From what I know and have seen a lot is being made over not much. I don’t believe the RTA’s main goals have much to do with forcing NASCAR’s hand on very many issues. The teams have been meeting a couple of times a year for years now and most of the issues they are trying to solve involve cost cutting; on the non-racing side of things. They talk about more basic issues like hotels and airplanes. As individual entities they cannot negotiate cost cutting deals on hotel rooms and air travel. Right now almost all the big teams fly their over the wall crews in the day of the race, and their setup crews a few days before. You have two choices if you don’t have a team aviation department; Roush Air or Crew Air. Most teams no longer use domestic carriers because of the inconvenience of changing tickets, security and not being able to fly into the closest airport. There are more charter companies out there but to get a good deal you have to be able to guarantee bodies in seats. The same can be said for hotels. In the past each team negotiated their own price. As a group they feel they will be able to negotiate a better price because instead of only need 10 seats or rooms now they will be looking for a discount on 200 seats or rooms. Rental cars is another issue again there is bargaining power in numbers. So it is things like this that they are trying to solve.

The other thing to remember is the owners are about as non-union as you can get. They aren’t going to form what basically amounts to a union because they know that eventually it would filter down to the guys in the shop. Believe me they like the independent contractor model of doing things. If Hendrick wants to change the entire 48 cars’ over the wall crew he doesn’t want to have to clear it thru the players union. So I don’t think they will try to strong arm NASCAR on very many issues.

Unlike the PDA in 1969 the owners of today have sponsor obligations. In 1969 most of the teams had small sponsorships or none at all. Because of that the drivers could walk fairly easy. Today if the owners decided to boycott a race they would lose so much in the way of sponsor dollars that they would be forced back within a matter of weeks. Not to mention you would basically take yourself out of any chance at a championship ensuring more lost money.

Lastly there are a lot more old Cup cars running around than you would think. I could lay my hands on five right now. Hell, I think Norm still has two and one is fairly up to date. I would drag whatever I could to any track that NASCAR would let me run on until the money ran out.

So in short I think the media is sensationalizing this whole thing more than it needs to.