NASCAR Jeff Gordon Racing to Win or Racing for Profits
With the recent signing of Kasey Kahne to Hendrick Motor Sports beginning in 2012, people have been questioning if HMS is becoming more concerned with selling t-shirts then building a successful organization.
One can argue with the success of team veterans Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson and the eight championships between them that this isn’t even a valid question, but it seems like times are changing at HMS. Jeff Gordon, senior Hendrick Motor Sports driver, is arguably one of the best NASCAR drivers of all time with four Cup Championships under his belt. With 82 career wins, he is currently the winningest active driver in the sport. But lately he has been struggling...at least by his standards. He has had one win out of his last 86 races. He is showing frustration like a rookie and it seems he is not nearly as much of a threat as he once was. But he’s still selling t-shirts.
Jimmie Johnson seems to be unstoppable. After winning his fourth consecutive Cup Championship in 2009, Johnson made history as the only driver to do so in the 61 years of the sport. Johnson’s success should be able to dispel the theory that the HMS focus is on selling t-shirts but he is actually the one who makes it all possible. If Johnson is going to win everything anyway, why bother competing with him? Hendrick doesn’t need to look for someone to win- they have him, so he can focus on signing more of the popular drivers and increase sales.
With Johnson’s success, Rick Hendrick was able to hire over rated, t-shirt sellers like Dale Earnhardt Junior and Kasey Kahne. In fact, Junior has been voted the most popular driver in NASCAR seven years in a row and, while he finished in 25th place last year, he still brought in more money than any other driver according to Forbes magazine.
HMS had Kyle Busch, who probably has more raw talent than anyone on the track today. Kyle has speed, skills, and guts. It is all you would want from a race car driver. Unfortunately in 2007, when Hendrick had to make his decision, he didn’t have very many fans. He didn’t have close to the number of fans that Junior had. So, Hendrick released Busch from the organization and signed Junior in a move that many people feel he would now regret if he really cared about winning.
Busch is in his sixth year in the sport, has 17 wins and is only getting stronger. Junior has been in the series four years longer and only has one more win than Busch and is running out of people to blame his mediocre career on. Busch has finished higher in points than Junior in the past three seasons and is currently ten spots ahead of him in the standings. Dale Junior was responsible for over 40% of all merchandise sales in 2008. In 2009, only four drivers in NASCAR netted more than $1,000,000 from merchandise sales- Dale Earnhardt Jr, Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Tony Stewart (owner of the 14 Hendrick equipment supported team).
The best days of Kasey Kahne are here and now and they are just mediocre at best, but his t-shirt sales are only bound to increase with the impending move. It seems that as long as Johnson is winning and still successful, Rick Hendrick can concentrate on the most important focus of the team- making money. Too bad he didn’t hold out and make room for Kyle when he brought Junior over. According to NASCAR.com’s Superstore, Kyle Busch ranked sixth in merchandise sales on their website.
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