9.13.2007

NASCAR could take a PR hit with these lawsuits

The lawsuits filed on behalf of Sterling Marlin and Joe Nemecheck against Ginn Racing isn't good for NASCAR.

A report listed on Jayski not only lists what the lawsuit is for, but it completely outlines the structure of the respective contracts for the drivers. It lists annual salary (roughly $1 million for each), race winning percentages they were allowed to keep (45 percent), merchandise percentages (33 percent) and bonus schedules (including individual races and final points positions).

It's not a secret that Nextel Cup Series drivers are well-paid. But unlike other professional sports contracts, NASCAR contracts are kept hush-hush. For a sport aimed at blue-collar workers and middle-America families, flaunting multi-million dollar salaries around a courtroom is a lose-lose proposition in the court of public opinion.

If Marlin and Nemecheck are making more than $1 million annually, what does that say for top-flight drivers. Suddenly, multi-million dollar athletes are right here and NASCAR. Can anyone envision a scenario in which Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart or Dale Earnhardt Jr. -- arguably the 3 most marketable drivers out there -- aren't making $5, $10 or even $15 million each season?

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Busch East Series driver Max Dumarey may be taking his lumps in his 1st season with the series (he's 19th in points) after coming over from Belgium, but he enjoyed the recent stretch of time off.

Driving a Porsche 997 with Max Goosens, Maxime Soulet and brother Guillaume Dumarey, Max was part of the team that won the 24 hours of Zolda in his home country last weekend.

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J.J. Yeley is pulling triple-duty at NHIS this weekend.

Not only is he in his usual No. 18 for Joe Gibbs Racing in the Cup Series, but he's also in a Whelen Modified Tour entry (he qualified 5th for the New Hampshire 100) and he's entered in the USAC Silver Crown 75-lap event here on Saturday.

Yeley joins JGR teammate Tony Stewart as the only drivers in history to win all 3 USAC titles in the same season -- Silver Crown, Sprint and Midget.

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Todd Szegedy won the pole for the New Hampshire 100 with a time of 29.725 seconds around the 1.058-mile oval. It was the 1st career pole at NHIS for the former series champion.

"I think driver error is why I wasn't here sooner," Szegedy said. "It was driver error, either getting into the corners too hard or getting out of the groove somewhere."

Ron Yuhas, Donnie Lia (who has 5 wins this season), Tony Hirschman and Yeley rounded out the top-5 qualifiers.

1 comment:

Brenda said...

Good for Max he's a pretty good kid and from what i've heard from people on the crew he's improved a lot and managed to handle a lot of learning curves regarding the types of cars, new crew, and new competitors...be interesting to see how he does this trip around here...