Answers to pressing questions heading into Saturday's Dodge Charger 500 Nextel Cup race at Darlington Raceway by USA TODAY's Nate Ryan:
Q: Why would the departure of UPS to Michael Waltrip Racing cause more shockwaves than Dale Jarrett making the move?
A: Because the defection of a big-ticket sponsor from an established team would bolster the worried whispers that Toyota's arrival could have a drastic effect on sponsorship revenue.
In the Craftsman Truck Series, Toyota absorbs chassis and engine costs for all its teams and is the primary sponsor on three trucks.
Toyota will not be sponsoring cars while letting teams build their own cars in Nextel Cup next year. But the fear among current Cup owners is the company will take a similar but more surreptitious approach in entering NASCAR's premier series, essentially subsidizing teams with huge cash outlays that allow them to undercut sponsor bids by as much as 50%.
If premium primary sponsorship packages plummeted from $16 million to $8 million, it would spell disaster for teams that have structured budgets in the tens of millions around the existing financial structure. If sponsorship funding was chopped in half, it's unlikely General Motors, Ford and Dodge could make up the difference for their teams as Roush Racing president Geoff Smith believes Toyota is.
"Toyota is attacking the price points of our sponsorships by offering radical discounts as a means of attracting corporate sponsors to those teams," said Smith, whose boss, Jack Roush, has been sounding the alarm since January about Toyota's potential impact in Cup. "If you look at the truck series, that's what they did there. You can see what their impact is on the sponsorship environment."
Toyota Racing Development president Jim Aust has dismissed the notion that the Japanese manufacturer will bridge sponsorship shortfalls.
"We don't have it in our budget," Aust said. "It'd be nice to be able to do that, but you're talking about millions of dollars. We don't have the capability of doing that.
"Ultimately it's up to the teams to find sponsors, and right now the sponsors they have in NAPA, Caterpillar and Red Bull are pretty solid. I wouldn't think there would be any need for the teams to come to Toyota with any request like that."
Aust said Toyota would be pleased to add Jarrett's name to its driver lineup, which currently lacks star power. Jarrett, the 1999 champion and a 32-time winner in Cup, is expected to decide soon — perhaps this weekend — whether he will stay at Robert Yates Racing or leave for Waltrip's team. Yates' deals with Jarrett and UPS, which has sponsored the driver since 2001, are up at the end of 2006.
