Burton on crate engines

GIVEN THE GM SITUATION IN THE NATIONWIDE AND TRUCK SERIES DO YOU THINK IT'S TIME FOR NASCAR TO GO TO A CRATE MOTOR TO SAVE COST?

“It’s a double-edged sword because on the surface a crate engine thing sounds like a great idea, but at the same time there is a lot of resources that are channeled through Hendrick Motorsports, through RCR, through Roush that make our companies that make our companies more stable and enable us to make the investments necessary to be here.

"So on the surface of it the crate thing for a lower budget Nationwide team the crate engine thing makes a lot of sense. For the Nationwide teams that are winning races, I don’t think it makes a lot of sense. I think in some ways it lessens a team’s ability to serve the sport.

"If you go to a crate motor it takes away and there are a lot of people that are employed today that would not be employed. You know every time we start talking about saving money we are talking about people. That’s what it ends up being. We have to be careful because it’s a double-edged sword.

"I’ll tell you that if I owned a Nationwide team and somebody said your engine bill is going to be cut in half that would sound pretty enticing to me. At the same time, it's kind of like paying taxes. I don’t want to pay any more taxes than I need to pay, but if me paying some taxes makes our infrastructure better and health care better then I’m okay with it. So in some ways, spending more money in our sport makes our sport stronger and spending less money is not all positives.

"If you do the crate thing, I think it really hinders our opportunity for Chevrolet to want to be involved in the Nationwide series or Ford to want to be involved in the Nationwide series. So that’s probably not a good thing either.

"With the IRL and Honda doing that, I don’t know how that thing works but in these times, it's like hey man if we weren’t relying on the manufacturers that might be a good thing but the majority of the time the manufacturers being here has been very beneficial to this sport. Marketing, merchandising, technology. The manufacturers have brought a lot to this sport. The manufacturers really started pushing the safety thing and put funding into that safety thing before anyone else. The manufacturers have brought a lot to this sport so going to that sounds good but there also some real serious negatives to it that aren’t as good as it looks on the surface of it.“

From a GM Press Release

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