They have formed something of a brotherhood, these men who once built race cars and race engines and ran race shops, and now have nowhere to go. Once in a while several of these out-of-work mechanics and fabricators and engineers will get together, to eat dinner or watch a ballgame or just talk. And every now and then, a familiar conversation topic will arise.

Does anyone even realize we still exist?

It's easy to see why so many of them feel that way. It's been more than a year since the "Black Monday" layoffs that put an estimated 1,200 NASCAR team employees out of work, a recession-driven purge that followed the 2008 season. Now, with a new campaign dawning and the Daytona 500 but a month away, the garage area is considerably leaner -- there are fewer teams, and those that survived have learned to make do with fewer people. But the starting fields are still full, and the top drivers still pull down seven-figure salaries, and the races still go on and the champagne still sprays in Victory Lane. Although sponsorship is far from the sure thing it once was, it all creates a perception of a sport that has weathered the storm.

Don Gemmell knows better. Last week he posted 20 more resumes to dontcheckup.com, the Web site he founded to lend hope and support to men and women put out of work by sponsorship shortages, team mergers, or other factors that have adversely affected the industry over the last year. There were the roughly 200 people laid off when Richard Petty Motorsports, which will field Roush-powered Fords this coming season, shut down its engine shop late last year. There are the occasional layoffs by larger, more successful, seemingly more secure organizations, which aren't getting the sponsorship value they once were, and are reducing their payroll as a result.

And then there are the people still out of work a year later, men and women for whom auto racing was all they had ever known, people who are subsisting on government-supplied unemployment checks and supplemental health insurance, and are beginning to realize the industry they once called home may never have room for them again. A few find contract work. A few got hired only to get laid off again. A year after Black Monday, it's become increasingly clear that the sport has endured a painful type of correction, and that the expansive personnel rolls once so indicative of NASCAR teams may be a permanent relic of the past.

"We're getting a growing number of people leaving the area," said Gemmell, a former production scheduler at Dale Earnhardt Inc. who, along with hundreds of others, lost his job the week after the 2008 season and has yet to find permanent work. "And some of whom have called and said, 'Remove all my information from the site, because we're leaving the house.' We have had about a dozen guys who have walked away from their homes. They can't stay and they can't afford to keep going, so some of them have decided to make that choice. There are some drastic changes that people are making."

Gemmell's Web site, which he designed with the help of a computer-savvy neighbor, posts resumes for potential employers and provides information on everything from insurance to real estate to continuing education. For former race shop employees, it's become something of a lifeboat. There are small shreds of positive news -- a 20-week extension on unemployment benefits because of the large percentage of people out of work in North Carolina, an eight-month extension on the subsidy for federal health insurance coverage, a real estate professional who has worked some magic and helped some people save their homes, former track promoter Humpy Wheeler putting one fabricator to work on a personal project. (Continued)