As manufacturers teeter, race teams watch, wait (cont'd)

Today, most of the bills are paid by sponsorship money, which for championship-level organizations can run into tens of millions of dollars a year, far outdistancing the cash that manufacturers put in. Nobody wants to lose any money, especially in a recessed economy that's made sponsors more difficult to find. But should one of the carmakers go belly-up, insiders believe the results would be far from debilitating.

"From the standpoint of financially, I don't see [manufacturer money] being the lifeblood of the teams," said championship-winning car owner Rick Hendrick, who owns a number of car dealerships and fields four Chevrolet teams.

"I don't think anybody in NASCAR is dependent 100 percent on the manufacturers. I don't know anybody that's totally a factory deal. Evernham Gillett, it had been sponsored by Dodge in races, but that's kind of gone away. I don't know anybody that's totally looking to the manufacturer for all of their income by any stretch."

The same opinion is held by some on the race track side, where facilities receive promotional and advertising money from manufacturers. Several tracks have lost some of that income as manufacturers have cut back. Texas Motor Speedway president Eddie Gossage, whose facility has a tie-in with Chevrolet, said the manufacturer buys signs, suites and promotional rights, and provides the staff with free vehicles to drive. Should GM go under, the track would risk losing all that. It wouldn't be ideal, Gossage admits, but ultimately those losses wouldn't be irreplaceable.

"It would be like losing the Acme Corp., which buys a suite from you and some signs and tickets and things like that," he said. "Obviously, you don't want to do that, but we lose sponsors every year and pick up new sponsors every year. It's the constant ebb and flow of the business."

All of which may explain why, within the walls of a race track, there's plenty of concern over the manufacturers' viability but little discernible panic. NASCAR is full of veteran competitors and car owners who remember times when carmakers left the sport, and the series still carried on. If a manufacturer disappears or is forced to abandon its motorsports program, some organizations certainly will take a financial hit. But almost no one expects a devastated NASCAR as a result.

"The parts and the pieces and the support from a technical standpoint that we get from General Motors is crucial, and we need that," said Chevrolet driver Jeff Gordon. "They are fantastic at it. It's not that we don't want that, we do. We don't want that to go away. If we didn't have that support and if they went away, does it mean that Hendrick Motorsports would have to cut our employees in half? I don't think so."

"I think we will adjust," added Hendrick, Gordon's car owner. "We need them in the sport for a ton of reasons: technology, support, vehicles, it's going to hurt if they're not there. But I've raced when I had very little help from them, and there are some teams out there that get virtually nothing. It's just going to be part of the adjustment the whole world is going to go through."

As for the specter of bankruptcy? Not necessarily as bad as it sounds, Gossage points out.

"I think GM and Chrysler are going to survive," he said. "People have a misunderstanding about bankruptcy. It doesn't mean that you vanish, necessarily. It could mean that, but they're too big and important to vanish. It just means they're going to reorganize and basically not pay their bills and get dispensation for it."

Even though GM and Chrysler are facing bleak times -- Ford and Toyota, the other two carmakers that compete in NASCAR, are on better financial footing -- it's easy to find optimism. Car owners may be planning for a worst-case scenario, but that doesn't necessarily mean they expect to see it.

"I know that talking to the people at Chevrolet, they're very committed to the racing program. They realize the value of it with not only the rest of corporate America, but what it does to our nation. It still goes back to 'win on Sunday, sell on Monday.' This is a sport that's been good for the auto industry, and vice versa. I do know how committed they are," said Tony Stewart, who owns a two-car Chevrolet team.

"I'm very confident that the racing side is going to be fine. How it's affected, I think only time will tell. But talking to the people at GM, I mean, they're very committed to this program and understand the value of the racing side."