Money is overshadowing racing
Richard Petty is back in Victory Lane, Tony Stewart is making it work as an owner/driver, Mark Martin is a championship contender at age 50.
Interesting stuff all around, but one subject continues to overshadow everything else in NASCAR this season.
Money.
It's the inescapable topic on a daily basis. And not in a good way.
Teams are losing more of it every day. Why? Manufacturer support is ending. Sponsor renewals are uncertain. On and on and on.
The funny thing about it is no one really knows all the facts. No professional sport is more shrouded in secrecy than NASCAR when it comes to money.
And all that secrecy fuels increased speculation about how bad things are because it's human nature to assume the worst.
Unlike stick-and-ball sports, in which many of the financial numbers are clear, NASCAR is all a guessing game.
That's generally true across motorsports. We learned recently that some Formula One teams have threatened to form their own league over a proposed $60 million budget cap, but no one knows how much each team spends. Some estimates place Ferrari's annual budget at $500 million.
NASCAR teams don't come close to those numbers (as far as we know), but you have a better chance of getting security clearance for the nuclear codes than learning the bottom-line accounting figures for each organization.
NASCAR teams are independent contractors, private businesses that don't have to reveal their finances publicly. NASCAR also is privately owned by the France family.
So it's all a mystery. We don't know NASCAR's profit margin. We don't know what's in Jeff Gordon's contract. We don't know what Lowe's pays Hendrick Motorsports to sponsor Jimmie Johnson's No. 48 Chevy.
And we don't know exactly what the auto manufacturers pay teams, so we don't know how much the teams are losing as some of that support ends.
Rick Hendrick was asked Sunday how much manufacturer support he was losing because of General Motors' bankruptcy.
"Somewhere between zero and 100 percent," he quipped.
In other words, "I'm not telling."
Even Gordon, who officially is listed as the owner of Johnson's car, doesn't know the hard numbers.
"I have no idea," Gordon said of the cutbacks. "I don't know what they are in any way, shape or form."
Tony Stewart also was asked the percentage GM was cutting for his team, but wouldn't say.
A glimpse of cutbacks came this past weekend when a report showed court records of a $2.5 million payment Richard Childress Racing didn't receive from GM on June 15.
When Childress was asked about the situation Saturday, he said, "That's all business numbers. I don't go around asking people what they're paying y'all."
Again, more guessing is required. The obvious assumption is that this was a quarterly payment to RCR, meaning Chevy gives Childress $10 million a year.
Assuming that's right, another guess is needed on how much of RCR's budget that money represents. The estimate is 10 to 20 percent, a number that differs from team to team.
"I don't think it will put them out of business," Martin said of the manufacturer cutbacks to teams. "I don't want to minimize it. Everybody is feeling pain. But it's just a correction, and I think all the race teams will weather it."
Will they? We just don't know, so the guessing game escalates.
Will Childress need to shut down one of his four Cup teams? Will other organizations try to switch manufacturers -- Richard Petty Motorsports to Toyota, for example -- to garner more support?
Toyota still is paying its teams (how much, we don't know), and Ford continues to support Roush Fenway Racing. But supporting more teams seems unlikely for any manufacturer in this economic climate.
Will a lack of manufacturer support doom the Camping World Truck Series?
It's all about the money, and that's unfortunate.
A little more transparency, even if some of it is bad news, could end some of the speculation and allow more of the focus to return to the track.
Speaking of money, here's something I never expected to say. The sale of the Montreal Canadiens could have an impact on the NASCAR team that carries Richard Petty's name.
Bizarre but true. George Gillett, the man holding the purse strings at Richard Petty Motorsports, is selling the NHL team to the Molson family (Canadian beer moguls) for a reported $550 million.
Whether this is good or bad for RPM is hard to say. If some of that money is put into the NASCAR team, it's a good thing. But the sale of the NHL team will lead some people to wonder whether the Gillett family may be interested in selling its interest in RPM.
The value of RPM went up Sunday with Kasey Kahne's surprising road course win at Sonoma, one of three Petty cars that finished in the top 10.
Two Cup stars -- Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch -- flew from Sonoma to Milwaukee on Saturday for the Nationwide Series race and finished 1-2, respectively. Bullies prevail, and they continue to rank 1-2 in the standings.
But who would have thought Edwards wouldn't earn his first 2009 NASCAR victory, in any series, until June?
Terry Blount covers motorsports for ESPN.com. His book, "The Blount Report: NASCAR's Most Overrated and Underrated Drivers, Cars, Teams, and Tracks," was published by Triumph Books and is available in bookstores. Click here to order a copy. Blount can be reached at terry@blountspeak.com.
