NASCAR appears to be running out of gas

By MARK EMMONS

SAN JOSE, Calif. — When Jimmie, Tony, Junior and the rest of NASCAR’s good ol’ boys make their annual pilgrimage to wine country this weekend, they will arrive in the Bay Area with a little less swagger than past years.

The stock cars have hit some bumpy asphalt.

Attendance is down. TV ratings are off by double digits. The recession, which has clobbered Corporate America, is proving to be a flat tire for a sport where the cars are rolling billboards. Also, there’s a perception that the action on the track has grown stale.

Once billed as the country’s fastest-growing sport, NASCAR is seeing its pop-culture buzz morph into Zzzzz’s.

Is the sport running out of gas?

NASCAR executives and drivers answer with a definitive no. But there’s enough concern that officials recently staged a “town hall” where people like Jimmie (Johnson), Tony (Stewart) and Junior (Dale Earnhardt Jr.) gathered to discuss what ails the race series.

“If you look at the economy, anything that’s considered an extracurricular activity is down,” said Ryan Newman, who is fifth in the Sprint Cup standings heading into today’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma’s Infineon Raceway. “The economy is driving the situations that many sports and businesses find themselves in right now.”

For NASCAR, that means being driven into a wall.

While tracks do not release detailed attendance figures, a recurring theme this year has been the noticeable number of empty seats in the grandstands. Both Fox and TNT report an 11 percent decrease in telecast viewership. That’s especially troubling because you would think fans who couldn’t afford tickets at least would watch on TV.

Sponsorship, the real fuel that powers the sport, is so tight that smaller teams have merged or are racing limited schedules. More than 1,000 team members have been laid off since the end of last season.

Detroit’s problems have been particularly crippling. General Motors has told NASCAR that it is cutting back on its racing support. Chrysler, which just emerged from bankruptcy, is reducing its funding of Dodge teams. That’s why Richard Petty Motorsports — the team of San Jose native A.J. Allmendinger — was issuing pink slips and salary cuts last week.

Still, everyone from NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France to the drivers publicly express optimism that the sport will roar back with the economy.

“I guess the stock market dropped something like 35 percent from its high point,” Carl Edwards said. “So when you compare us to that kind of percentage, I feel like NASCAR is doing really well.”

Maybe, but after years of explosive growth, the sport was also due for a pit stop.

Previously just a Deep South attraction, stock cars zoomed onto the national scene so quickly that they left skid marks. NASCAR tapped into America’s love affair with the automobile and became the country’s No. 2 spectator sport behind only the NFL.

There’s a reason why the race at Infineon is known as Northern California’s largest sporting event, attracting more than 100,000 spectators over three days of racing.

Just four years ago, Fortune magazine called NASCAR the “best-run sports business in America.” That sort of praise, however, is getting smaller in the rear-view mirror. Forbes magazine wrote earlier this year that “NASCAR is no longer the unstoppable marketing phenomenon it used to be.”

Once lauded for its colorful stars who were approachable, NASCAR now features drivers who look to have emerged from the same bland cookie-cutter and are much less accessible to fans.

There also have been complaints that the excitement quotient has slipped with longer races filled with yellow caution flags. The new Car of Tomorrow design has improved safety, but it doesn’t handle as well in traffic and has cut down on passing.

And it hasn’t helped that Earnhardt, the sport’s most popular driver, continues to struggle mightily.

The numbers seem to indicate that the novelty factor for casual fans — the ones who don’t know a restrictor plate from a dinner plate — may have worn off.

“There’s clearly a correction going on,” said Steve Page, Infineon Raceway’s president and general manager. “I think NASCAR hit that plateau before the economy began to tank. We definitely feel it.”

Last year, during the height of the gas-price spike, general admission ticket sales were off 12 percent. Page said Infineon will match last year’s figures. But corporate sales — the domain of hospitality tents — now are down nearly 15 percent.

“That’s where we’re really hurting, and that’s perfectly understandable considering what’s happening in the business world,” Page said. “Hopefully those people will come back with the economy.”

That’s the sentiment throughout NASCAR.

“It’s a really difficult time for race fans,” said veteran driver Mark Martin. “We understand and we realize that things will get better.”

But for now, NASCAR is spinning its wheels.