Are the top drivers really the best?
I am on record in believing that the impact of team finances on baseball teams’ success is wildly overstated. I am increasingly coming to believe, though, that the effect of team finances on NASCAR drivers’ success may be much greater than acknowledged, to the point of dwarfing the impact of differences in drivers’ skills.
Start with a look at the driver standings more than halfway through the 2007 season: the top ten drivers come from only four teams, all of which field at least three cars in each race: Hendrick, RoushFenway, Childress, and Gibbs. Conversely, the highest-ranking single-car team is Robby Gordon, driving for himself and currently 26th in driver points. That alone seems like a strong piece of evidence that economies of scale in engineering, pit crew training, and other areas offset material differences in driver ability; can anyone claim with a straight face that 19th-ranked JJ Yeley is a better driver than Robby Gordon?
The remaining three-car teams are either right behind the rest (DEI boasts the 11th- and 12th-ranked drivers), or suffer from team-specific problems such as Waltrip’s qualifying issues and Ginn’s failure to secure primary sponsors for two of its three cars.
What’s more, the top-ten drivers have won 15 out of 19 races so far this season. Not shocking, since you’d expect people who win races to be high in the points standings. But look at the remaining races - all were won by drivers for teams with three or more cars as well. The trend is little better looking at top-five finishes; of 95 top-five places through 19 races, just 13 belong to drivers for teams with fewer than three cars. Perhaps this is just the acceleration of a trend that has been in place for some time; in the past 17 years, only twice - Alan Kulwicki in 1992 and Dale Jarrett in 1999 - was the Cup won by a driver for other than the four teams that currently own the top ten.
This also offers some insight into Junior’s decision to join Hendrick. If he wants maximize his chance to win a championship, his choices are limited to four teams. Roush already has too many teams (plus they drive Fords and he wanted to remain with Chevys). Driving for Childress would only put him further into his father’s shadow. So he really only had two teams to choose from.
The Car of Tomorrow was supposed to reduce the larger teams’ advantages by standardizing a lower-cost car. That may turn out to be the case in the long run, but so far Hendrick drivers have been even more dominant in COT races than in non-COT ones. I have to think that was a factor in the draconian penalties NASCAR hit Hendrick cars with for violations of non-existent specs.
In any event, if NASCAR fails to act the problem will likely grow more acute as larger teams grow more financially sophisticated. Jack Roush just sold half of his company to Fenway Sports Group for a fraction of its market value in an attempt to expand his team’s sponsorship opportunities. Ginn appears poised to merge with DEI, which would turn two underperforming three-car teams into an imposing four-car team. Evernham, the most successful team with only two cars, is nearing a deal to sell a stake to Montreal Canadiens owner George Gillett for the same strategic reasons that motivated the Roush-Fenway deal. The default future for the sport may be a bifurcated landscape, with a half-dozen teams with revenues of over $100 million competing for all the glory, and everyone else doing not much more than filling out the field.
July 30th, 2007 at 10:15 am
You address it in your initial paragraph, but I’m still extremely bemused that this concern comes directly from the mouth.. er, fingers of a Yankees fan.