DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Drivers and teams have spent the past couple of weeks trying to learn about the new NASCAR charter system. Not only do they need to know the financial details to do budgets, they need to learn how to restructure drivers so they get paid similar to what their contracts had called for under the old system.
In the past, the entry blank had the purse based on where a driver finished, plus contingency awards and the formula for “plan money” if a team had won in previous years.
The new system is a little different. According to NASCAR chief operating officer Brent Dewar, there is a fixed portion of the purse that goes to charter teams, as well as another portion of the purse that goes to charter teams that is based on a three-year performance scale, where the past year gets the most weight and the season three years ago gets the least.
There is a fixed amount for non-charter teams that is 35 percent per team of what each of the charter teams get. The amount based on where a driver finishes is the same for all drivers regardless of whether the team has a charter, as is year-end performance and bonus money — although where a charter team finishes each race will eventually affect its future “fixed” income based on the three-year performance scale.
If there are fewer than 40 cars, the amount left over for open teams that didn’t participate goes into a pool that will get divided among the three non-charter teams that are highest in owner points.
A team can lose a charter based on performance — if the team finishes among the bottom three charter teams in owner points for three consecutive years. That doesn’t mean NASCAR will definitely take the charter away, but it has the option, Dewar said. The charters first would be offered to current teams. Any proceeds, after an administrative fee, from the charter sold by NASCAR would go into the season-ending points fund, Dewar said. That also would occur if a charter team ends up being financially insolvent and doesn’t show up for a race.
The total amount of money in the pool will go up each year, Dewar said. (The television money increases by 3 to 4 percent a year.) The points fund would depend on how much is contributed by the new series sponsor in 2017.
“Everything is slated for better performance,” Dewar said. “There is a slope to every piece of the curve with the exception of the fixed, whether you’re a fixed open or a fixed charter. … The charter system is designed to create stability, but three of the four elements are performance-based.”
Along with all this, NASCAR doesn’t plan to release how much a driver makes in the race report each week, even in the Xfinity and Truck series that have more traditional purse allotments. Dewar said the money has always gone to the team, and the teams have always been the ones to pay the drivers whatever they negotiated as far as the portion of the purse.
For the drivers, though, they were used to seeing that amount — either in an entry blank (which no longer lists purse money by order of finish for Sprint Cup) or in the race report — and having a good idea of how much they should be paid per event. Now that the charter teams will get their money more on an annual basis, the driver contracts have to be reworked.
“I’ve got to tread lightly in what I say, but I think everyone would have to have something redone within their contract, legally,” Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin said. “There’s been some verbiage and stuff that has changed essentially how the drivers get paid the purse. … It’s up to the individual driver and owner to work out those details.”
Most drivers have agents who handle those negotiations and have been busy the past week reworking deals. JGR’s Carl Edwards is among those who doesn’t.
“I’ve been working real close with them on all that stuff and it’s basically a non-event,” he said.
All the drivers, for now, seem confident their owners will work in good faith. If not, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the drivers unite even closer than before.
The current season’s Sprint Cup drivers council includes three newcomers — Jimmie Johnson, Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski — joining Hamlin, Joey Logano, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick and Kyle Larson. Dewar has met with at least some of the members and said the teams were given a sheet to help understand how to compute new performance-based contract clauses.
“Everybody knew there was going to be some contractual stuff that we had to work through,” said Harvick, who drives for Stewart-Haas Racing. “For me, I wanted it to happen as openly and as quick as possible because I didn’t want it to linger and have things be brought up that really didn’t need to be brought up and cause tension between teams.
“That was my ultimate goal. I’m not going to sit around and pinch pennies just because of the fact I think I’m being treated unfairly. I want to just be treated fairly. That was really all that I was looking for. I felt like our team did that.”
Until then, the drivers aren’t using the media to plead their case.
“I’m not in a big rush to address it,” said Danica Patrick, another SHR driver. “I’m sure that my team has been nothing but fair for years, so we’ll work it out.”
If it seems the drivers have a lot of trust in their owners, they do.
“What else can I do but trust?” Keselowski, of Team Penske, said. “It’s my only option.”
