Brian Wolfe has learned to live with less and, hopefully, make it work.

The director of Ford's North American motorsports program since the middle of 2008 came from the company's power train unit, where he says budget and personnel cuts were a way of life long before the economy began crashing down around everyone's heads.

"There's no easy jobs at the OEMs [original equipment manufacturers]," Wolfe said Thursday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "I've been at Ford for 27 years now in a variety of leadership positions and you learn to focus on what's really critical to be successful.

"And being successful means I have to have a winning platform and championship capable teams and I have to be improving the favorable opinion of Ford to drive showroom traffic and sell some vehicles," he added. "That's what is important to us."

Like his competitors at General Motors, Chrysler and Toyota, all of whom compete against Ford in NASCAR's Sprint Cup Series, Wolfe has had to be creative this year.

The Ford Racing budgets were cut by more than 30 percent across the board and Wolfe's staff was reduced before the season by 10 percent.

That has forced Wolfe and Ford to make some hard choices.

"In NASCAR, it made us focus on Cup and Cup exclusively," Wolfe said. "In the Truck Series and the Nationwide Series, we backed away from a lot of our, if not all of our financial backing, although we're still offering technical assistance to insure the cars perform as well as they can on the track, and a contingency program where we reward some people for that." (Continued)