Top-35 rule hurts sponsors it was designed to protect

The impetus was one night three years ago in Hampton, Ga., when 58 cars showed up to try and squeeze themselves into the field for a 2004 fall race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Of those that didn't make it, two were high-priced casualties: the No. 10 of MBV Motorsports, and the No. 22 of Bill Davis Racing. They were bumped by the likes of Tony Raines and Todd Bodine, piloting vehicles fielded by owners no one would recognize and backed by sponsors no one would remember.

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The fact that Scott Riggs and Scott Wimmer drove two of those cars that went home early didn't really matter. The fact that they were sponsored by Valvoline and Caterpillar -- two companies with long and rather distinguished histories of backing cars in NASCAR's top series -- did. Change was spurred, and by the beginning of the next season there was a new rule in the Nextel Cup Series. In order to protect the sponsors that were the lifeblood of the sport, in order to prevent DuPont or Home Depot from becoming the next Valvoline or Caterpillar, the top 35 cars in owner points would henceforth be guaranteed starting spots in that weekend's event.

It was implemented with all the best of intentions. NASCAR, more than any other big-league professional sport, needs sponsorship to survive. Without it, cars sit immobile, half-assembled in darkened shops. Sponsors have to be kept happy, and the way you keep them happy is to make sure they're in the race on Sunday, with their logos appearing prominently on television. Watching their cars loaded onto a truck on Friday evening doesn't sit well with companies that pay between $10 and $20 million annually on what's essentially a 190 mph advertising campaign.

So it's easy to see why NASCAR did it. You want to make sure high-dollar sponsors stay in the sport? Make sure they're in the races. But three years later, the rule change seems short-sighted. In many ways, the NASCAR of late 2007 is very different from the one of late 2004. Economic and competitive environments have changed. Now, the top-35 rule is harming the very entities it was designed to protect.

In 2004, sponsors needed protecting. The sport was still feeling the aftereffects of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, which sent the economy into a tailspin and forced a number of companies to slash their marketing budgets. Companies that once sponsored racecars -- like Amoco, Exide, McDonald's, Conseco, Kodiak, K-Mart and others -- got out of the sport altogether or assumed less visible, less expensive roles. The heady days of only a few years earlier, when Pfizer and UPS jumped in with huge deals that raised sponsorship rates to unprecedented heights, were over. Teams were taking what they could get, which sometimes wasn't very much at all.

Some teams, like those owned by Andy Petree, Mark Melling and Junie Donlavey, either suspended operations, scaled back, or slowly began to fade away. This was the era of the field fillers, when shoestring drivers like Carl Long and Kirk Shelmerdine made races just by showing up, because there were only as many qualifiers as there were positions on the starting grid. Some teams came to the track without pit crews. They didn't need them. At Rockingham, Joe Ruttman took one lap and parked it. He and owner James Finch collected $54,196 for an easy day's work.

It all came to a head that October at Atlanta. The regular drivers showed up. So did the field fillers. So did youngsters like Kyle Busch, J.J. Yeley and Martin Truex Jr., trying to get a little more Cup experience before moving into the series full time. So did hopefuls like Kerry Earnhardt, Shane Hmiel and Johnny Sauter, driving essentially for test teams, but still trying to prove themselves against the best. The resulting collision was ugly. Riggs, Wimmer and Earnhardt found themselves on the outside, packing up transporters alongside Hermie Sadler and Andy Belmont. Raines, Bodine, and Kevin Lepage all made it to Sunday afternoon. NASCAR took notice, and a few months later took action.

Team Sponsors

Races Made / Missed (2007)

Driver	Sponsor	Races
D. Blaney	Caterpillar	29 / 3
D. Jarrett	UPS	21 / 11
D. Reutimann	Domino's/BK	24 / 8
S. Riggs	Valvoline	35 / 7
M. Waltrip	NAPA	13 / 19

But it isn't 2004 anymore. Shoestring teams may still attempt to make races, but they're rarely successful. The recovering economy has produced not a shortage of Nextel Cup primary car sponsors, but a glut of them. And the top-35 rule, designed to send home cars like Andy Hillenburg's Commercial Truck and Trailer Ford -- which finished 42nd in the 2004 spring race at Atlanta, making only 15 laps -- is now sending home cars like Michael Waltrip's NAPA Toyota or Sam Hornish Jr.'s Mobil 1 Dodge. Now NASCAR faces embarrassing qualifying sessions like the one that unfolded two weeks ago at Talladega, when the fully funded car of A.J. Allmendinger posted the ninth-fastest lap of the session yet still didn't make the race.

And ironically, the two cars that spawned this whole thing have been among the hardest hit. The No. 10 Valvoline car has failed to make seven races, a factor that surely contributed to Gillett Evernham's decision to part with Riggs. The No. 22 Caterpillar car has missed three starts, and struggling to stay in the top 35 has almost certainly compromised the performance of driver Dave Blaney, who's still managed to establish himself as the class of the Toyota fleet. How much better might that car be if everyone was on an equal playing field, and Blaney's crew didn't have to focus solely on qualifying 24 hours a day?

The top-35 rule was antiquated from almost the minute it was put into practice. Today, virtually every car that qualifies for a Nextel Cup race is a legitimate entry, with millions of dollars in sponsor and manufacturer support behind it. NASCAR was once the epitome of American free enterprise, a sport where anyone with enough cash and moxie could field a car and compete against Richard Childress and Rick Hendrick. Now, the top-35 rule -- and to a lesser degree, the Chase for the Nextel Cup -- have segregated the sport into distinct classes of haves and have-nots, each with clearly divergent ambitions once they get to the racetrack.

What might change that? A sponsor like Wells Fargo or Little Debbie or even UPS, getting fed up with not making races and walking away. After all, it was the sponsors who got NASCAR's attention three years ago. Maybe they need to do the same thing again.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.