“Three or four years ago Hendrick Motorsports and Roush Racing were dominating the sport. People pointed to their 4 and 5-car teams as a major reason for their successes (nevermind their impressive collections of mechanical, engineering and driving talent). The theory said that the more cars you had, the more data you could compile and share among the teams. At that time teams tested as much as possible, whether it was at official NASCAR Cup test dates, tire tests or at the unsanctioned tracks. So the amount of data a team could potentially collect was huge, and it was assumed that a bigger net could grab more of that valuable data.
For Cup teams, the race to expand was like Air Jordans to a seventh grader: no one wanted to be the last guy to sport the latest trend. DEI, Ganassi, Ginn Racing, Evernham Racing and Michael Waltrip Racing were all teams eager to expand and absorb as much testing data as they could. Not to mention taking advantage of a bull market for sponsorship too.
Four years later things are obviously different. Sponsorship dollars have shrunk escalating costs, so much that most teams can not afford to remain independent and maybe most damning, NASCAR outlawed all testing except for Goodyear tire tests. Look at the list of teams that expanded since 2005. Only DEI (twice) and Evernham have landed drivers in the Chase. More crucially all the teams on the list have lost sponsors and been forced to merge or form alliances (what is this Survivor?) to stay afloat.
One theory I have is that these teams lacked the depth to expand. DEI has won races and enjoyed moderate success but when they expanded to three and four teams it spread their personnel too thin. Instead of focusing on how to make two cars go really fast, they had to worry about building four cars and whether they would all qualify for the race. It makes it a lot harder to share data when teams are in different situations. Without the prospect of track testing, teams have to rely on the engineers in the shop more than ever.
So with no testing and not enough sponsorship dollars to cover the operating costs, I wonder whether teams might discover that pruning their race programs might be beneficial?
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