The way to make a dollar in racing, the old adage goes, is to start with two. It's a trite expression, to be sure, but like all such maxims it contains a nugget of truth. The quest for speed is expensive, and even in a sport that's been contracted and streamlined by an economic recession, some will still spend untold millions trying to find it. The best of them are able to do so using other people's money, securing sponsorships that allow their organizations to grow and prosper. The rest battle for crumbs, lurching along in an unforgiving sport where cash is the only thing burned faster than fuel.

Which brings us to the case of Richard Petty Motorsports, a program that by all accounts seems mired in financial difficulty, to the point where it's natural to wonder how much longer the team bearing the King's name might still be around. Last weekend at Martinsville Speedway, RPM vice president Robbie Loomis said the organization had every intention of completing this season and moving into 2011. And yet, a recent SportsBusiness Journal story described a team burdened by debt, with little in the way of sponsorship value, and searching for investors to help keep it afloat.

That's a dangerous combination, and it emphasizes just how tenuous ownership in auto racing can be. Drivers put their lives on the line every time they slide into a race car. Crew chiefs can get fired on a whim. But the riskiest job in NASCAR belongs to the team owner, who operates without any kind of safety net, and can see his entire investment go up in smoke should the wrong combination of economic conditions arise. Like entrepreneurs operating a start-up business, race teams often face boom-or-bust scenarios -- they make it big, or they don't make it at all. To be in the middle is to be slowly bled to death, dollar by dollar, until the end.

Granted, George Gillett, RPM's majority owner, hasn't helped himself. The most successful owners in NASCAR are those who make it their priority, who are at the facility overseeing the organization's day-to-day needs. Absentee owners, by contrast, have a wretched track record. Gillett makes his primary residence in Colorado, where he owns several ski resorts. For a two-year period, he owned the Montreal Canadiens hockey team and the Liverpool football club (both of which since sold) in addition to the racing operation. Fair or not, he's perceived as an overextended absentee owner, someone seen rarely at the race track, who bought a team that showed great promise under Ray Evernham and chased it to the edge of financial ruin. And you wonder why Kasey Kahne wanted out?

And yet, there are men who dedicated their entire lives to NASCAR, owners who were in the shop every day, and still suffered a similar fate. That's because in NASCAR, race teams are essentially private businesses, subject to the same risk as a new restaurant or a local hardware store -- going out of business. In most other major sports, teams are franchised; that is, awarded on a finite basis to a select few who have the ability to pay an often exorbitant entry fee. You want to start an NFL team, be prepared to cobble together a coalition of businessmen and local leaders who can front the hundreds of millions of dollars it takes to even be considered. You want to start a NASCAR team, you open a shop and roll out a car and take it to the track. That's always been the beauty of NASCAR, the fact that in theory anyone can turn out a vehicle and compete against Rick Hendrick. (Continued)