Childress a NASCAR visionary

The fans call out his name like he's an old friend.

"Hey Richard," they yell. "How are you guys gonna do this weekend?"

When he walks through the garage area on Sunday morning, Richard Childress is a superstar.

He's far more gracious than any driver, stopping to sign autographs and chat with fans as he goes about his business on race day.

And that's just it. Richard Childress may seem like a good old boy, but underneath he's as savvy a visionary as the sport of NASCAR has ever seen. And while what he foresees on the horizon may surprise you, it's best to pay attention to what Childress predicts.

Because more often than not, he's right.

This is the man who started his NASCAR career as a driver, and then when he saw the sport changing financially, realized it was probably best if he stepped out from behind the wheel.

So he gave up his seat to Dale Earnhardt. Turned out to be a pretty smart move.

"I could run in the top 10, top 15, top five. … I had some good finishes in those years," Childress said. "And then, I'd seen the sport changing. I had vision and watched what was happening.

"And what was happening was that you had people like Harry Rainer, Warner Hodgedon, Jim Stacy – you go down that list of people who came in to change the sport at that time – that took a lot of the people out of the mix."

Childress rattles off names no longer associated with the sport, but whose money changed the direction of stock car racing forever. They came in and bought existing teams, offering high-paying contracts to drivers and upping the ante.

Childress continued on as a team owner, finding success first with Ricky Rudd and then after reuniting with Earnhardt, winning six championships with the legendary driver behind the wheel.

The business model changed once again when owners Rick Hendrick, Jack Roush, Chip Ganassi and Roger Penske came into the sport, bringing with them the kind of financial wherewithal that was independent of their business interests in NASCAR.

"All those people started moving in and it took it up a whole other notch because they had the finances to do two, three, four teams," said Childress. "They could do whatever they chose to do."

Childress again looked at the direction the sport was taking and made a bold move.

With the model of relying solely on revenue from sponsors no longer applicable, Childress sought out a partner to take his racing interests to the next level.

In 2003, he did just that, selling a part of Richard Childress Racing to Chartwell Investments, a private equity firm out of New York City.

Chartwell not only brought the money for RCR to expand its operations, it brought the kind of internal structure RCR needed to move forward, first by finding and bringing in a top-notch CFO who installed fiscal discipline, tighter budgetary restrictions and a strategy designed to expand investment in the racing operation.

The partnership with Chartwell freed up Childress to focus his attention on the competitive component of his organization so that it could better produce the kind of on-track results that would attract sponsorship, which still factors heavily into a team's bottom line.

"The sponsorship dollars today is probably somewhere, maybe, 60 to 70 percent of your income," said Childress. "There's a lot of other ways you have to make your money to keep this thing above water.

"It's getting tougher and tougher. The expenses today on a car owner – the total expenses – are tremendous. Things have changed. It's a tougher business today to make your numbers work."

Despite the difficulty in making it all work, Childress believes that the current business model in NASCAR is attractive to outside investment. He points to the recent influx of outside investors like John Henry (Roush Fenway Racing), George Gillett (Gillett Evernham Motorsports) and Robert Kauffman (Michael Waltrip Racing).

He does, however, believe that that kind of investor may be increasingly harder to find.

One of those investors who has expressed a real interest in NASCAR is Texas businessman Tom Hicks, who has been seen in the company of Childress at NASCAR events. Hicks owns Major League Baseball's Texas Rangers and with Gillett co-owns the Liverpool (England) Football Club.

Childress believes Hicks would be a welcome addition to the roster of current team owners, possibly as one of his partners.

"Tom, whenever he gets ready, is the kind of guy we'd welcome because he's the kind of person who understands competition in sports and dealing with the athletes," Childress said. "He's someone, plus they have such a great marketing group themselves, I think that we could do a lot of things together whenever he wants to come in and whenever the time's right."

Childress still isn't sure whether this current crop of new investors is a good thing for NASCAR. But, once more, as he looks into the future, he sees them playing a major role in shaping the future of the sport.

"I can see if the sport and the trend goes like I see it going, it may be five years, it may be 10 years, but you're going to have 10, 12, 14 car owners," said Childress. "And if you've got 11 of them, you've got 44 cars in the field. So then, those 11 guys can sit right in this room right here and say, 'You know, that damn purse really ain't being divided right. Or the TV money (isn't either). Or we don't like this.'

"If you've got 40 car owners, it's a whole lot harder to get them to go in one direction. When you get it down to 11, say a 44-car field, it makes a huge difference."

Childress sees the demise of the single-car team owner, primarily due to the increased operating costs that otherwise can be spread out amongst four teams – which is one reason why he will add a fourth car in 2009. He'd toyed with the idea for years, but was waiting for just the right time. And it seems, once again, his timing was perfect, as he landed General Mills, one of the most prized sponsors in the Cup garage.

"I can see where having the resources of four teams is really going to be a key thing for a car owner," said Childress. "We don't want our company sitting back here three years from now saying, 'Damn, we should have done four teams. Now you can't get this, you can't get that. All this stuff is gone.' "

Even with all the changes he's seen in NASCAR over the years, Childress enjoys nearly everything about it.

"I enjoy the people I work with," he said. "The crew chiefs, the race drivers. I enjoy all of that. I enjoy the fans. I enjoy the actual race.

"We've got great companies that we work with. We've got great sponsors that we work with."

There is just one thing that takes some of the enjoyment out of the sport.

"The politics is what will run me out of the sport," said Childress. "It's just (expletive)."