Team owner Rick Hendrick's domination: Is that good for the sport?

  Car owner Rick Hendrick (C) has another superstar, Kasey Kahne, ready to plug into Mark Martin's ride for 2012. The rich getting richer? Too powerful? Rivals are wondering (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)   

    By Mike Mulhern
    mikemulhern.net

    FORT WORTH
    Rivals can only look at car owner Rick Hendrick's growing power in NASCAR and shake their heads....and dream.
    Life for them is only becoming more frustrating -- Hendrick has just added Kasey Kahne to his already star-studded roster, giving him and his satellite engineering operations seven of stock car racing's top name drivers. And an eighth driver is eventually expected to join too, some here predict.
    Hendrick, and not just because of Jimmie Johnson's four straight Sprint Cup championships, is the top team owner in NASCAR....and the gap between him and the rest of the stock car world is growing wider.
    Is that good for the sport? Is that dominance and that depth good for the sport?
    No one questions Hendrick's own talents in amassing such a powerhouse.
    But is it good for the sport?
    When rival team owner Jack Roush put five Cup teams in the championship playoffs in 2005, NASCAR boss Brian France quickly reacted by limiting the number of teams under one corporate roof, to four.  And France even hinted then about a cut to three.
   Now, however, team owners have figured a way around that limit by 'affiliating' with more teams, sharing technology and equipment.

   Richard Childress, who has had to cut back from a four-car team to three this season, after losing a major sponsor, can only bite his tongue, when asked about Hendrick's dominance: "He's just got a great stable of drivers, and a good bunch of people."
   Does Hendrick have too much dominance? "That's up to NASCAR to control, not me," Childress said.
   Is NASCAR worried about the seeming lack of balance? That's hard to judge.
   NASCAR's Robin Pemberton says the Hendrick domination is all by the book: "Jimmie is a great talent...and it shouldn't be overlooked that they have done a good job of keeping all their core group together. That probably helps them to be as successful as they are.
   "They've got the best athletes, they do the best job, and they win their events."
  
   However around the garage Friday there appeared to be an increasing sense of frustration with Hendrick's growing strength. Whether that might translate in to anger is uncertain.
   Ty Norris, who helped the late Dale Earnhardt create DEI and knows well the power inside such clout, says, with a laugh, "Remember the Bruce Springsteen song: 'The poor man wants to be rich, the rich man wants to be king, and the king's not satisfied until he rules everything.'
   "Well, King Hendrick the Great lives. He's starting to build quite the monopoly of premier talent.
   "Not that others can't be successful....and we will be successful...but he's definitely positioning himself in his own league.
   "And that makes it tough."
   Norris, now general manager for Michael Waltrip's own four-team operation, says "We'd hoped that the (NASCAR mandated) team limit rule (four) would limit that...but now with Stewart-Haas (the Hendrick engineering satellite), they (Hendrick) can extend that to another two more.
    "But you can't be mad, you can only be jealous. He has built quite the empire.
   "It just makes you work harder."
    Still, Norris says wearily power seems to beget more power: "The days of other teams feeling they can go and try to buy the sport's top free agents appear to be waning, because all the top ones appear to end up in one place: the Tony Stewarts, the Ryan Newmans, Kasey Kahne, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Mark Martin, Danica Patrick.....
   "It just puts a premier on trying to build your own rock star through your own system...."
   
    Would the late Bill France Jr. have allowed one man to amass such a powerhouse roster, or would he have stepped in to try to maintain some balance of power?
   Norris says he remembers when NASCAR wasn't enthusiastic about the prospect of Earnhardt joining team owner Junior Johnson in the early 1980s when Johnson was building an empire with Darrell Waltrip and Neil Bonnett and Budweiser.
   "But it's a free enterprise world, and Rick has earned what he's got," Norris said. "And when you earn your position, people come to you.
   "In the heyday of the Earnhardt era, I used to answer a lot of inquiries about sponsorships...and we could pick and chose who to engage with. Rick is in the same situation now: he gets the call more often than he makes the call.
   "But the economics are still hard for them. It costs them an awful lot of money to be successful. So I'd say cost-wise they're probably still cash-challenged.
   "You want to be frustrated....but he (Hendrick) wasn't always getting the best free agents. He has built an organization that can attract them now."
  
   Robby Gordon, one of the very few independent owner-drivers still on the tour, is struggling. Just hanging in the key top-35 is difficult. So Gordon says "the only way I can compete against Hendrick is to the other things I do.
    "Like this Monster Truck program, our (off-road) desert program, our Dakar program. We have to do different things."
    However Gordon's Indianapolis 500 plans, "are on terminal hold," while sponsor Monster debates the value, "to see if it fits their demographic."
    That's not a plus, because Gordon has Indy-winning potential.
   So this is frustrating, Gordon says: "The Hendrick guys are the class of the field here. So he can hire the best drivers out there...so he can get the best sponsors too.
    "If Kasey goes to Stewart-Haas, well you can call that a Stewart-Haas deal, but they buy cars, engines, engineering, everything from Hendrick. That's different than we are, because we build our own stuff."
    Is it time for NASCAR to step in to rebalance the balance of power in this sport?
   Gordon: "Jack Roush has eight teams (counting the four Gillett teams), and Hendrick has seven next year with Kasey, and I'm sure he'll wind up with eight.
    "That's 16 cars right there. So if we can just run in the top-16 we're doing pretty good.
   "And that's not even consider the Gibbs guys, and Red Bull, and Chip Ganassi....
   "Now hats off to Rick. He's been doing this longer than most. And he's not doing anything wrong.
    "The Hendrick guys have everyone beat in craftsmanship, quality and attention to detail. Other teams have good drivers and good crew chiefs, but their equipment isn't as good as Hendrick's.
    "They're the top dogs right now....and we can only dream....."

    Kyle Petty, now TV commentator, says "In a lot of ways you can compare Rick Hendrick's operation to the New York Yankees organization – they both just keep adding A-level players.
   "They never make a move by taking a B-level player and try to make them an A-level player. Consider Gibbs, in contrast: they're taking Joey Logano and trying to make him an A-level player. And Richard Childress took Clint Bowyer, when he wasn't an A-level player, and has worked to make him one.
   "All those other teams still use the old model: 'Let's discover a guy and make him good.'
    "By the way, going back six or seven years to all those 'development' drivers; where are those guys now?
   "Rick lets someone else develop them, and then he takes them. That's not a knock on Rick either.
   "The players Rick gets are already established.
    "Jack Roush, for example, is still struggling with David Ragan, whose not yet an A-level player.
   "You can't fault Rick. The rules allow it.
   "And until someone else gets into position to combat him, that's the way it's going to be: There's the Hendrick bunch, and then there's everybody else. The Roush guys all but fell off the face of the earth, for example....and look at Childress and
    "There's A-level, which is Hendrick; and then there's everybody else."
    Would Bill France Jr. have allowed it?
   "It's not that Billy would allow it or not allow it, but he would try to be making rule changes to level the playing field. He would give the Hendrick guys a four-inch spoiler and everybody else a 10-inch spoiler.  He was not afraid to step in and do something.
   "But there's so much money in this sport now that I'm not even sure if he were here he could fix some of it."
    Over the past several years the 'little guys,' once the heartbeat of this sport, have been left hanging out to dry.
    Example: Robby Gordon's 14th place run at Phoenix last weekend was almost like winning, considering the 13 men ahead of him at the finish were all driving for 'mega-teams.' "Hey," Petty says, "Robby Gordon won the race at Phoenix. You look at the finishing order and it's 'Mega-team,' 'Mega-team,' Mega-team,' and 'Oh, there's Robby Gordon 14th, so he 'won' the race.
    "Robby's got to be pleased with that."

    Jay Frye runs Team Red Bull, a fairly new two-car operation, which finally put a team in the playoffs last season: "Rick is replacing one superstar with another superstar," Jay Frye says. "Baseball players want to play for the Yankees, basketball players want to play for the Lakers, and this is no different.
   "This will give Kasey an opportunity to showcase what he can do...and it will eliminate any excuses. We'll see what he's got."
    That can be a double-edged sword, of course, as Dale Earnhardt Jr. has found.
    "Just adding another team to add a team, if it's not the right team with the right driver, doesn't necessarily mean success," Frye points out.
    "Adding a team can offer economics of scale, yes.
     "But how much more powerful can those Hendrick guys get? Can they win two championships this season? There's only one trophy."

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