NASCAR has plenty of action going on at the race track every week. Yet, it also has some off-track issues that need to be resolved.
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The renewal of the current NASCAR charter system, or lack of renewal, has been an ongoing topic of conversation between the sport and its race teams.
NASCAR appears to have made a small concession by agreeing to extend the current charter system for seven additional years, according to Brian S. Hall from Heavy.com.
The race teams have been pushing for a bigger amount of money from NASCAR's new media deal and this might be the comprise they will have to take for the foreseeable future.
NASCAR's plan to extend the charter for seven years would give the teams the certainty they need to run a car and make a profit.
That has been a major concern for a lot of teams, including Hendrick Motorsports, which hasn't made a profit in nearly a decade, according to Jeff Gordon.
NASCAR isn't hurting for money as it recently signed a 7-year, $7.7 billion media deal with FOX, NBC, Amazon and TNT. It has also experienced an increase in popularity because of the Netflix docuseries "NASCAR: Full Speed."
Yet it appears that NASCAR doesn't want to change how the charter system currently works, causing a divide between itself and its teams that could destroy all the momentum and cause investment from the biggest names in motorsports to dry up.
The rise in the cost of charters has easily deterred some owners in the sport who have wanted to make the jump to the Cup Series, including Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s JR Motorsports.
A good start would be for NASCAR to make its charters permanent, wouldn't it?
Earnhardt Jr. recently suggested that NASCAR needs to adapt its business model on the Dale Jr. Download.
"This is not a good model for the teams. This model needs to change. Drastically," Earnhardt said, though he admitted that he was just "imagining" what new "big money" owners might be thinking.
NASCAR seems to be following Earnhardt's suggestion, at least by extending the charter system, but it is clear, that it needs to find more common ground with its teams if everyone is going to thrive.
