It’s time to drop down to Busch

By Mike Harper

CJM Racing, the No. 72 Nextel Cup Series team has earned my respect.

I’ve found in my professional career that being a decision-maker for an organization can be one of the toughest jobs around. I would imagine being an owner in the Nextel Cup Series ranks right up as being one of the hardest jobs in the land, because the level of stress regarding the race-team operations and retaining valuable sponsorship would be a difficult challenge to say the least.

In today’s Nextel Cup Series we’re seeing a totally different level of business. It’s not for the weak at heart or even the cheap at heart. To compete you’ve got to have a rich and aggressive backbone to even make it in the sport.

It doesn’t matter who you are, what kind of famous name you have, the bottom line is if you can’t cut it in NASCAR’s elite series, you’ll end up watching the race from home or ultimately closing shop.

This week on my radio show I had the privilege of interviewing driver Andy Belmont. I consider Andy a friend and one thing I respect about Andy is he speaks his mind. He’ll tell it like it is even when it’s not the popular opinion. But in most cases Andy is spot-on.

In our talk, several discussion points stood out in my mind. But one point keeps ringing in my head and it surrounds how the sport (ARCA & NASCAR) has changed. From the cost of doing business to actual team business tactics on obtaining sponsorships – they’ve all changed from the way it was done in the past. It’s the new NASCAR.

It seems like it was only yesterday the big discussion was about "field fillers" because the Nextel Cup Series didn’t have enough cars in a 43-car field that could call themselves competitive. Today, competitive drivers and sponsors are going home instead of spending race day on the track and in my opinion that’s criminal.

Millions of dollars are thrown at one chance, one shot to make a weekend race. It’s past the point of ridiculous!

The No. 72 CJM racing team has decided to pull the plug on their Nextel Cup Series efforts and go Busch racing. I applaud this move. It’s a good sound business decision and I think many more should follow CJM's example.

Michael Waltrip’s NAPA team can’t make a race these days, Red Bull Racing is struggling, Kenny Wallace has gone from racing every weekend to only when he makes a race and Jeremy Mayfield hasn’t seen the green flag drop on a Sunday afternoon this season. I feel these teams should revisit their business plans and build their teams within the Busch Series. I say work up - isn’t that what the Busch Series was built for?

Throwing all your eggs in the Nextel Cup Series basket is proving to be a mistake for these teams. Especially for some of these start-up teams and in today’s racing environment it won’t take too long before your dreams end up burnt scrambled eggs sitting at the bottom of the garbage can.