Getting The Green: How NASCAR Can Help Race Teams Survive, by Tommy Joe Martins

Tommy Joe Martins, 30, is a driver in the Xfinity Series and Camping World Truck Series. His family’s race team, Martins Motorsports, currently fields entries in the Truck Series.

By Tommy Joe Martins

When NASCAR announced a 10-year, $8.2 billion television rights package with NBC and FOX in 2013, it became perhaps the greatest TV deal in the history of sports.

At the time the deal was signed, NASCAR Cup events averaged a 5-plus rating — and now that number is down to less than 3. But no matter the ratings, that $8.2 billion, long-term contract is locked in.

NASCAR hit the lottery and Brian France bought the ticket. He and his team deserve plenty of credit for negotiating a superb deal.

But how that average of $820 million per year is split has been a topic of much discussion lately — with Denny Hamlin among the recent voices to question the arrangement.

NASCAR gets 10 percent, so let’s round off and say that’s $80 million per year. The tracks get 65 percent — roughly $530 million — and if that sounds like a lot, then you’re not the only one that thought so.

I’m not going to act like I know the first thing about the expenses of running a racetrack. So for now, let’s just assume they need every dollar of it.

The teams get the remaining 25 percent of the deal, which is roughly $200 million per year — and that’s distributed through the purse money for each race. That money is then split again among the top three national series. And if you’re not sitting down, you’re going to want to before you read this next part.

As of 2014, the Cup Series got 93.75 percent of the team cut. NINETY-THREE PERCENT. The Xfinity Series got a whopping 5.75 percent (although maybe that wasn’t seen as a big deal since almost half of the Xfinity field is made from Cup teams or affiliates).

But the Truck Series? It got an almost unimaginable 0.5 percent. Half of a freaking percent. That worked out to roughly $1,000 per race, per team.

The entry fee alone for the Truck Series is $1,650 per race.

Thankfully, that horrendous split got restructured in 2015. But best I can tell, the Truck Series still only receives around a 2 percent take. Not exactly the jump we were looking for.

My family’s team, Martins Motorsports, received roughly $14,000 per race in prize money last season. A set of Goodyear tires costs roughly $2,300 per set, and we’re allotted five sets on most race weekends ($11,500). If we didn’t buy used tires from other teams, we’d be broke in a month.

Clearly, there needs to be a change. The goal should be to make teams profitable. Just like teams in every other pro sports league, NASCAR teams should operate in the green.

Now, that’s not to say that team ownership should be lucrative. For a team to do that, it’s always going to take sponsorship. I want small teams to be able to eke out a small profit — around 10 percent each year. It costs a LOT of money to start a NASCAR team. With equipment purchases, engine costs, shop expenses and weekly salaries, the initial investment is massive before ever receiving an awards check from the racetrack. There should be a return on that investment.

So how do we make the adjustment? I think the TV ratings are a good place to start. The ratings for this season are public knowledge, but I did the math for you. The averages are: Cup 2.8, Xfinity 0.8, Trucks 0.4. Theoretically, a TV revenue split based on ratings could be: 70 percent Cup, 20 percent Xfinity, 10 percent Trucks.

That wouldn’t change much for big teams. They don’t count on the prize money to balance the budget — it only makes up 15-20 percent of their income. A reduction to 15 percent of their income isn’t a big deal.

Taking the charter-weighted math out of it (I don’t even want to try; I’m struggling enough as is), each of the 40 Cup teams would still get roughly $3.5 million from the 36 points races. Factor in traditional prize money at only $30,000 per race (and I’m sure I’m low on that number), and that makes for a $4.58 million dollar budget.

Assuming they qualified for all 33 races, Xfinity teams would earn roughly $1 million from the TV money alone. That would be a huge increase from the current deal, and that doesn’t account for traditional track-paid prize money. Let’s say that’s around $15,000 per team, and would make a $1.25 million budget for each team.

It would be an even bigger deal for Truck teams. A $625,000 TV share would be close to double the total prize money our team won in 2015. Factor in $10,000 per race in traditional purse monies (which I’ve averaged out over the past two Truck Series seasons), and that would make for an $855,000 budget per team.

Big teams would tell you that’s not even close to enough cash to run a team for a season. For example, the Lilly’s sponsorship for Roush Fenway’s Xfinity team was reported at $10 million per year — $5 million competition, $5 million activation, while Cup sponsorships can range anywhere from $5 million to $35 million.

So when those teams say this wouldn’t make a difference for them, they’re not wrong. The prize money I’m talking about isn’t enough to run their teams for the season.

Rich teams will always be the best teams. They have the best facilities. They have the best people (because they can pay them more). They have more people and resources. So of course their costs are going to be higher.

But those aren’t necessary costs. They’re optional, self-inflicted costs. If you want to be a big team and you have the money, go for it! Money will always help in motorsports. But you shouldn’t have to spend big money to be successful. And sponsors should be a luxury, not a necessity to break even!

Can you imagine if the Minnesota Twins shut down because Target decided not to sponsor the team’s stadium anymore?

Small teams should always be the backbone of the sport, and if they’re financially viable on their own, they can develop talent for big teams to eventually steal away. And I don’t mean that as a negative thing. That’s no different than how the Yankees treat the rest of baseball. But the Yankees also don’t win every year, and nobody brings $5 million to play first base for New York.

Here’s a scenario: A small team takes a chance on an unproven, talented driver. Maybe they’re discovered in a Late Model or a sprint car. He or she does great, attracts a sponsor, makes the team and driver some money — and at the end, the driver gets a great offer from a better team.

Everyone wins.

Here’s another: A big team cuts a veteran loose, so the small team picks them up. The team gets a great leader to help develop their program and an experienced driver to take care of equipment and a name to sell to potential sponsors.

Everyone wins.

But right now, NASCAR owners have their hands tied. With the financial model we’re currently under, those scenarios are becoming rarer because driver talent is a secondary attribute — and that’s never going to work long term. Quality, veteran drivers are losing rides because they don’t have the funding behind them to balance the budget. Meanwhile, unproven drivers are getting top-flight rides because they have the financial backing.

It’s backward. We need to reward the people that invest in this sport with the power to control their team’s future — not have it decided by outside money like a sponsor or a funded driver.

NASCAR isn’t dying. Far from it. As a sport, we’ve never had more money flowing through the garage area in our history. We’ve got a die-hard fan base that we’re making some great strides to reconnect with.

But we’re never going to be where we want to be unless that kid at the local short track knows that if they keep winning, they’re going to get a shot in the big leagues.

The cream should rise to the top. It’s the same dream all of us have had since we first fell in love with this sport — or any sport — and it needs to come true again.

How this could work

Below are some hypothetical budgets of Cup, Xfinity and Truck Series teams, all under the current schedule and all of which would wind up with a profit at the end of the year.

These budgets assume five things:

1. All budgets assume teams own all necessary equipment.

2. No crash damage cost has been added (from my experience, if you tear up
race cars, you’re always going to be over budget).

3. Races are shortened, tire prices adjusted, or some other form of savings in
the tire budget (bias ply tires, just saying) to keep Xfinity and Truck teams from
spending the full $10,000-$12,000 per race on rubber.

4. Spec motors are used in Trucks and Xfinity competition – drastically reducing operating cost after initial purchase.

5. Travel budgets are kept light by the team driving to most events.

 

Monte Dutton: Money Can’t Buy Love, But It Works Pretty Well With Speed

By Monte Dutton

Resistance is futile. Martin Truex Jr.’s season is a wildfire, out of control, fueled by drought conditions elsewhere.

The Bank of America 500 came down to an overtime finish matching the indomitable Truex against a host of NASCAR immortals — genuine, would-be and arriving soon — who didn’t have a chance.

Denny Hamlin, who started the Charlotte Motor Speedway autumn race on the pole, said that where speed was concerned, Truex had it — and has it every week — in reserve, with whipped cream and cherries on top.

Truex’s sixth victory of the season was an excellent time to make that argument. Truex qualified 17th on Friday. Only twice — both times on plate tracks where it doesn’t much matter — has he qualified worse. Seventeen times Truex has started on the front two rows.

Many observers, including virtually all those who describe races electronically, thought Truex starting 17th suggested a certain susceptibility to grim defeat. More likely, he was just having a little fun.

Cole Pearn, the unassuming crew chief, said they sure messed up in qualifying and added that it was evidence of “how close everyone is.” He couldn’t keep his face completely straight.

Say whaaaaaaaaaaat?

A lot of the Truex case has been tagged as evidence for how far away everyone else is. On the two laps noted for a green, a white, and a checkered flag, Truex’s Camry laid close to a second (.911) on Chase Elliott, and even young Elliott couldn’t beat himself up too much for that.

Yeah, I mean, it’s nice to run in the top five solidly,” Elliott, who has done it two weeks in a row and three of the last four. “Obviously, you hate to run second because that means you were close to first, but hopefully we’ll have our day sometime.”

In two late-race restarts, Truex’s Toyota took off as if it were a blue streak. On second thought, it was a blue streak.

If the season has a mystery regarding Truex, Pearn, Barney Visser, Denver, Colo., and Furniture Row, it is why hasn’t the team won 16 races instead of six?

The winner’s press conference seemed ridiculous. Most of the questions asked what made the team so strong, and most of the answers were because of how great the competition was. The question may have many answers, but that one isn’t it.

For what it’s worth, the answers to all questions regarding strength — by Truex, Toyota, the team, the State of Colorado — are not to be found in the conspiracy files, either. The grapes of Ford and Chevy wrath are sour. The overwhelming reason for Toyota supremacy in NASCAR, circa 2017, is not that NASCAR’s best and brightest have been paid off. Nor is it that its engineers are double-aught spies from the Organization Formerly Known as the KGB.

A NASCAR legend named Banjo Matthews, now looking down from heaven at Toyota with serenity, is associated with a slogan: “Money buys speed. How fast you want to go?”

The Toyota answer: Pretty damned fast. In NASCAR, the way one tells that a company has barely limited money is when said company says it doesn’t. It’s the same principle as chalking up a football team’s 59-0 victory to the incredible level of the opponent’s “athleticism.”

In modern-day NASCAR, points don’t mean much, but it doesn’t look bad on a resume that Truex has led them 13 weeks in a row.

Know what? Strip away the high level of pontification that often accompanies press-conference questions, and Truex is a straight shooter. Six victories, given his and his team’s performance week after week, from the high banks of Talladega to the flat concrete curves of Martinsville, are damned near the Marty Truex minimum.

“We could have won 10 or so,” Truex said. “That’s a realistic number. Winning six seems ridiculous, though. You don’t worry about the ones that got away.”

No. That’s Chase Elliott’s role. His day will come. At age 37, Truex knows some things that Elliott doesn’t  at age 21.

Editor’s Note: Longtime racing journalist Monte Dutton covered the Charlotte race for this website. If you’re interested in more of his racing-related work, check out his novels “Lightning in a Bottle” and its sequel “Life Gets Complicated.”

Monte Dutton column: Singin’ In The Rain (What A Lovely Feeling, I’m Happy Again)

By Monte Dutton

On my way to Charlotte Motor Speedway, I learned from a radio personality that, up ahead, it was “pouring mist,” and I picked up the pace because I wanted to experience the phenomenon of mist that would pour.

My God, it’s misting sideways! Alert Jim Cantore!

Here I sit, at 4:32 p.m., in the CMS infield media center, and Top Gun is showing on the monitors, now that Duke-Virginia is over, along with Cars and, according to tweeted reports from chums who were here, Speedway with Elvis Presley before I got here.

If the advance of this storm gives us a worst-case scenario, I may get to watch Rory Calhoun in Thunder in Carolina by, oh, Tuesday.

Surely not. The Bank of America 500 is optimistically scheduled even earlier than before!

This morning I arose sorrowfully, knowing that even though I haven’t experienced one of these long, rainy journeys into night in a while, a few of them remain vivid in my psyche. It’s not like the old days when NASCAR officials waited to announce a postponement until Dale Earnhardt was safely out of the track and boarding a plane. The discerning scribe could simply find a vantage point where he could see Earnhardt climb into a black limousine, then he could go to his rented Ford Contour and beat the traffic a short distance behind the seven-time champion. He could then wrap up the day’s activities from the motel room while his ears were ringing from less astute scribes, ensnarled in traffic, cussing him from afar.

Everyone from that era misses Earnhardt. That’s my reason.

It was long ago and far away (Pocono), when men were men and race tracks had traffic.

It rained in varying degrees, from the regular, non-pouring variety of mist to the kind that made me cuss every driver on the road who didn’t know how to turn his lights on, from the South Carolina Upstate to the grandeur of the Queen City. I stopped at a truck stop for gas and considered a hoodie that was day-glow yellow but sold for a mere $14.99. Instead, I bought a Diet Coke and a corn dog because not even a truck stop can mess up a corn dog.

I still own a Winston Cup Series umbrella. As I walked into the media center, a fellow looked at it and said, “Duude, that’s, like, serious old school. Cool. I like it.”

I looked at him and didn’t say a word. He probably thought I was a serious sort. It was just the umbrella that’s been behind my seat since I bought my truck and the one before it.

The word has just come down from Imperial NASCAR that the driver introductions are going to take place momentarily. Technically, no announcement has been made regarding the running of the NASCAR Xfinity Series Drive for the Cure 300 presented by Blue Cross Shield of North Carolina, but, as a general rule, one is not held without the other.

I’ve left the infield now because I like press boxes, never more than the present, because I watch races the way they do in the infield – on TV – every week. I like to watch a race without conforming to television’s judgment. Sometimes I use primitive instruments such as stopwatches and radios that just go one way.

Besides, before the race, I heard Dale Jarrett say that this race –- because of all the rain and all the hocus-pocus stick’em and unexpected nighttime running (when all the goblins come out) — would have more uncertainty and pure madness than any race he could remember (and he remembers a lot).

What about the 1954 Carrera Panamericana, won by Umberto Maglioli? Dale might have to ask Ned.

They’ve completed a stage now, and the field seems full of professional drivers unfazed by the predicted madness. Literally hundreds are in the stands.

Tomorrow – if a scheduled Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race is run ahead of a tropical storm with a bigger advance team than a Trump golf outing – the 40 greatest drivers in Cabarrus County will take to the track without having practiced on Saturday.

I’m sorry I am unable to provide you, gentle readers, with more hard-hitting, gritty racing coverage, but I’d have had a better chance of bumping into Tiger Woods at the Family Dollar than a prominent driver in the garage. They were all holding virtual practice on simulators somewhere.

It’s after 11. Alex Bowman is in Victory Lane. It’s all been worth it … for him. I’m hoping that coffee at the truck stop I visited earlier is hot and plentiful, but truck stops are more reliable in coffee than day-glow hoodies.

What I miss most about the racing lifestyle is the glamor.

DraftKings Fantasy NASCAR picks: Charlotte playoff race

I’m playing DraftKings this season and will be posting my picks here each week. Disclosure: If you want to play and sign up using this link, DraftKings will give my website a commission.

Last race’s results: Played $4 Brake Pad contest. Finished 850th of 1,200. Won $0.

Season results: $93 wagered, $104.50 won in 24 contests.

This week’s contest: $4 Brake Pad contest (single entry).

Charlotte strategy: Without reliable practice results to use for the race (both practices were washed out on Saturday), I’m relying heavily on position differential to get points. So that’s where most of these picks come from.

Charlotte picks:

— Martin Truex Jr. ($10,900): Picking Truex here this week works two different ways. First of all, he’s the best car every week and gives you a great chance to have fast laps and laps led. Second, he had an uncharacteristically mediocre qualifying spot — 17th — which offers an opportunity for easy place differential points.

— Joey Logano ($9,600): The decision here came down to Logano or Jimmie Johnson ($10,000). I couldn’t afford both. So I picked Logano because he’s $400 cheaper and has a slightly worse starting spot (28th compared to 25th for Johnson).

— Jamie McMurray ($8,800): Making this pick solely based on place differential opportunities compared to similar drivers at this price. McMurray qualified 18th and I figure he might get a top 10, so that’s worth the cost.

— Erik Jones ($7,900): Jones seems like the biggest no-brainer pick of the bunch this week, since he didn’t make a qualifying lap and will start 38th with one of the fastest cars.

— Ty Dillon ($6,700): This pick is just to make my lineup work. I looked for the cheapest driver who starts the furthest back with the most reasonable chance to gain spots. So that fell to Dillon, who starts 27th and is capable of a top-20 (his average finish this season is 20.9).

— Michael McDowell ($5,900): McDowell probably starts too high to make this a smart pick (16th), but the price is tough to beat. And compared to other drivers at this price range, it seems like the safest pick.

Monte Dutton: The Encumbrance of a Truncated View

 

By Monte Dutton

Most weekends I stare at the forest from afar. This weekend I’m scheduled to mingle among the trees.

For the second time this season, my intention is to write on-site about the NASCAR races at Charlotte Motor Speedway, where once I wrote about 40 consecutive points races, and 20 consecutive All-Star races, circa 1993-2012.

When I study the forest, the beauty is evident, but the details are sketchy. The first time I ever wandered into the Charlotte trees, Elliott won the race in No. 9. Next year, Elliott will be back in No. 9. Different Elliott. Chase, son of Bill. In a way, it is a microcosm of more than three decades. That first time, I was a fan, there because the Furman University football team was playing the Fighting Dates of Open. My job was with the Paladins. The Paladins took up most of my time.

Growing up, the forest was something I could barely make out in the distance. No cable. No live (flag-to-flag!) coverage. I listened on the radio to Ken Squier, Ned Jarrett and a bunch of guys yelling from various turns and pit stalls. On Monday night, WBT in Charlotte televised the highlights. Channel 3 was one of those stations I could watch by adjusting the antenna in order to make the electronic snow slightly less snowy. I loved the way the Charlotte tri-oval had been clipped into harsh angles. In the ’90s, the late NASCAR historian and freelance statistician Bob Latford coined the term “truncated tri-oval,” which I liked only because Bruton Smith’s preferred term, “quad-oval,” made no sense.

Then Bruton truncated a tri-oval near Atlanta, tinkering mainly because he could, and built another one near Fort Worth, and truncating became such a blur that truncation disappeared from the NASCAR lexicon, just like the old point system that Latford had famously devised.

What has changed the most? The rules. NASCAR then was a lot like Southwest Airlines now. It was easier for the leader to get away. In the ’70s, when I was in high school, the cars to beat were driven by Richard Petty, David Pearson, Bobby Allison and Cale Yarborough. On Oct. 8, 1972, Bobby Allison won the National 500, and the only other driver to finish on the lead lap was Buddy Baker. By my rough estimation of the consequences of the current system, had that race been run on Oct. 8, 2017, Pearson, A.J. Foyt, Butch Hartman, Darrell Waltrip, James Hylton, Buddy Arrington, Joe Frasson, Petty and Larry Smith would have also been on the lead lap. Today’s rules are the equivalent of, “No shirts? No shoes? No problem!” where the lead lap is concerned.

Now the cars to beat, every single confounded week, are driven by Martin Truex Jr., Kyle Busch and Kyle Larson. One reason more surprises happen is the rules. Losing a lap today is no more an impediment than a mosquito bite on a camping trip. It’s a mild annoyance. An itch.

Yet the season has still settled into a reliable pattern. Truex to Busch to Larson is as reliable as a double-play combination. Not every fair ball bounces to short. Early this season, Jimmie Johnson won three races before anyone else did. Now the seven-time champion is in the reserve pool, which has more swimmers than the public ones on the mill villages of my youth. No race’s outcome has really been a surprise since Kasey Kahne won at Indianapolis on July 23.

Denny Hamlin, hardly an underdog, mind you, won at Darlington, but that was “encumbered,” a word as mystifying as “truncated” in the ’90s.

The forest seems ever more distant and obscured by haze. The trees reveal detail, depth and craftsmanship. I’d like to see the trees of Darlington, Martinsville, Atlanta, Talladega, Bristol and Richmond again. I don’t want to fly on airplanes to races anymore. In a car, I can watch the trees all along the way.

I’m anxious to be there, well, a little more. Four and 94/100ths years away have made me keenly aware of the difference in perspective. At the track, I will be surrounded mainly by others who also love racing. TV’s message is that everything and everyone is just alike, only better. I don’t know any better.

The double entendre was intended as entendres tend to be.

Back home, I seem to be surrounded by others who tell me, ad nauseum, that they used to love racing but no longer. The general answer is “it ain’t like it used to be.”

Just what in the wide, wide world of sports is?

Social Spotlight with Justin Allgaier

Each week, I ask a member of the racing community about their social media usage. Up next: Justin Allgaier of JR Motorsports.

You’ve been on social media for a long time now. I feel like you’ve been through the ups and downs of it. How has your personal use evolved over the years to what it is now?

I think that there’s a fine balance of what you put out and what you choose to not put out. I was on social media before I had a child, and I think that having a child changes how you spend your time and how much time you have to devote to certain things. And just the stresses and the pressures and the time allotment of what we do here right now is a lot greater than what it was when I first got onto social media. So I’m probably not on it as much as I would like to be.

I take that back. I’m on a lot, I just don’t necessarily post a lot. I struggle because I love the interaction of it and I love being a part of it. To be honest with you, my wife (Ashley) is great at social media and I learn a lot from her on a daily basis. On the flip side, I’m kind of living in the moment of things instead of documenting them. In some ways that’s good, but in other ways it’s kind of bad. So I’ve struggled with social media on and off because there’s times where I wish I was better at it and then there’s other times when I wish I had never started it and just kept off of it.

But I love the interaction with the fans. My challenge is that 140 characters is just not necessarily enough to communicate with our fans, and that’s tough. At Chicagoland alone, I went through like 800 tweets of people just sending congratulations (after he won). Well I went through 250 text messages, so it’s like, there’s no way you can ever respond to every one of them and not get lost. I had people that were like, “Man, I texted you after Chicagoland,” and I’m like, “You did?” And one of them was one of my pit crew members, and I was like, “I didn’t even see it.” So I think that there’s a fine balance there and I kind of struggle with what that balance should be.

So you touched on this, but being a dad, how much does that take you off social media? Even if you wanted to be on it, how much less time do you have for it?

Now I find myself getting on and scrolling to the top (of the feed), right? Like “What’s going on right now?” If I have a few free minutes, I’m looking at what’s going on in the current moment.

The challenge of that is, I want to go through every tweet until I get to the top, or if it’s Instagram or if it’s Facebook. I’ve got to read all of them and see what’s going on, and I have to go in order and I have to go at my pace. So my wife gets so mad at me because she’s like, “You literally need to get off of Twitter without scrolling to the top, it’s not the end of the world.” I’m like, “No, because if I get off, I don’t know where (I left off). Like when you come back on, it refreshes, and I’m gonna lose all that.” I’ve kind of gotten into the habit of trying to get out of that and scrolling to the top and being done with it.

But on the flip side of it, especially Instagram, if you’re on Instagram, there’s a lot you miss because it doesn’t necessarily come in order, it comes in whatever it thinks you want to see. Like I’m missing a lot of things that would be things that I would want to see and usually seeing the crap that nobody wants to see on my feed.

So I struggle with that part of it. My wife posts a lot of videos and pictures of my daughter. And it’s not like I don’t want to post those pictures and videos, but she’s usually the one taking them, and then I’m gonna end up posting the same photo she posts, and more than likely most of my fans follow my wife anyway. So it’s easier to let her do that part of it.

But there isn’t a good way to do it. I’ll be honest with you, there’s not a good way to balance it. I’m typically reading Twitter at 10:30, 11 o’clock at night in bed or when I get up in the morning or when I’m out by myself and I’ve got five minutes — like if I get somewhere early, I’ll sit in my truck and scroll through. But I think that leaves me not posting as much because I’m typically not on whenever I would want to post something cool.

You touched on a few interesting things there. On Instagram, how arrogant is it on their part where they think that they know what’s best for you to see? I want to see all the posts, like you, in order — and yet you can’t do that! It’s so frustrating with Instagram.

That is the really frustrating part. I always get in that moment (where) I’ll think of somebody’s posts, and I’m like, “I haven’t seen them post in a while.” I’ll go to their page and they have five new posts that I haven’t looked at. So I’ll go through and look at them, but then you get in that moment of, “Do I like all five of them? Or do I not like them?” Because then their feed’s gonna be blown up with, “Justin Allgaier liked all your photos.” But on the flip side, if I don’t like the photos, then they’re like, “Justin Allgaier hasn’t been liking my photos lately.” Especially if they like my photos, then you’re like, “Man.” So to be honest with you, I’ve actually gone on a binge of not liking anything, because I don’t know when it’s from — whether it’s from four days ago or if it was 20 minutes ago. So I agree with you on that, I think for sure it can be done better.

That being said, on Instagram I follow 1,858 people, and on Twitter I follow 1,400 people. So in that regard, sometimes it can get a little bit challenging because you’re go on at times when nobody will post and you’re like, “Man, I gotta go search hashtags or search things” or I’ll go to the trending (section).

Then there’s other times where it seems like everybody wants to post at the exact same time, and you’re like scrolling up, scrolling up, scrolling up and I’ve only made it three minutes. So that’s the other challenge, too: People post in waves, companies come in waves, everybody does things on a different schedule and nine times out of 10 they all do it on the same schedule.

I also wish Facebook was a little bit more user-friendly as far as going back and seeing stuff, because I’ll go on, look at a page, and if I go through and approve a post on my (official) page, then when I go back to my main feed, it’ll be all the posts that I’ve just approved. And some of them might be from 10 days ago. So that doesn’t necessarily work, either.

So I’ve struggled with all of that, but at the end of the day, I guess it really doesn’t matter, as long as you have the people that you want to see and you get their stuff liked or commented on or retweeted or whatever you’re gonna do there. It makes it worth it.

A lot of drivers seem down on Facebook. They kind of ignore it, they have someone else manage it. It sounds like you are still managing your professional page yourself. What is the value there? How do you use that for your professional work?

I still look at everything, and I still try to do some of the official page. All of my personal accounts, I don’t let anyone else touch it. The only person who has access is my wife, and the only reason is if she wants to keep people updated when I’m in the car. She has done that before, but we typically don’t do that.

Now on my official Facebook page, my PR girl Megan (Johnson), she does do some of the posting on there, and the only reason for that is because it went dormant for a while. I got on there one day, I was checking stuff out, and the last post was eight months before that. I was like, “That kind of defeats the purpose of having an official page if there’s not going to be any posts on it.”

And then I went through a spell where it’s tied to my Instagram, and so I was posting on Instagram — you have the option to post on Twitter, post on Facebook — I didn’t know it wasn’t posting to it. There was a glitch between the two, and I went three or four months where I didn’t know the pictures that I was posting weren’t being posted onto it. So now I let her do some of the posts or some of the things that she thinks are important. I’ve given her access to be able to put stuff on it just so there’s at least content on there.

But I still go back through and reread all the comments and try to keep up with what’s going on, what people are saying. At the end of the day, I don’t know if what you post is most necessarily important, it’s more the interaction that I think is probably more important to people. So I think that’s how I’ve kind of gone with it. I’ll post as much as I can post on my own personal stuff but then on the official page, I let her do it.

It goes the same with the website (JustinAllgaier.com). It’s crazy how much websites have changed from years past. Mine now is more of kind of a news hub/ social media hub, so you get the news, the team’s gonna put out at a press release doing whatever, and then the rest of it, it’s all social media on the main page. Right now there’s obviously the tabs that you can go to other places, but keeping people updated on what’s going on on your social side of things is as important or more important than anything else.

I didn’t even think about that, actually.

When was the last time you went to a driver’s website?

That’s what just started going through my mind. The best way to keep it up to date is if you had your social feeds directly plugged into it, because that’s the most updated information you’re giving anyway. It makes a lot of sense, really.

I think so. We do all of our press releases and then right below that is all our social media, whether it’s Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, it’s got all of them tied to it.

YouTube is, for me, the easiest, and I keep wanting to do videos. I keep wanting to do more of YouTube. I’ve said that like 10 times. I bought a bunch of camera stuff and I was gonna do YouTube, and it’s hard. Like I don’t know how people get big YouTube followings.

We posted the video the other day of Harper giving me my helmet, and the story of it, and I had 800 likes between all three social medias that I run — and I had 40 views on the video. And I was like, “Well, the post on social media was to watch the video, and people liked it or commented on it — but I was only on 40 views.” That doesn’t add up in my mind. So I’m struggling with that.

What happens when the interaction turns negative? Like for instance the Indy thing (when he was criticized for mistakes that cost him a shot at the race), you posted a statement responding to everything. Do you go through all those comments on a bad day like that, or do you just have to turn it off after a while?

My wife gets so mad at me because I go through (the feed) good, bad, or indifferent. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s good or if it’s bad, I want to know what people are saying and I want to know what the interaction is.

And the hard part for me is, I get really aggravated when people don’t tag me. Like if you’re gonna subtweet or tweet about somebody, at least tag them so they know what you’re saying. I feel like that’s like going to high school and you’re at one table and you’re talking about someone sitting at another table, right? Be man or woman enough to stand up and say, “Hey, this is how I feel and this what I think.”

My statement from Indy was kind of a loaded statement. Steve Letarte called me after Indy, and we had this conversation about there were a lot of things that happened that day. Obviously, there wasn’t a lot of positives out of it. But there was a lot of the story that never got told, and I told Steve, “You buried me on TV, which led to a lot of what happened on social media. They took your comments and Jeff Burton’s comments and they turned those into headlines.”

And what they said (on TV) wasn’t necessarily as bad as what the headlines ended up reading, but it still caused things to snowball into something. I had people that wanted NASCAR to drug test me and all kinds of crazy stuff, and like it literally went from zero to 100 right now. So I felt like it was important to put out a statement.

At the end of the day it didn’t really matter, it didn’t change anybody’s perception, it didn’t fix what happened on the racetrack. But for me, I at least feel like all sides of the story should be heard at all times, so that’s where social media is at. Whether you like somebody’s opinion or not, you can at least post about it on social media so people know where you’re at and why you stand for what you stand for.

But it was great, because of social media, it caused the conversation between Steve and I. And I don’t know if it changes anything on how he did the TV side of things, but for sure we had a great dialogue out of it and I feel more comfortable with where he’s at as a broadcaster and his position on things and understanding some things, and I also think he understands some other things of where he felt I was at as a driver. So social media caused great dialogue that we would have never gotten had it not been for that.

Something you touched on at the start of that comment is very interesting to me is about tagging people. I personally struggle with that, because let’s say you’re going to say that “Justin Allgaier messed up right there” or something like that. If somebody tags you in it, it’s almost like they’re wanting you to read it. You said you want to read it because you want people to be a man about it when they say it, but at the same time, that could bring a ton of hate your way, like an avalanche of people saying, “That guy sucks!” or something. So what is the balance there? When do you tag somebody, when not?

Because I follow a volume of people, I see a lot of stuff where people aren’t tagged. … But the funny ones to me are the ones where I’ll see someone’s response with a tag of my name in it, but the original post didn’t tag me in it. So it’s like now I’m catching it secondhand. Now you’re reading back through it and you get fired up. Like I would feel better off to know what somebody said.

And at the end of the day, if we make a mistake, if we do something stupid — Indy for example — we already know what happened. We already know that it’s dumb. We already discussed it internally as much as anybody else externally is going to discuss it. That being said, for me personally, from your standpoint or whether it’s any other media member or fan, I think tagging somebody is appropriate. I want to at least know if you’re talking about me. Good, bad or indifferent, I at least want to know.

When it comes to being a dad and sharing your home life, you mentioned you let Ashley handle a lot of stuff because she’s used to being in that role. What is the balance there? Do you feel like fans want to see that part of your life and you feel comfortable sharing that part of your life?

I think I’m more comfortable sharing that part of my life than what fans would want to see of that part of my life. Being around the racetrack and talking to a lot of our fans, I get a lot more responses on the posts that I make about my daughter than I do on the posts that I make about whatever is going on in my life.

I still struggle with that, because I would post pictures of my daughter every day, right? I love my daughter and I’m super happy to watch her grow up and be a part of it. That being said, I feel like sometimes you find there’s enough and there’s too much — and I don’t ever want to hit that plateau. Because once you hit that number, it separates you out from everybody else.

You don’t want to go to work or to dinner or to whatever and one person is constantly, “Hey I got this new photo in my wallet,” or “I got this new photo on my phone,” and constantly showing people photos of their kids. I love that, but at the end of the day, I love it because she’s my daughter. Not everybody else loves it because that’s not their daughter. They could care less. So I don’t know. I struggle with that.

But I feel like the people that follow my wife are either really close friends of hers or they understand that (off-track look) is what they’re getting. I think sometimes as drivers or team members, you’re in a different role. If they watch me race on Saturday from the grandstands and they want to see what’s going on next week, they don’t necessarily know that they’re signing themselves up for a picture of my daughter or a picture of her at dance class or whatever.

I think there is a balance. I don’t know if I know what it is, but I try really hard to not over-incorporate one side or the other. I want people to understand that my social media pages are my own, and so if I post only info and commercial-type content, like race team-style content, people are gonna be like, “He doesn’t do any of his social media.” But then again, if I only post on my daughter, people will be like, “I can’t go there for information of what I want to find out.” So it’s trying to find that balance is really important for me.