Start and Park - yay or nay?

[mrfizz]

This season there seems to have been an increase in the number of teams who start and park - especially in the NNS. So whats your views on this? Personally I don't really have an issue with it as long as it's not half the field. I take Joe Nemechek as a good example of where it provides a means to an end. Joe S&P's in Cup to help fund his Nationwide efforts where he always runs full races and finishes top 20 most weeks. He does it so the employees in his small operation get a paycheck every week, and Joe gets his racing fix.

I can see an issue when teams who S&P are qualifying ahead of others who will attempt a full race, although if you can't qualify faster than an underfunded S&P team with old equipment then perhaps you shouldn't be trying!

[fieldodreams79]

I don't really like it but the only other option is a field less than 43, which is what you get 5 laps in, so I have never really understood the complaints.

Not sure how it works business wise for them, but depending on the driver, they'll score $20K plus/weekend for pretty much just showing up.

[Clive Brown]

I detest Start and Park; my view is that you should come to race, or not come at all. It would be a rank injustice if any team intending to run the full distance were to be deprived of a start, perhaps through a crash or a blown engine in qualifying, by one of the S&P brigade. I'd rather see a field of 35 starters in NSC and NNS than have to endure the weekly litany of "brakes/electrical/vibration, etc., etc."

The solution is simple; pay out the place money from the prize fund as a direct proportion of the number of laps completed out of the total race distance. Thus if the car is classified in say 37th place, the listed prize money for 37th place is $40,000, but the car only completes 30 out of a total scheduled race distance of 300 laps (10%); then it only receives 10% of the prize money ($4,000). End of start-and-parkers at a stroke!

This won't happen, of course, because NASCAR covertly encourages S&P operations to disguise the current lack of competitive runners.

[MJ_N_09]

They had to cut the grid from 43 to 40 for Nationwide because of this issue. Just too many people were doing it. They should do the same for Cup.

[mrfizz]

I'm sure I read something a while back that Nascar were clamping down on it by inspecting cars that in their opinion have parked up for no good reason? But I haven't heard anything since. Surely it can't be that hard to inspect a car that has stopped because of 'brakes' or 'overheating'?Perhaps they are taking a more sympathetic view in these harsh economic times where even established, top-name teams are struggling for sponsors, let alone small one-car operations with no-name drivers.

Although Clive's idea is a good one, I can't see Nascar implementing anything like that. Fans already have a dim view of those in charge and I think reducing money for S&P teams would lead to teams closing and people being out of work. It would be a PR disaster.

[Clive Brown]

Originally Posted by mrfizz

I'm sure I read something a while back that Nascar were clamping down on it by inspecting cars that in their opinion have parked up for no good reason? But I haven't heard anything since. Surely it can't be that hard to inspect a car that has stopped because of 'brakes' or 'overheating'?

I'm sure you're right. But if you think about it, the S&P excuse book is all about dynamic conditions which cannot be verified by static examination, unlike 'blown engine', where rods and pistons might well be hanging out of the sides of the block like wilting flowers dangling over the side of a pot, and the motor will neither start nor run.

If teams were only paid place money as a proportion of the total race distance completed, I wonder how many of the current S&P teams would then attempt the full distance, as opposed to just shutting up shop?

It may in the short term have a serious effect upon a small number of people, but I wonder how much the loss of S&P teams would really impact on NNS and NSC competition in the long run? It would at least remove a number of mobile chicanes from that period of a race after the start when the leaders have caught the S&Pers before they've, err, P'ed.

[MJ_N_09]

Yeah, seems like we need to NOT force start and parkers out of the series, but find ways to encourage them to attempt the full races. That way, everyone's happy; more cars racing, and people won't lose jobs.

[Clive Brown]

It is an uncomfortable fact that despite NASCAR not overtly condoning the S&P brigade, it does not actively act against them. The new #44 NSC team openly declared its intention to S&P, yet NASCAR took no action.

I'd hate to think of crew members unable to put food on their families' table because of a clampdown on S&P forcing teams to close their doors, yet on the other hand, should teams that have no intention of actually competing be allowed a start?

On balance, I'd like to see a gradual strengthening of the competition rules with the end objective of cutting out S&P completely.

[Axeman444]

for the economic students out there, isn't it a similar scenario to those industries that enjoy tariffs on imported products, so that this funding for a "protected industry" from paying S&P'ers does not encourage them to be the best/leanest they can be and finish a race, and potentially even challenge for a good result?

I don't agree with it, but don't see an alternative until times are better and there is more sponsorship dollars out there to get 43 cars that will attempt to finish the race, which hopefully means the S&P'ers are weeded out naturally.

Alternatively, if they are going to S&P, then I would be happy if they did it for say 75% of the races with the prizemoney going towards running the other 25% of races to the end

[MJ_N_09]

I remember near the end of 2010 where for whatever reason, the S&Ps were told to run at least to halfway in the race. Doing that again will be a huge step in the right direction to fix the problem.

An example: http://www.jayski.com/stats/2010/res...al-results.pdf The lowest finishing start and parker completed 190 laps. That's quite good. Here, http://www.jayski.com/stats/2010/res...al-results.pdf the first car who retired went out at lap 197.

[Jacques Rabbit]

In the spirit of "Limelight" by Rush, with some shifting of syllables here and there, a song about Curtis Key's The Motorsports Group...

Driving in a big race,
Approaches the unreal,
For those who steer the wheel,
In draft lock with Lewandoski,
Behind the leader's pace.

Last in these twenty-two rows,
Coming to the green,
With insufficient means,
They must go to the garage,
To bring this car next week.

Driving in a big race,
Is not quite what it seems,
For those like TMG.
Those who drive for Key,
Must sit aside for the duration,
Park their cars with a vibration,
Third lap cessation,
Four start-and-park entries.

Parking in a garage stall,
Collecting a great prize,
Checkbook balance will rise,
They will defend what Curtis does,
And keep it off the wall.

All these teams intend to park,
And buy one set of tires:
Scott Speed's the one they hired,
To never go the distance,
Or past the halfway mark.

Driving in a big race,
Is not quite what it seems,
For those like TMG.
Those who drive for Key,
Must sit aside for the duration,
Park their cars with a vibration,
Third lap cessation,
Four start-and-park entries.

Third lap cessation,
Four start-and-park entries.

So, yes, I love start-and-park.

[MJ_N_09]

*applause*

[Speedworx]

Teams can't afford more than one set of tyres when they don't have a full season budget.

Even teams in the top 30 in points (Germain #13) doesn't have a full budget and has to S&P. Its a sign of the times.

One solution would be take some sets from the big teams and give them to the others (but the big teams pay for them)

[HJJ]

I looked this up because of an article in this week's Autoweek on Start and Park-ers.

Joe Nemechek ran for points in the Nationwide Series. He made 31 races on the Cup side with 29 DNF's and made $2,534,419.

In the Nationwide Series Joe finished 11th in the final points (he did miss one race) and won $707,128 for the year. I have to find out how much the check for 11th paid in the final points tally.

But over $3.2 MIL in winnings is not bad and I'm sure that he made money.

Not bad to run 14 laps and retire from "Handling" issues.

[MJ_N_09]

He made quite a killing, didn't he? He has the Cup team solely to fund his Nationwide Series effort. He's one of the few exceptions that was very profitable, as many of the teams that start and park eventually cut their races or completely close down.

[IceMan_PJN]

If a team doesn't already have the funding to participate, they need to withdraw from the sport. How many other motorsports have folks paid for just showing up? In F1 you need $100 million or more, per season, and while I don't recall how much teams win I believe it's a fraction of what it costs to field a team, and if you're an upstart backmarker I think you don't get anything. You definitely won't fund a new F1 team getting nine-digit winnings by just showing up and retiring after five laps.

Originally Posted by Clive Brown

The solution is simple; pay out the place money from the prize fund as a direct proportion of the number of laps completed out of the total race distance. Thus if the car is classified in say 37th place, the listed prize money for 37th place is $40,000, but the car only completes 30 out of a total scheduled race distance of 300 laps (10%); then it only receives 10% of the prize money ($4,000). End of start-and-parkers at a stroke!

That would affect the entire field. If Tony Stewart gets wrecked out five laps in, he gets a handshake and a pack of gum because he not only finished fortieth or worse but on top of that only made it to like 1.7% of the race distance.

[Clive Brown]

Originally Posted by IceMan_PJN

That would affect the entire field. If Tony Stewart gets wrecked out five laps in, he gets a handshake and a pack of gum because he not only finished fortieth or worse but on top of that only made it to like 1.7% of the race distance.

Yes it would, but the bulk of the majority of teams who are not start-and-parkers rarely retire early either through wrecks or for mechanical reasons such as a blown motor. Furthermore, if I understand the funding of a major Sprint Cup team correctly, their share of the prize money pot for a given race is merely the icing on the cake, as their costs are met primarily through sponsorship.

I've read somewhere that Clint Bowyer took $5m of Five Hour Energy money to MWR, and that that same $5m was previously not enough to have retained his ride at RCR. I've also seen $12m quoted as the price to run a full season in one of the Grandee teams' cars. If I wanted to sponsor Kermit J. Hornswoggle III from Bigotsville, AL. , for a full Cup season, then how much would JGR, RCR, RFR, or SHR want to put this promising young hotshoe in the car?

What is the actual cost of running a top-level Cup car, before adding a profit margin?

[Scooter185]

Originally Posted by IceMan_PJN

If a team doesn't already have the funding to participate, they need to withdraw from the sport. How many other motorsports have folks paid for just showing up? In F1 you need $100 million or more, per season, and while I don't recall how much teams win I believe it's a fraction of what it costs to field a team, and if you're an upstart backmarker I think you don't get anything. You definitely won't fund a new F1 team getting nine-digit winnings by just showing up and retiring after five laps.



That would affect the entire field. If Tony Stewart gets wrecked out five laps in, he gets a handshake and a pack of gum because he not only finished fortieth or worse but on top of that only made it to like 1.7% of the race distance.

I'm not sure how the purse is divided up per race, but points are only given to the top ten. That makes a huge difference at the end of the year when the teams get paid for their final WCC standings, and only the top 10 teams get paid. The back 3 teams fought for the last WCC paying spot based on finish position -since they scored 0 points- so they were racing for a lot of money.

[Jacques Rabbit]

Caterham got around $48,000,000 (USD) in 2012 for P10 in the WCC. Red Bull just shy of $100,000,000. The WCC covers a larger percentage of the budget than the NASCAR title does, but not a significant portion (between 25 and 30%).

NASCAR pays teams to show up because the TV contract (the largest source of revenue for all the tracks, by the way, much more than attendance, hence you don't see races dropping off the Sprint Cup calendar like they do in other series despite declining attendance) mandates 43 drivers start the Cup races.

I am hoping the next TV contract has eliminated that rule and lowered it to 40, like in NNS.

Of course, the next TV contract is outlandishly over-paid for given declining ratings, and while high TV revenue is good for the circuits, it's bad for the TV viewer. The more FOX pays for NASCAR, the more commercials it needs to sell...I just want to illustrate that pre-2001, the TV broadcast on any channel would cover the entire field and show a wide variety of drivers. It would go where the action was, or where the stories were. Likewise, rights to an on-board camera weren't as overpriced then, so you'd have an on-board with Mike Bliss or Joe Nemechek or whomever. Plus, there was usually one generic on-board sponsored by someone not on a car that they would put on one of the smaller teams that didn't have a sponsor (i.e. Derrike Cope's cars).

Now, nearly everything you see in a NASCAR broadcast is paid-for. Why are we watching Jeff Gordon now? AARP paid. Hey, we've seen all of Dale's pit stops! National Guard paid. Here's Danica Patrick, she's a lap down. GoDaddy paid. Etc, etc, etc. You end up only seeing a few cars every race, and missing interesting storylines developing in the race because the TV deal is so expensive they have to sell even the race broadcast time. Any IndyCar fan may remember missing the final restart because there was a provision that mandated the final one be shown from the GoDaddy.com car of James Hinchcliffe.

So, with both start-and-park and other things, the TV deal, though good for NASCAR to have not lost value despite some of the poorest ratings since the 2001 switch-over, has some implications that I don't really like.

Knowing how much NBC has overbid for the NHL and Formula One in the U.S., I can only imagine they'll offer something ridiculous for NASCAR, and probably mandate there be 50 cars in the field every weekend.

[Clive Brown]

Originally Posted by Jacques Rabbit

Caterham got around $48,000,000 (USD) in 2012 for P10 in the WCC. Red Bull just shy of $100,000,000. The WCC covers a larger percentage of the budget than the NASCAR title does, but not a significant portion (between 25 and 30%).

I'm not quite sure what you're saying here; are you suggesting that Red Bull got ~$100,000,000 as WCC winners, but that this only represents 25-30% of their budget?

I'm interested in what you have to say about the terms of NASCAR's TV contract obliging them to have 43 starters. This surely leaves them in thrall to the start-and-park teams. What happens if only 42 cars are entered for a given race, or if wrecks in practice or qualifying take out a small team's only car, thus reducing the number below 43?

[Jacques Rabbit]

Originally Posted by Clive Brown

I'm not quite sure what you're saying here; are you suggesting that Red Bull got ~$100,000,000 as WCC winners, but that this only represents 25-30% of their budget?

I'm interested in what you have to say about the terms of NASCAR's TV contract obliging them to have 43 starters. This surely leaves them in thrall to the start-and-park teams. What happens if only 42 cars are entered for a given race, or if wrecks in practice or qualifying take out a small team's only car, thus reducing the number below 43?

It's good you pointed that out because I was using older numbers. It seems like F1 budgets have come down a bit for a top team in recent years. $250,000,000 to $300,000,000 sounds like a top team, so maybe the WCC prize is more 33-40% of the budget. I'm still stuck in the old days when Toyota would drop $400,000,000 to go nowhere.

I honestly don't know what happens when you violate that term. The lack of a Humphrey-Smith car in the show certainly isn't a material breach; I doubt Reed Sorenson's mom even bothers to watch when he's in the 91.

I assume there are liquidated damages which impose some financial penalty on NASCAR for having a Cup race with fewer than 43 cars, and those damages must exceed the $60,000 to $70,000 the last place car is getting just for showing up.

The justification, I'd imagine, is that the TV contracts obviously want more than 43 entered if they're airing qualifying and, as far as the race goes (even if only 43 entered), they don't want people to think NASCAR is "weak" or "struggling" to fill the field. The casual fan won't notice the start-and-parks as long as ESPN doesn't tell you they were ever there; the casual fan might notice "hey, there are only 41 cars today" and apparently turn the TV off screaming "NASCAR IS DOOMED!"

Moreover, having 43 cars start means a big wreck on the first lap could be really, really, really big, and the TV networks would loooooove that.

The whole provision seems ridiculous to me, thinking through it. In theory, does having more cars make a better race? Maybe, from the angle of "any 43 could win!" But when the cars you'd lose aren't even going to run more than 3 laps, why have them?

When you consider that purse money is recycled TV revenue, and the TV contracts require 43 cars, the TV networks are paying the start-and-park teams to show up. Who could justify that? At least with the FOM requirement of minimum teams (10), they aren't paying the excess turds (Marussia and HRT) who just so happen to show up.

In short, NASCAR can pay these teams with the TV networks' money to satisfy their obligation to the TV networks. If they don't do that, they have to pay the TV networks with their own money, which will be a greater expense.

It's all justified by the fact that, on the surface, NASCAR's ninth most popular driver Bobby Labonte finishing P27 in a field of 43 cars looks better than P27 in a field of 35, I guess.

[Paradise City]

In principle, I'd assign an inspector to assess the consumable resources (fuel, tyres) of a team to see if they have a minimum of these consumables to complete a race. If they don't, don't let them start, if they finish the race prematurely, confiscate the excess.

[NaBUru38]

To prevent start and parks, I would pay Nascar drivers only if they finish 90% of the leader's laps. With the money saved, they could increase the purse for finishers, so the regulars would get roughly the same money. By they way, drivers outside the 90% of laps shouldn't get any points either.

[courageous]

Might see even more of them in 2013.
as the top 35 are not locked in any more, there's more chance for somebody to sneak through qualy ahead of serious runners.

[Clive Brown]

I would think I dislike the whole S&P farago more than most, but I thought that in post#21, Jacques Rabbit explained very lucidly just why it is that NASCAR tacitly condones the practice. Needless to say, it's all about money.

If, as JR says, NASCAR is contractually obliged to provide 43 starters in Cup, then 43 starters there will be, even if ten of those mysteriously succumb to various unverifiable ailments during the course of the first twenty laps or so....