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Category: Motorsports

As races collapse in Detroit and Ohio, is your event next?

If you thought NASCAR's recent shocking race team mergers and layoffs are the worst of the adjustments needed to navigate our nation's spreading economic turmoil, take a hard look at what happened in Detroit and Mansfield, Ohio, on Thursday.

The highly successful, Labor Day weekend, Roger Penske-backed Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix for the Indy Racing League and the American LeMans series got canceled. And, Mansfield Motor Sports Park closed a day after losing its NASCAR truck race.

Just last week I spoke with Grand Prix organizers who admitted budgets that were cut only two months ago were already being reworked again, but I was assured the Grand Prix was going to happen.

All of the Grand Prix's sponsors were in the automotive world, the Big 3, Firestone, Bosch, Audi and Porsche, so there have been no certainties while the world watches Washington dally over the surreal possibility of letting millions of Americans simply lose their manufacturing jobs.

Grand Prix officials were expecting to announce this week very positive regional economic impact figures from last Labor Day weekend's race that showed improvement from the 2007 return of sports car and open wheel racing to the beautiful island park between downtown Detroit and Canada.

Days later, that good news was lost in the turmoil here in the Motor City. I never heard back from my source until Thursday afternoon when the announcement was made that the 2009 Grand Prix was called off.

That's how volatile the climate is here because of the teetering auto industry and it's impact on all of the related suppliers and many other businesses that are seeming unrelated. Like dominos, many are poised to fall if one of the major firms starts the cascade. Everyone's holding their breath.

Penske labeled the decision a postponement and told Curt Cavin of the Indianapolis Star, "This is a real economic time of distress for everyone. We couldn't sit here and count on a lot of things happening (from a sponsorship standpoint) that we knew weren't going to happen knowing that (Detroit) is so distressed with unemployment and all the things going on."

So If you want a glimpse of what's to come for you in the rest of the county, just look toward this industrial giant that happens to be leading the way on this hell slide that got kicked off by the financial industry collapse.

Of course, the big wigs in the banking and insurance industries got hundreds of billions in tax dollars thrown their way with nary a question or a condition. These are people who make nothing but money by selling debt. The rest of us are left with paper cuts.

But the looming collapse of the industrial giants -- and the heavy impact on so many other things including our motor sports -- was treated with contempt by a pack of Southern Senators hell bent on union busting even if it means throwing a few million American families into unemployment. Our current President also may have shown he's got the quicks to duck a few shoes, but he has dallied while Chrysler idles all of its plants nationwide and many of its suppliers are in trouble. How did Washington move overnight to help the bankers?

Putting a bunch of Yankee factory workers and their families out into the snow might not bother many of the "right-to-work" champions of minimum wage and Wal-Mart-like benefits down South. Although I know a few families in Gulf Shores, Alabama, who are worried about their friends from Michigan who rushed down there to help after the hurricane.

We understand here in Detroit why the nation vented its anger on the auto-making CEOs. You feel like you got taken for a ride by these fat cats -- their fancy advertising promising what their cars for decades failed to deliver. The people who actually design and build cars in Detroit want to be proud of their work. They got cheated too.

But the zeal to get even, we have to be careful about where the blows are landing. We are all in this mess together now. Mansfield's close on Thursday sent the May 23 truck race to Iowa -- a track owned by NASCAR's deep pocketed founding family. But the Frances also recently announced falling expectations for their business as well.

It's only December. Do you think the closings of our sponsorship-dependent sports teams and tracks is going to end with these two cancellations?

Since losing the Navy as sponsor of his Nationwide team, even Dale Earnhardt Jr. hasn't landed a replacement sponsor. This is the most popular driver in NASCAR. And his driver Brad Keslowski of Rochester Hills, was recently voted the most popular driver in the Nationwide series.

Dodge has issued statements committing to stay in racing, although the loss of the Ganassi team to Chevrolet in its merger with Dale Earnhardt Inc. helped reduce expenses by 30 percent. And, I suppose anything Dodge says means nothing if those factories don't reopen in January.

As you can see, this is beginning to mess with NASCAR, and I think it's only fair to warn Alabama's Sen. Dick Shelby that he'd better be careful or somebody might throw a shoe at him too. I've seen how good his constituents are at hurling beer cans at Talladega. Conversion to shoe hurling should be easy.

You'd better watch out too Sen. Bob Corker. At Tennessee's Bristol Motor Speedway, it might seem like sponsors Sharpe and Food City are far removed from the auto industry, but this evil storm is going to swallow up everything from coast-to-coast if the new President doesn't pull off an instant miracle. If Shelby and Corker and the other anti-Detroit Senators thought you were helping the non-union Toyota and Mercedes auto plants they lured to their states with generous tax giveaways, how come Toyota told you to help GM and Chrysler? Toyota and Honda both are caught in this downward slide and they tried to warn you that if one of the Detroit 3 falls, the suppliers they also depend upon will fall too.

With Thursday's announcements about race and track failures, I think we all can see where this is going.