NASCAR COT a dud

Watching the Car of Tomorrow (Really Car of Yesterday) come down pit lane last Sunday at Homestead, we could not help but notice that the cars are set up to crab (rear-end stepped out to one side from the front) as the car is going straight.

It's clear that the COT does not turn well so the teams have to monkey with the chassis to help this dud of a car turn. After a lackluster season it is clear the COT makes the cars less competitive and fans are switching off the TV sets in droves. Rushed into competition, the COT was not fully developed and the results showed on the track as Cup races have become parades with the leader – in clean air – rarely threatened. Side-by-side racing, especially in the turns, is even more unusual. Once one of the most exciting sports on the planet, Cup races are now four-hour parades of boredom occasionally punctuated by some racing and pit stop contests.

Meanwhile, the cost of making the COT competitive fell to the teams. Team budgets swelled to the $25-$30 million mark, an amazing figure considering they were in the $5 million range just a decade ago. Because of the COT not being fully ready to race when it was introduced, teams have had to spend millions of dollars in research and development engineers, additional mechanics, test teams, and all the equipment needed to power them.

The sport of NASCAR racing has expanded so much the past few years that 100-man teams are almost the standard, and four-car teams carry 400-plus on their roster.

Running a major NASCAR Cup team today requires an annual budget of $20-$30 million, with maybe half a dozen teams in the $30-million range, and at least one well over that.

It’s little wonder people are getting fired by NASCAR teams. NASCAR has just posted one of its most abysmal seasons. Interest in the sport waned as ticket sales and television ratings were flat or off of 2007 levels. Even the Chase – NASCAR’s ‘playoff’ system for the Cup divisions, struggled to attract attention with no sellouts and just two of the events (New Hampshire and Kansas) posting higher television viewership than its 2007 races.

The television numbers are revealing. Yeah, the economy is tough, but the cost of plopping the family on the couch and watching the race is pretty minimal. Given the ratings numbers, it is clear fewer folks aren’t doing that and points to problems way deeper than whether sponsorships are tight or teams are saddled with excesses like too many employees.

Simply stated, the product at the most visible level – the Cup Series – isn’t compelling and the NASCAR bubble, under the leadership of Brian France, has burst.