They didn't have a car in the Chase, and they didn't have a driver with a realistic chance of winning the event. But last weekend's race at Lowe's Motor Speedway outside Charlotte was still a very big one for Petty Enterprises.

The legendary NASCAR operation hosted four different sponsor groups during the course of the Sprint Cup weekend, taking part in a courtship required of organizations that depend on corporate funding to get on the racetrack. Petty pulls out all the stops -- a typical pitch involves a visit to the race shop to meet drivers and see how the cars are made, a tour of the garage area, premium hospitality in the team's condominium at the Charlotte track, and of course the presence of The King, seven-time NASCAR champion and team namesake Richard Petty. The hope is to make enough of an impression that a signed contract and signed check will follow.

"We'll make sure they see everything they want to see and touch everything they want to touch," Mike Bartelli, Petty's chief marketing officer, said prior to the Bank of America 500. "They'll get to meet our drivers, get sort of the insider's tour. We'll have them over to our race shop prior to that to see how all that works, meet the team. You want to make sure you're putting your best foot forward."

Yet these days, convincing corporate honchos to spend the millions it takes to put their brand on a car hood can be about as difficult as a four-wide pass at Martinsville. Sponsorship has always been the lifeblood of NASCAR race teams, which can't survive for very long without it. But with the world economy on nervous footing, the U.S. financial industry in the midst of an unprecedented bailout, a presidential election looming and the stock market in a state of upheaval, many companies aren't willing to part with marketing dollars as freely as they once were. Few sports feel that more than NASCAR, where lower- and mid-level teams looking for sponsorship for the 2009 season are foraging for every cent they can find.

"Our people in the financial markets tell us that the worst is yet to come," said Ty Norris, vice president of Michael Waltrip Racing, which still needs a half-season's worth of backing for David Reutimann's No. 44 car for next season. "They don't think we're going to be out of it for a while on the financial side. If that's the case, then we're all going to have to batten down the hatches, save what we have, and weather the storm. Because I don't think the storm is over."

That's not to say that NASCAR as a whole is unhealthy. According to the sanctioning body, $86 million in new sponsorship money entered NASCAR's three national divisions -- Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Craftsman Truck -- in 2007, a number that includes the arrival of Amp, which backs Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s car at Hendrick Motorsports. That number is expected to rise to $100 million next year. Car sponsors such as Aflac, Wrigley's, Best Buy and Mobil 1 extended contracts prior to this season, and Coca-Cola recently re-upped for 10 years on its series, track and associate car sponsorship deals. Tony Stewart used his name to secure funding for his two Sprint Cup entries for 2009. Recent reports indicating that the flagging economy may lead NASCAR to reduce starting fields are untrue, a series spokesman said.

Getty Images

The struggling U.S. economy is affecting NASCAR teams first-hand.

But little of that helps John Story, the vice president for motorsports at Dale Earnhardt Inc., and the man tasked with finding three new primary car sponsors for next season. No question, there are some deals out there to be made. But they're not necessarily the kind of deals that Sprint Cup teams, which can spend upwards of $20 million to fund a competitive car, are accustomed to finding.

"The economy is definitely taking its toll," Story said. "As late as a month ago, I really wasn't concerned. Call me naïve, I don't know. A month ago, I thought, it's going to be OK. The market fell another 690 points [last week] when it was supposed to be up. The investment community is scared, the banking industry is struggling for sure, the automobile industry is off. The economy, to say it's weak is an understatement. I don't know that that translates into a lot of new business in any sport, not just NASCAR. There are still some deals out there for 2009. We've spoken to a lot of them. But I am a little bit nervous about the garage, about the sport and the industry, because of the economy, for sure."

Thus far the economic crisis hasn't had a noticeable effect on the sport's power teams, which have proven able to obtain and keep multi-million-dollar sponsorship even in an atmosphere not exactly conducive to it. This summer Aflac announced it would move up from associate to primary sponsor on Carl Edwards' entry at Roush Fenway Racing, which only last month unveiled UPS as David Ragan's car sponsor for 2009. Earlier this year, DuPont extended its agreement with Hendrick as Jeff Gordon's sponsor, and even Chip Ganassi Racing, which has won just one race on NASCAR's top circuit in the last six years, signed car sponsor Target to a multi-year extension.

But there's been a clear movement of money from low to high, fueled by corporations' desire for star power and the trend toward several companies splitting the price of a full season by sharing time on a competitor's car. DEI is losing the U.S. Army to Stewart-Haas Racing. Waltrip is losing UPS to Roush. Petty Enterprises is losing General Mills to Richard Childress Racing, also the beneficiary of Caterpillar's move from Bill Davis Racing. The sponsors stepping into that void are often doing so at a much lower dollar figure, one that can have a severe effect on performance.

The result is that a number of mid-level NASCAR teams are on the hunt for sponsorship money at the same time, and doing so in an uncertain time and a sluggish economy where corporations are keeping a very tight grip on marketing dollars.

"There's a lot of money moving around, but I don't see a whole lot of new money coming in, either," Story said. "A couple of smaller programs, a couple of million-dollar programs. But none of the $20, $25 million deals. It's going to be a while before some of those bigger guys come in, I would think."

How much of a while? That's the $20 million question.

"I think that the Sprint Cup, NASCAR sponsorship situation is in the same crisis mode that the rest of the financial markets are in. In the short term, it's the worst scenario for raising sponsor money since NASCAR took off with some national television contracts," said veteran sports consultant Max Muhleman, who is based in Charlotte and has a long history in motorsports. "Long term, the question is, how long will it take to bounce back to a more normal state of affairs? Whether that's six months or a year or more, I don't know. Brand new money is going to be extremely difficult. And deals that were pending, I think we're going to see a lot of postponement."

On hold

Autostock

After this season, AAA will cut all sponsorship in the sport.

Ty Norris can hear the phrase ringing in his head.

"Waiting on budgets. Waiting on budgets," the VP at Michael Waltrip Racing said with a knowing smile. "It almost echoes in your head. Everyone you talk to, it's, 'Waiting on budgets.'"

That's what he hears when he asks a prospective sponsor about their interest in backing a car for the 2009 Sprint Cup campaign, and he's not alone. Uncertainty on both economic and political fronts has led to hesitancy on the part of some potential sponsors, who are dragging out negotiations and leaving team executives frustrated over the prospect of a long courtship with no payoff at the end. Maybe they're afraid of negative publicity, of spending marketing money if they also have to cut in other areas. Maybe they want to hold fast to every dime, fearful that the Dow Jones will take another tumble. Maybe they're protecting themselves, not wanting to be seen as the guy willing to spend $20 million in tough economic times.

Regardless, there seems to be a lot of stalling going on, and a lot of teams still trying to cobble together deals for next season as the 2008 campaign speeds to an end. That's not the case just in NASCAR, but in sports across the board. "Everybody borrows money," Muhleman said, as a way of explaining how companies not in the news can still suffer. Golf, which relies heavily on sponsorship from the financial sector -- easily the area hardest hit by recent events -- could be facing a major blow. Stadiums in stick-and-ball sports, which in recent years have built more and more suites and luxury boxes in an attempt to cater to corporate interests, will almost certainly feel the squeeze as well.

"As corporate dollars become tighter, you're not seeing these sponsors want to get as involved," said David Carter, executive director of the University of Southern California Sports Business Institute, and a Los Angeles-based sports consultant. "They're talking a little bit of a wait-and-see attitude. Some of them are taking more of a wait-and-see attitude. They're simply going to be standing down for a while."

A general rule of thumb: the more a sport relies on corporate sponsorship, the more vulnerability it faces in times like these. In the case of NASCAR, that doesn't mean that companies are yanking deals off the table. "We haven't had anybody that we thought was a prospect suddenly tell us, 'Hey, our stock is in the toilet, so we can't talk anymore.' There's been none of that," Petty's Bartelli said. And unlike the financial crash in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks, there's not a laundry list of major sponsors leaving the sport. Havoline, which backs a Ganassi car, and AAA, which sponsors a Roush Fenway entry, are among the few pulling out after this season.

According to NASCAR team executives, it's still not even difficult to get corporations to listen. "Our sales people are able to get people engaged and talking to them," DEI's Story said. At Petty Enterprises, which has yet to name a sponsor to replace outgoing General Mills on Bobby Labonte's No. 43 car, there's still some power in The King.

"I don't want to say it's ringing off the hook and we can't keep up," Bartelli said. "But absolutely, opportunities present themselves. We get inquiries. We're fortunate in that regard. I'm not going to name names, but there are other teams that deliver performance that is comparable to ours, teams that are not in the Chase, and I would venture to believe that we get more opportunities than they do."

Autostock

Petty Enterprises is still searching for a replacement for General Mills, who is leaving for RCR in '09.

The sticking point has become getting those opportunities down on paper, and getting those papers signed. Sports marketers still vouch for the power of NASCAR as an advertising tool, and Sprint Cup television numbers are still relatively strong. But CEOs are simply squeamish about pulling the trigger on such large sponsorship deals in this economic climate. Jill Gregory, who as NASCAR's director of industry marketing tries to cultivate relationships with corporations that can be converted into sponsorships for race teams, can see it.

"I think we've all noticed the fact that it is probably a little harder to get deals signed. If you've been talking to the teams, you know one of things we're hearing a lot is the length of time it takes the companies to make a decision. The sell cycle, or the getting from an interest in NASCAR or that particular team, is a lot longer. The lead time is longer than it used to be. We started noticing that probably earlier this summer. So certainly I think everyone that is involved in the industry is noticing that it's a process that takes much longer than it has in the past," she said.

"We do have sponsors that are coming into the sport in 2009, or sponsors that are in now and extending their positions in '09. So NASCAR is still a very good place to be, and we do see companies increasing or starting their investment. It's just, I think the time it takes from piquing that interest to getting a signed deal is definitely taking longer. As news continues to come through on the financial front, it's probably going to continue. But I think it's something we all know is part of the business right now."

Norris calls it a "perfect storm" -- a credit crisis, a sea of bad loans, a restructuring of Wall Street and some basic differences in tax policy among presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain. "Obama and McCain are so opposite on some issues and some tax implications, and I think some companies are waiting to see what happens," Norris said. "Because if one wins and there's a tax implication for anyone over $250,000 or more, including businesses, and the other doesn't have that, some companies are really waiting to see who's going to be the president and what direction the company is going to go in."

So who, if anyone, steps into the void? The hope is that cowboy and maverick investors, those renegades who see value in a down market, will jump at the chance to buy sponsorship at what almost certainly will be a reduced price. In fact, some teams are using that as part of their pitch -- buy now, when value is lower. Because when the market goes back up, the sponsorship costs will as well.

"In a down market, you find cowboys and mavericks. You find people who are willing to spend their money right now because the market is down," Norris said. "Now, this is when they want to invest. If they have the money, they want to put it in now, because as history will tell you, it always goes back up. The cowboys are ready to gamble now. The question is, when do you get in, and when does it start going back up? So I think good smart marketers can say, 'I can get more for my dollar today than I could have two or three years ago,' and I think good, smart marketers still find us an attractive place to be."

That may sound like a selling point, but there's some solid marketing logic behind it. From a potential sponsor's standpoint, "at a time like this, when everybody's struggling, you could make a pretty strong argument that this is your time to really double down and make a difference," said Carter, the sports marketing consultant.

"If others are not investing in NASCAR and sponsoring it, it gives your company a chance to really break through and get a lot of notoriety and get a lot of exposure and do a lot of business development. This might be the time to do that. I think the problem is, if I'm that NASCAR sponsor and I want to crow about how we're deeply involved in NASCAR and I want to start entertaining people at the track, how strong does that look when the industry around you is in trouble? It's kind of a mixed bag."

So now, NASCAR teams are wondering -- where have all the cowboys gone? And what if the cavalry never comes riding over the hill?

Tightening belts

Autostock

In order to cut costs, Michael Waltrip Racing and other teams may have to reduce time testing.

The hope was that the implementation of the new Sprint Cup car would save teams money, given -- in theory, of course -- that one of the vehicles could be used on a wider array of racetracks than its predecessor. But in ultra-competitive NASCAR, checkbooks never sit idle for very long. That's why the fleet of racecars at DEI numbers the same as it did last year, Story said, even though the new vehicles are more expensive to manufacture. Among the major teams, sometimes it seems the race isn't to the checkered flag, but to see which organization can spend the most.

Economic reality may change that, at least to a certain degree. The struggles that mid- and lower-level teams face in finding sponsorship could force some operations to be shut down. It could force others to lower the amount of money they're accustomed to spending on a single race team. It could force still more to tighten their corporate belts, shelving some of the luxuries once seen as necessities. No wonder so many team managers are confabbing in the garage these days, looking for information on who's cutting what.

"You're seeing more owners and more senior managers of [different] teams spending more time together these days, more than I've ever seen before," Story said. "I know we have. I've spent time with a number of different owners and general mangers and management groups, just trying to find out if our issues are similar to their issues, and in fact, they are. There's a lot of benchmarking going on, a lot of people sharing war stories, trying to figure out if there's a common ground, a way we can all save money. It's hard to save money when you're also trying to increase your performance, though. Unless we all cut back, none of us are going to cut back."

And therein lies the rub. While the sport's more successful teams are certainly feeling effects of the economy to a certain degree, they're far from the near-crisis mode that's been reached by lesser operations at the far end of the garage. A best-case scenario is that the current financial squeeze only widens the already-existent competitive gap between the sport's haves and have-nots. Worst case? That some operations don't survive.

"I think it's possible that the car counts will go down," said Bartelli, the marketing officer at Petty, "because you have a situation where you have one group of owners whose businesses are quite healthy. You have another group of owners whose businesses are stable, let's call it, but there is certainly less opportunity for them to make the forward-looking investments than the first group. And then there's a third group, where it's literally day-to-day and hand-to-mouth. That third group, I think, they're struggling, obviously, and I think it's only going to get tougher for them. Where we might see a reduction in car count is fewer of those guys showing up."

That could already be happening. Waltrip's Norris talked about fielding three cars for 2009 -- one for Waltrip, another for Reutimann, and a third in an alliance with JTG/Daugherty Racing and driver Marcos Ambrose. That plan omits the third solely-Waltrip car driven for most of this year by rookie Michael McDowell.

"If you were going to be fiscally responsible to your ownership, yes, you will see fewer Cup cars. If you're fiscally responsible," Norris said. "If you take a leap of faith and bring in racecars unsponsored and take that money out of other places thinking that you'll recover it long term, I think you'll be sadly mistaken."

Autostock

Will the reality be only the top-notch teams will be able to test regularly?

Story doesn't believe the end result will be starting fields of fewer than 43 cars. "Throughout the history of the sport, there's always been somebody to take your place," he said. "If you don't show up, somebody else will." But there is the inescapable sense that some race teams, after years of talking about saving money, are now actually going to have to do it. For mid-level organizations, research and development could be a popular target for cuts. Norris said the Waltrip team may not have the money to test as many times as NASCAR's revised 2009 policy will allow.

"We will do what every other family in America is doing as an individual group. We're going to have to pinch pennies," Norris said. "We're going to have to be very fiscally responsible. If you have $1,000 in your bank account, you don't write a check for $2,000, or it will bounce. We have to do the same thing. We have to be very fiscally responsible as a corporation. There's no question that NASCAR teams have been just like Americans. We've been fat. We've been able to do things just because we had the money to do it. There are a lot of things we can do without. We think they're necessary, but there are a lot of things that we could do without, and if we ever got into a situation where we had to do without, then we could definitely cut and save."

Runaway spending has been an issue in NASCAR for years. Muhleman, the sports consultant, wonders if the current economic climate gives the sanctioning body the perfect opportunity to reign it in.

"The old excuse was, well, it costs more and more each year. Horsepower costs money. We have to hire new people every year, we have to get better equipment every year," he said. "Well, you don't have to when there's no money there. Have to is a product of a good economy. One of the things I hope will happen is that NASCAR, in these unprecedented times, this would be a good time for them to look at the unprecedented cost of racing regulations. They will never have a better chance. Every $5 million they can knock off the annual costs of racing is going to be like found money to these teams, for at least the near future."

As much as some may welcome it, team executives don't expect that to happen. Several of the initiatives NASCAR has presented in recent years -- the new car and more limited testing policy chief among them -- were originally intended as cost-cutting measures. Teams found ways to spend more anyway. And even though they compete under NASCAR sanctioning, race organizations are still private businesses responsible for balancing their own books.

"I think the teams have to take that responsibility for themselves," Story said. "I think NASCAR provides us a playing field. They provide us a free market enterprise, basically. They give us an opportunity to come here and compete. They're not requiring us to come here and compete. They allow us to do it. Each team has to be responsible for its own bottom line. There are certainly ways we know we can be better, and save money, and reallocate money, perhaps. But I don't think it's NASCAR's responsibility to show us how to make money. We have to do that ourselves. It's been that way forever in this sport."

Norris agrees. "NASCAR tries to come up with ways to save owners from themselves," he said. "NASCAR hasn't dictated that everyone has to have a seven-post rig and a pull-down rig, and NASCAR hasn't mandated that you have to have some of these things the race teams have. NASCAR can't save us from going from King Airs and commercial flights to jets. I say all that to say NASCAR has always tried to figure it out, but it's going to really be up to the owners to try and slow down what drivers are getting paid and what certain people are getting paid. Some of it is just going to have to right itself."

Here's the pitch

Autostock

Caterpillar is leaving Bill Davis Racing at the end of the season to join Richard Childress Racing.

It could begin with something as simple as seeing a commercial, or a corporate logo on an outfield wall during a televised baseball playoff game. That could lead to a telephone call to an agency representing the company to gauge its interest in further sports marketing, which could lead to a meeting about potentially sponsoring a NASCAR racecar, which could lead to a weekend of hospitality and oohing and aahing over polished sheet metal at a racetrack. And then it could all culminate in a signed contract and a big, splashy media presentation, complete with a show car dolled up in the new sponsor's corporate colors.

That's how it's supposed to work, at least. As with most things in life, the details are a touch more complicated. Even in good economic times, the search for a corporate sponsor can be drudgery -- full of agency contacts, leads that never pan out, and cold call after cold call after cold call. It's selling, plain and simple, and in a struggling economy that sell can be a very hard one indeed.

"If you sit back and wait for the phone to ring, it won't," DEI's Story said. "If you try to make something happen, it usually does. You can't sit back and wait for the phone to ring. If you do, you'll never get anywhere. There are a couple of teams in here that are winning a lot this year. I promise you, their phone is ringing this year. The rest of us, they're not calling us. There's not a lot of order-taking going on in NASCAR right now."

Muhleman has worked as a point man in a race team's sponsorship search, and knows the drill. "You're trying to demonstrate value: Here's a program that will build your business," the consultant said. "That's what every sponsorship comes down to. You try to demonstrate that as best you can. The problem now is, that argument is taken away. More than ever before, the sponsor is likely to say, 'Gee, that's a great idea, and I like it, but we're just afraid to make any new business decisions right now until we see what this economy is going to do.'"

But boom or bust, the search goes on. Every team embarks on some variation of the same routine, yet attempts to stress the details that they think set them apart from the rest. At Waltrip, it's "how we support our sponsors," Norris said, referring to the high-profile role team owner and frequent TV pitch man Michael Waltrip takes in cultivating the sponsor presence. At DEI, there's the association with the eternally-popular Earnhardt legacy. Petty pushes a multi-platform approach that also includes the Richard Petty Driving Experience, Kyle Petty's charity work, and the iconic image of The King himself.

"We certainly get calls because we are Petty," said Bartelli, the team's chief marketing officer. "No doubt about that. We don't get as many calls maybe as Hendrick does, or maybe even Gibbs, but we get calls because we're Petty. What might happen is, discussions might begin because someone is interested in Richard as an endorser or an ambassador. If we're doing our job or the opportunity is there, we're able to convert that into a sponsorship platform."

And everybody shows off the shop, which plays a central role in the pitch process. Team shops have ballooned in size the last decade, partly because crewmen need more room in which to work, and partly because the facilities have become showpieces for team owners trying to impress potential sponsors. That goes all the way back to the early days of DEI, which constructed a marble and glass edifice that at the time was the envy of the sport, a place still known as the Garage Majal.

"The No. 1 question from a sponsor that's never been around the sport is, why does it cost so much? How can it possibly cost that much money to operate?" Story said. "When they come to the shop, they look through the shop, and they see the number of people who are working, they see the equipment, they see the amount of technology that's being put to use, they see the fact that it's not just one racecar on a team. There's still this misconception on the part of a lot of people that this car is going to leave [Charlotte] Saturday night and go to the next racetrack. It's not like the elephants at the circus, and they're going to go to the next town. That car may not come back out for the rest of the year, and that's just the way this sport is. It's amazing when they come into the shop and go, 'Ah-ha, I get it. I understand now.' It takes a 200,000-square-foot factory basically, to race these things."

NASCAR tries to help as much as it can. The sport's marketing arm, which has offices in Charlotte and New York, offers teams marketing resources, branding expertise, and demographic information, among many other things. While NASCAR doesn't match specific sponsors with specific teams, it will forward teams information on which companies might be interested, and will host corporate groups at the racetrack in an attempt to generate interest.

"Every couple of weeks there will be some folks we've heard who are interested in this sport, so we'll bring those folks out to a track and show them the entire sport -- the track opportunities, the team opportunities, to whet their appetite, so to speak," said Jill Gregory, NASCAR's director of industry marketing. "And then, ideally, they'll get hooked once they go to a live event. We kind of pique that interest and try to pass that along to a team. So every couple of weekends we'll have a different group of folks out there. We'll do some work on trying to identify, here are some companies that aren't involved in the sport, here some categories that aren't involved in the sport, how can we get some interest generated? And once that interest is kind of ignited, then we will hopefully pass those along to a team."

Everything helps, but in this economic environment, it's never easy. Teams have been forced to get creative in their approaches, to offer partial-season deals at dollar figures that may be more manageable. But it still comes down to trying to pry away sponsorship money that some corporations may not be willing to spend.

"[NASCAR] is still a great marketing tool for a company," Story said. "Sometimes it's the price tag that scares them away. If we could get our primary sponsorships back to a more manageable level, I think people would be much more receptive to opportunities. When you talk about a $20 million sponsorship from a single company, it's a lot for them to handle."

And right now, there are a lot of team executives working the telephones, looking for just those kinds of numbers. DEI needs sponsorship for three cars. Petty needs enough for one car, and perhaps two other part-time deals. Waltrip is still looking to for half a season's worth, as is Stewart-Haas Racing. Bill Davis Racing has yet to announce a replacement for Caterpillar. Yates Racing is looking for two primary sponsors, while Gillett-Evernham Motorsports still needs one, and Chip Ganassi Racing needs a half. Oh, and it's already October. The Daytona 500 is four months away. Where is all that money going to come from?

Under such conditions, it can be difficult to remain optimistic. Norris tries his best.

"Michael is always positive," he said, referring to Waltrip. "He's of the opinion that we've seen these roller coasters before. He's not one, and nor are we, to cry wolf and say it's never going to come back and we're never going to recover. We're going to recover. The economy is going to recover, the U.S. is going to recover. There are just so many unknowns right now. It's just the perfect storm that has brewed with the credit crisis, with the Iraq war, with so many bad loans, and with two presidential candidates who are just so diametrically opposite on so many issues. When you combine all those things and you don't know ... a lot of people go, I almost want to just wait."