NASCAR's Financial Evolution and Employee Impact

1:49

58:24

79.5K views

At 1:49 in

The Miami Brothers Who Invaded 1980s NASCAR: Rahmoc's Race Shop Time Capsule

Watch on YouTube

What happens here

Inside the shop, the owner recounts how the advent of big money in NASCAR changed the racing landscape. He explains that smaller, independent teams like Rahmoc could compete on the track but not in the 'boardrooms' against larger, factory-backed teams. He describes losing skilled employees who were poached by bigger teams like Penske and Hendrick, leading to a shift where pit crews evolved from volunteers to highly paid, specialized professionals. This era saw a dramatic increase in team budgets, making it difficult for grassroots operations to sustain themselves.

Goal: Understand the financial pressures and human resource challenges faced by independent NASCAR teams.

What they say

(2,162 characters)

Hide

there and bang go. Yeah, it was everything's done incrementally. Like people look around here, "Oh my god, Bob, how did you get all these machines? How did you do all this? Blah blah blah blah." Well, hell, I've been working at it for 50 years. >> [laughter] >> You know? Oh, yeah. So I mean, Jesus, I mean, you look at the Yeah, look what you can collect in 50 years. So, you know, the big money came in being a nothing but a blue collar guy. I couldn't I could compete with them guys on the track, but I couldn't compete with them in the boardrooms. Right. And so and I you know, I got tired of you know, the big teams coming in and pushing out all my employees and you know, you train these guys, you get them out the time they come to where they're an asset to you. You know, Penske calls them and next thing you know, half your team's gone. Right. Yeah, that's what I was saying about me leaving Cale's. I mean, you got I got the rest of my life I want to stay at Cale's and then Rick Hendrick's coming. What do you do? Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I yeah, I don't fault any of my guys because I mean, if somebody if I'm paying a guy all I can pay him and somebody offers him double his money, I mean, what kind of fool would he be not to take it? So That was the airport the money got doubled or more. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. And then all the way up really to about around 2000. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, look at look look what's happened to pit crews. Pit crews used to be volunteer or guys that worked on the cars. >> Yeah. How does this place work in 1985? Is it like take us through it. How did you >> Okay, well, this this part here is always been the engine shop. Okay, this is it. You know, Bob and Dick were always over here with the engines. And then the fab shop was next door. I'll take you over to the fab shop. We got everything we need to do engines over here and we still that's how we still make our living. Uh so we we build a lot of engines. I mean, we're really just a two-man shop. My brother and I were both in our 70s. So we're we're not uh young men and

Auto-generated from the video audio.