NASCAR working on cost cutting

France has insisted that NASCAR will not be immune to the downturn in the US economy, which has raised worries of many small teams that are struggling to find sponsorship money to stay in business next season.

He says they will continue to work on ways to trim down costs through the regulations, although nothing concrete has been announced yet looking ahead to the 2009 season.

"Let me say that obviously, it's very difficult. It's on our whole industry," France said. "There are always some unfunded teams, that's not anything new. But one of my goals is to have a system where you don't need $26 million to put a competitive team forward.

"That is one of the things NASCAR has a lot of influence on and we're working all the time to figure that out. But there is no question that with advertising and marketing budgets coming under lots of pressure, that we are, as I've said for many months now, not immune to those kinds of reviews."

NASCAR has yet to announce the testing policy for the Sprint Cup Series for 2009. Initially, there was a plan to increase the amount of testing to 24 days per team with a limit of two cars. But some squads projected that would need an increase in their budget of around 20 per cent.

It is now expected that testing will be reduced dramatically from the initial figure.

"We're going to need to react to that quickly because the budgets are being set for each team," France said about their testing policy. "So we'll not waste any time on that. We'll do that pretty quickly.

"It will be comprehensive if we go as aggressive as some have suggested, including ourselves. To be as aggressive as we can take cost out of the system."

Many teams haven been rumoured to be in talks for possible mergers for next season including Dale Earnhardt Incorporated, Petty Enterprises and Chip Ganassi Racing. France says they have been part of the talks as they seek to help find ways for them to stay afloat and remain competitive.

"We have been in the middle of talking to team owners about them realigning with one group or another should they think that a merger would be important," said France. "We play a role in that.

"We don't publicise that, and we do that on the basis of how an individual team owner would want us to play a role. But (President) Mike (Helton), myself, together and separately, are meeting with them constantly.

"We obviously understand the teams that are underfunded and face the biggest risk and are working with them to find a partner, find a sponsor. We just don't put that in bright lights every week."

Stock prices for some manufacturers involved in NASCAR such as General Motors have plummeted to record lows recently as they've reported massive losses which are set affect some of their racing programs for next year.

Despite that, France says NASCAR transcends any of the manufacturers involved if any of them was to pull out of the sport, although they are working closely with them and hope their cutbacks don't affect their future in the series.

He also said they remain open to new manufactures joining NASCAR in the future.

"[The manufacturers] play a very important role in lots of ways, in direct support to the teams, that's important; the branding and the heritage that they're part of the sport in a very unique way, and we're proud of that and as part of our history," France added.

"But we're not also going to live or die if one manufacturer or another manufacturer has a pull back or a pull out. I hope it doesn't happen. We're working like mad to make sure it doesn't. And it wouldn't be our first choice by any stretch.

"But the sport is on very, very solid ground that transcends one manufacturer or another."