With Furniture Row Racing's exit, Truex will now move to Joe Gibbs Racing next seasonGETTY IMAGES
Furniture Row Racing's exit from NASCAR after the '18 season has led to several roundtable discussions about the health of the sport. ESPN.com's Ryan McGee wrote the alarm that FRR's exit should trigger is "one that the sanctioning body and remaining team owners were already hearing, but perhaps not loudly enough." The "financial model of these teams is broken." The days of "cover-it-all giant sponsorship checks are gone." Way more money is "going out than is coming in." ESPN's Ricky Craven: "What I find most concerning is this took place during a very healthy economy." If "marketing initiatives" are indeed working for teams and NASCAR, then those "should have worked best" for FRR driver Martin Truex Jr., the defending Cup Series champ. Truex will now move to Joe Gibbs Racing next season. Craven: "I'm most disappointed for team [FRR Owner] Barney Visser. NASCAR cannot afford to lose owners of his caliber." Jayski's Scott Page wrote there has to be a way to "give sponsors more value for what they are spending." The cost of getting into NASCAR remains "outrageous." ESPN.com's Bob Pockrass: "If anyone inside the industry needed this as a wake-up call, they haven't exactly been paying attention to the recent downsizing of teams. It shows that winning doesn't equate to sponsorship" (ESPN.com, 9/5).
SIGN OF THINGS TO COME? MOTORSPORT.com's Jim Utter as part of another roundtable wrote there is "many more moving pieces to this story than the loss of one sponsor." Who set the price on the "increasing costs of the technical alliance with Joe Gibbs Racing?" Utter: "It wasn't NASCAR. It was JGR." In the end, Truex "isn't hurt by this move -- he actually moves into what could be arguably be a better long-term position." For years, Visser "poured his own money into running his team and taking a loss." In how many business models does that "equate to a viable long-term future?" MOTORSPORT.com's Kenny Bruce wrote something like this should "result in many, many closed-door meetings between officials and teams and (original equipment manufacturers) and anyone else with a stake in the sport." MOTORSPORT.com's Nick DeGroot wrote there is "nothing good coming from this sort of news and ultimately, it's one less competitive team gone from the grid." DeGroot: "Ignoring it or changing the narrative is the wrong decision." MOTORSPORT.com's Tim Southers: "This is a perfect opportunity to look at the overall business model of NASCAR teams but I really don’t see much changing" (MOTORSPORT.com, 9/5).
TROUBLING TIMES: In Richmond, Randy Hallman wrote it has to be "troubling to team owners" that Jimmie Johnson and Truex both "lost major backers in the same year." It also must be "troubling to NASCAR as an organization that some sponsors are no longer willing to pick up the tab for running a contending team." Maybe the sport "needs a new business model." Maybe NASCAR "needs to make it possible for a close-knit team" like FRR to "remain intact and stay put" (RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH, 9/6). USA TODAY's Michelle Matinelli wrote, "Ask any NASCAR executive, and they’ll tell you the sport is healthy and strong -- it’s just changing." However, the "growing piles of evidence suggest otherwise, and the sport can’t begin to concoct a viable solution until it acknowledges the problem" (USATODAY.com, 9/6).
