NASCAR feels gas crunch
The major issue teams face in fuels costs isn't the races, it's all the traveling between them.
By BRANT JAMES
Published April 22, 2006
Geoff Smith wasn't counting nautical air miles (1,537) or gallons of fuel used (more than 8,000) from his seat aboard one of Roush Racing's two Boeing 727s as his flight from Charlotte landed in Phoenix on Thursday. But as president of NASCAR's largest team (12 cars in the top three series) and a man very much attuned to most every dollar that flows into and out of the organization, he had a strong inclination of how much operating margin had been sucked into those turbofans the last few hours.
Nothing like a date in Phoenix during a spike in fuel prices to bust the budget.
"This doesn't come without a consequence," he said.
Out at Phoenix International Raceway, Keith Smith, driver of Matt Kenseth's transporter, had a much more personal knowledge of how much it was costing the company. Whether caused by unrest in Nigeria, anxiety over Iraq or the anticipation of millions of Chinese suddenly dreaming of owning cars, prices had exploded all across the country. Smith shelled out nearly $600 of company cash on each of three gas stops on the 2,100-mile trek. Four miles a gallon makes for an expensive trip.
"One of the things that's just strange to see now is how gasoline is so much higher than diesel," he said. "That used to never be the case, but, on my trip out here, diesel cost me between $2.60 and $2.89 per gallon, while gasoline, on average was over $3."
Major professional and college sports swim in gasoline. Lots of it. Teams - players, coaches and equipment - are hauled coast to coast to support multibillion-dollar sports/entertainment industries. But racing in general and NASCAR in particular is more affected than most when prices skyrocket. And it has nothing to do with race cars running on fossil fuel. Lugging mini race shops in huge transporters, motor coaches for drivers and owners to sleep in and flying team personnel to 36 races from New Hampshire to Southern California is vastly more expensive than shipping a hockey team and a truck full of gear.
Two points races in the sport's hub of Charlotte are the only cheap trips.
"Teams have their budgets and they have to adjust when things happen," NASCAR spokesman Jim Hunter said, "but we're like everyone else in America: we have to pay it and go on."
With gas prices one of few purchase variables teams cannot control and with the possibility they could remain high into the future, teams might have to rethink how they do business. The series responded to an oil crunch in 1974 by shortening races - which slightly reduced the amount of fuel the cars used on the track - but it can't shorten the distance to Phoenix, or Fontana, Calif., or Washington state, if a track is built there. Putting races in new far-flung West Coast markets has been a boon for NASCAR's national appeal, but it has added another burden to the teams that provide the show.
"Phoenix, the West Coast races are very expensive transportation races, very expensive and they're not necessarily the biggest purse races either," Smith said. "So what we have to do is, we monitor our costs very closely with regard to travel expenses and cost per mile and the fuel. So if we're identifying that there's a half a million (dollar) fuel increase, then that does have an impact because it affects what we can spend on salaries, what we can spend on engineering projects, its affects our ability to fund the core competition.
"It's just a shame. You have to ride it and you have to adjust all your other business opportunities around that."
NASCAR participants assert that racing's thirst for fossil fuel is no more damaging to the economy or environment than any other sport or entertainment industry. Or a commuter in an SUV stuck in traffic. The Devil Rays logged about 43,000 air miles last season and the Bucs 18,598. Under normal conditions, the Boeing 727 on which the Lightning flew to Ottawa for Friday night's playoff game would have consumed about 7,000 gallons of fuel.
The vehicles NASCAR races and uses to get to the track are horrific in terms of gas mileage, but the sport defends itself by saying its race gas - currently leaded but could change to unleaded in the Busch and truck series this year - is specially refined for the series by Sunoco and therefore does not draw from the national consumer supply. NASCAR also considers its 6,000 gallon per weekend usage modest when compared to national daily consumption, which is estimated to be about 380-million gallons. Smith thinks sports gets a pass because of what it provides with every tank.
"I think if this traveling were being done for private interest only - not let's go play a basketball game or have a car race," Smith said, "if there is a significant public interest here in terms of the entertainment of the nation and the millions of people we entertain, we really don't get the same kind of vehement attacks on that topic because of the nature of our business as opposed to the corporate CEO who is using the aircraft and shareholder dollars to go to the Bahamas every other week."