‘Start and Park’ was a strategy that underfunded teams employed in NASCAR throughout the 2000s and the early years of the 2010s. They would start a race, run a few laps, and intentionally park the car citing some reason and end up collecting whatever share of the race purse that was due to them for simply being a part of the race.
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The main reason behind this approach lay in the difficulty that teams faced in securing sponsorships. When the number of cars on the field began disappearing after the turn of the century, owing to financial difficulties, NASCAR began worrying that there wouldn’t be enough entries on the track on any given weekend. Some team owners decided to use this situation to their advantage.
Notable benefactors like Morgan Sheperd and Derrike Kope started and parked their cars for many years, making life difficult for the promotion.
The strategy was completely dependent on a particular race’s field not being full so that any team that shows up can be a part of the race. But this did not come without its risks. If a team showed up to the race and the field was full, it would have to qualify for a spot.
If it fails to do so, all the expenses incurred in bringing the car to the track would have been for nothing. Although there was a time when NASCAR encouraged teams to start and park just for the sake of having a full field, it later realized the disadvantages of it. The charter system that it introduced in 2016 eliminated this strategy in the Cup Series.
The benefit that teams got for starting and parking
So, what was the financial benefit of starting and parking? An ESPN report states that start-and-park teams made roughly $17 million in 2012. Which is a lot of money.
It was around 2013 that the promotion put this at the forefront of the table and cited it as the biggest problem in NASCAR. To curb things, it cut the size of the field in the Nationwide Series from 43 to 40.
The payout for the final spots in the Cup Series was reduced as well. Interestingly, fans never expressed a loud voice of concern over this.
The major reason for this was the awareness that it was the underfunded teams that were using the strategy and that they were doing it to save up enough money to run full-time. Either way, start and park has become a thing of the past in the sport.
Today, the number of entries in a race exceeds the available spots in all three tiers making filler entries void. But the one thing that continues is the difficulty that teams face in securing sponsorship and a better share of revenue from NASCAR. This is why, although it is a history that would rather be forgotten, start-and-park could still find a way back into the current age.
