TALLADEGA, Ala. -- Nextel Cup teams do not need a union. Not when they have Toyota.
NASCAR's new manufacturer has already begun its scheduled raid on top Nextel Cup teams, often offering personnel a five-digit raise to simply move over to their camp.
It's flattering to them. It's also hard to pass up. That is when they ask their current employers for raises, and often get them in order to stay put.
Such moves are a crewman's best friend. It is NASCAR's own version of free agency. Since most teams are based around Charlotte, free agency has existed for years, but with Toyota coming in and throwing big bucks to top names, it is really kicking in.
With the 2007 Daytona 500 looming less than 10 months away, Toyota has yet to sign a top-name crew chief or driver to its brand, and time is elapsing. As the clock ticks, the price goes up. Men like Kevin Harvick, Casey Mears and Dale Jarrett can see their net worth rise dramatically even if they never step foot into a Camry.
Of course, this is also good news to the people in the garage and the shops, who are finally starting to make the kind of money that their professional status should command.
A lot of them are cracking the six-figure mark for certain teams, and with Toyota swooping in with offers, team salaries are going to keep rising. Deals that were once done on a handshake will now be penned via a three-year contract by a professional human resources coordinator.
As we have already seen, current teams will issue statements saying that they have just signed Mr. John Q. Crew Chief to a "three-year extension." The timing is not an accident. Toyota is on the clock and ready to make certain people in the garage very well-to-do in a short period of time.
There is a well-documented shortage of experienced drivers in the Nextel Cup Series, but the same can also be said for experienced team personnel that have won at the Nextel Cup level. As drivers get younger and younger, so do crew chiefs and car chiefs.
To keep their longtime employees, current team owners are going to have to allocate even more of their budgets to salaries. Add that with the costs of the Car of Tomorrow, and team owners will be worried about far more than the cost of diesel fuel for the haulers.
We saw a lot of this in late 1999, when Dodge was able to lure Ray Evernham from a crew chief role to a team owner role. Now, in a very short amount of time, Evernham has built a five-team operation worth tens of millions of dollars.
NASCAR is not a small-stakes casino.
Dodge was successful almost immediately in its return to the sport in 2001. Even as recently as five years ago, there were plenty of drivers to go around, and Dodge simply lured teams (Ganassi, Petty) to their brand from other manufacturers.
Toyota, for the most part, has not used this method. Michael Waltrip is essentially the new Ray Evernham -- he will have the resources available to him to create the same thing that Evernham has done with his program. In 10 years, it is not unfeasible to speculate that his operation could be worth nine figures.
Toyota has yet to create the splash that Dodge pulled off during their big build-up, but with the money they are throwing around, it is only a matter of time.
