NASCAR Chairman Brian France called into SiriusXM NASCAR Radio’s “Tradin’ Paint” show Wednesday and discussed various topics with co-hosts Jim Noble and Chocolate Myers.
France offered his thoughts to the family of Hall of Fame inductee Robert Yates, who died Monday at age 74. France remembered Yates as “one of the pioneers” of the sport.
France was asked a variety of questions. Here are some of his responses:
Q: What is taking up your attention?
Brian France: “It’s always aligning everybody’s interest. It’s really that simple but hard to do. Things are different than they were five years ago, 10 years ago. I think aligning the interests, getting the costs out of the system … So the team owners can compete with less resources than they otherwise would need to and still do it at a high level. It’s all about that. It’s very hard to do because every stakeholder has their own interest and there’s institutional things that go on that either you can’t change or are hard to change. In the end, my dad used to say what makes it successful, he would always say that everybody has to win. The bigger we get, the more complicated it is, the harder it is to deliver. That’s where our goal is all the time.’’
Q: How do you see the sport’s future with all the young drivers?
France: “That’s the exciting part. The other part is we are in a transition. That happens if you go through our history. Sometimes it happens the way it is now, where a number of the top drivers exit for one reason or another. You didn’t mention Carl Edwards, who left for different reasons. That happens. Usually it’s more of not so many at one time but every once in a while we’ll have these moments. Everybody steps away at their choosing. The good news for us, you’re exactly right, there’s a lot of talent here that is coming through the system that are really going to be competitive and show their thing and that’s the beauty of sports. You can get a different group to put some … fingerprints on success and being a part of NASCAR. We’re looking forward to it.’’
Q: There often has been a lot of talk after races about penalties. How do we keep that from dominating things in the future?
France: “Boy, do I dislike two things. One is having to deal with penalties or infractions even though we have to. We have to keep the playing field even, and we have to do what we have to do. The second part that I would prefer to not have to talk about is the business side of NASCAR. That’s important, too.
“Because all of it takes away from what happened on Sunday or Saturday or Friday night in any of our national series. I look at it this way, I never get worked up over anything because I know the teams are pushing right to that last inch and then every once in a while they flop over the line, and there’s very rarely where it’s somebody just egregiously trying to get an advantage. It’s true that we have to have restrictions and tight rules and so on and it’s also true that the teams are so close to that line they’re going to create a P1 or P2, whatever it’s going to be, I don’t get worked over that because that’s auto racing.
“If we weren’t having some of that, then they’re not competing hard, they’re not trying to out-think, out-engineer, out-do some other teams. I don’t get so worked up over that. Frankly, I’d rather not talk about it. I’d rather we do what we do, which is we issue the penalty and we phrase it in a way … whatever the penalty is and our results on that and just not make it a big deal, but I realize it is easy to get caught up in it.’’
Q: One report that NASCAR is helping find sponsorship for Danica Patrick and Darrell Wallace Jr. for next year and how important is it that both are on the track next year?
France: “We get involved all the time with sponsorship arrangements with individual teams. That’s not inconsistent with what we do. As far as those two drivers, of course we would like to see both of them have a real good opportunity. We can’t control all of that. At the end of the day, you’ve got to compete, and both of those drivers have shown that they can compete at some level. The question is, is it high enough to attract the right sponsorship and interest? We’ll have to see how that plays out.’’
Q: What about new manufacturers?
France: “There’s two that have shown a lot of interest and are examining just how you go about it. It’s hard to do. It’s hard to come in and get the right teams. They all want to come in and compete at a very high level as fast as they can, which makes the challenge even harder. There are two and we’ll see how it plays out. Our preference would be to be able to add one more. Interestingly, the other car manufactures are open to that, too. They’d like to compete themselves with one another and take a lot of pride in that. My hope is that as soon as it can work out, we’ll add a fourth. We’ll have to see how that goes.’’
Q: What would you say to fans who are concerned about the financial future of the sport and the costs associated with racing?
France: “I would say look at history. There’s always cycles. Sometimes we have too many teams. I remember not that long ago, that Richard Petty, when he was racing couldn’t make the event for example. That happened. We’re working on it all the time. That stuff works itself out.
“Every sport has different cycles where it’s better than it was or less than it should be, whatever it is, that will work out. Our job is that if there is a way for us from a policy standpoint, as an example, getting the cost out of the system, that we are going to work, that’s where the charter agreements that we did a couple of years ago allow us to, get at those things.
“I wouldn’t worry about that for one minute if I were a fan because it just works itself out. We will make good decisions and the teams are working very closely with us to take any shortcomings out of the system and figure it out. I wouldn’t worry about that for a minute if I were a fan. I am a fan.’’
