It's no secret that running a NASCAR team is expensive.  The old cars, from the numbers I can remember, cost several hundred thousand dollars each.  The new car is supposed to cost less, but the up-front costs can't possibly be much different.  The savings are supposed to come from uniformity -- a car used at Talladega has the same basic configuration as a car used at Martinsville.

Unfortunately, the old car put such a distance between the top teams and the rest of the pack that it's hard for the backmarkers to catch up now.  The gap is huge, and now, when testing is needed most to further acclimate the drivers to the new car, the teams that had the most success with the old car have the greatest financial reserves from which to draw in order to pay for test sessions outside the NASCAR-sactioned events.

Dale Earnhardt, Jr. recently gave some insight into how often the front-running teams test compared to the also-rans, indicating that he has tested more in the last two months with his new team at Hendrick Motorsports than he usually did in a year at Dale Earnhardt, Inc.  With seven championships since 1995, Hendrick has achieved the kind of success that allows for those kind of expenditures.  Joe Gibbs Racing has won three championships since 2000, and they employ the current championship-leading team.

This week, we saw Petty Enterprises effectively change ownership.  While the Petty family still maintains a large stake in the company, majority ownership is now by a large investment firm.  This isn't the first time we've seen outside investment in NASCAR, either: Bobby Ginn had no physical interest in auto racing prior to entering the sport as an owner.  The ownership team of the Boston Red Sox -- technically a team within a competing sport -- have purchased a large stake of what used to be known as Roush Racing, now Roush-Fenway Racing.

NASCAR has clearly missed the obvious signs.  The sport has its roots deep in the soil of American automobile manufacturers, but as the tree has grown taller, the new growth is getting further and further from those roots.  The cars on the track once were the same cars we drove on the street.  Now, the only visible difference between a Ford Fusion and a Toyota Camry is the nameplate.  Toyota has a good reason to pump money into the teams: they're the new kid on the block, and they are trying to make a name for themselves in the only racing continent where they haven't already made a huge splash.  The money they have thrown at their teams -- particularly Gibbs Racing and Team Red Bull -- likely exceeds the gross domestic products of several developing nations.

The incumbent manufacturers, on the other hand, have less reason than ever to financially back their teams.  What was once a test bed for development and a high-speed showroom for their car models is now nothing more than a four-hour-long commercial each Sunday.  And considering how little resemblance there is between the cars on the track and the cars in their show rooms, there's just no direct tie from the race cars to the vehicles in our garages besides a name plate.  The manufacturers know this, the fans know this, and the sponsors know this.  The only people who seem to be missing the message are the people inside NASCAR HQ.

NASCAR desperately needs to cut costs.  The only way to do this is to get the manufacturers involved in the sport again.  That's a difficult task right now, considering the struggles of America's Big Three over the last decade, but proper planning could lead to a huge step forward for both sides. 

Something has to be done, before Victory Lane is renamed Wall Street.