR Bans Testing Written by: Tom Jensen Date: 11/14/2008 - 10:31 AM Location: Homestead, Florida Faced with rising costs and a shortage of sponsors, NASCAR has immediately banned all testing at any track where the NASCAR Sprint Cup, Nationwide, Craftsman Truck or Camping World series races. Including in the ban will be the cancellation of the annual NASCAR Preseason Thunder testing at Daytona in January. This year, NASCAR conducted sanctioned tests at Daytona International Speedway, Auto Club Speedway of Southern California, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Phoenix International Raceway, Lowe’s Motor Speedway and Pocono Raceway. In addition, Sprint Cup teams regularly tested at tracks like Kentucky Speedway and the Milwaukee Mile. But as of now, teams will only be able to test at tracks that don’t host races in any of NASCAR’s top series. Teams are still able to test at Rockingham Speedway in North Carolina, for example, because it doesn’t host any major NASCAR events. NASCAR’s original plan was to give Sprint Cup teams 24 days of testing in 2009, but the severe economic climate lead NASCAR to revise its plans in order to help teams save money. Elton Sawyer, competition director at Red Bull Racing, said his team had budgeted $1.7 million just for its tire bill at those 24 test days. Sawyer, like most team representatives interviewed by SPEEDtv.com, applauded NASCAR’s efforts to cut costs. “We’re not exempt from any economic woes that the country has, so we have to do our part, so I think it’s a great decision,” said Sawyer. “It was going to cost a lot of money and it wasn’t going to do the series or the industry any good.” “I think NASCAR’s doing the right thing for what they think is the right thing for the financial health of the teams,” said Hendrick Motorsports Vice President Doug Duchardt. “Hopefully, it helps teams stay afloat and get to the track.” Like any major policy change by NASCAR, the ramifications of the testing ban will not be fully realized until it’s been in place for some period of time. Some team members interviewed by SPEEDtv.com thought it might favor big teams with the resources to pay for either additional simulation and engineering work or testing at non-NASCAR tracks. Still, it should result in costs savings of $500,000 to $2 million per team, sources said, a significant sum of money in these tough times. “There’s a lot of unknowns, so I’m not sure of the consequences,” said Jeff Burton, driver of the No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, adding, “I’m shocked that we won’t be testing at Daytona.” Steve Addington, crew chief for Kyle Busch’s Joe Gibbs Racing Sprint Cup team, wondering how the testing cutback might affect JGR’s No. 20, which next year will have a rookie driver in Joey Logano. But overall, Addington favored the move by NASCAR. “I think they’re trying to cut costs for race teams with the economy the way it is,” he said. “I don’t know that it’s going to be a big gain financially, because we’re still going to find ways to test and figure out a way to get around it. I think it’s going to help the guys starting up new teams more than it’ll hurt us.” Tommy Baldwin, competition director for the financially strapped single-car Bill Davis Racing team, thought the move might be an advantage for the sport’s mega-teams. “It’s good right now because of the state of the economy and the state of the sport, with the sponsors and the partners,” said Baldwin. “Again, there’s going to be another separation between the three or four big teams and the smaller teams because the bigger teams are going to have all the technology to get over the hump that a lot of us won’t, as far as being on the track. It’s good. I think it was a good move overall.” One interesting view was proffered by Haas-CNC Racing crew chief and SPEED analyst Robert “Bootie” Barker, who noted that by eliminating testing, jobs would be cut as well. “A lot of people are going to lose jobs, so it depends on which way you’re looking at it,” said Barker. “Owners are going to save money and that makes sense with the economy, I guess, but a lot of people are going to lose a lot of jobs, so they’re not happy about it.” “We’ll do testing in another way,” said Wood Brothers Racing co-owner Len Wood. “We’ll do more seven-post testing. We will find different ways of testing, but the cost of testing will go down.”
