Starting a race team at NASCAR’s highest levels is not an easy thing. It takes a lot of time, money and experience. Now I don’t claim to be an expert on the subject, I certainly have never tried to do it, but I have been around long enough to know what you should and should not be doing when it comes to getting something like this off the ground.

Just this season we have seen the creation of multiple organizations at different levels. Some, in my opinion have done this better than others.

Let me start with Tommy Baldwin Racing as an example of a team that knows what they are doing. Tommy Baldwin is one of the most well respected and experienced people in the garage. If anyone could make a team with a shoe-string budget work it is this guy. And so far it looks like he is doing it.

He has a cheap shop over by the drag strip in Mooresville (an area that houses lower budget organizations). He has a manageable number of employees and expectations that don’t exceed reality. He bought equipment cheap and he has no outstanding debts hanging over his head. Admittedly they have struggled the last couple of races, but Baldwin and his team are doing everything right.

Trail Motorsport is in a situation similar to TBR. They are new and struggling to find footing in the present landscape. They though are going about it in a completely different fashion, one that is presently not very effective.

In a blog posting about a month ago team Managing Director Patrick Shelton wrote about how to run a race team; something he acknowledged is an expensive endeavor. What he chose to focus on in this post was how innovative and fan forward the team would be. This is all well and good, but fan forward philosophies, no matter how good they are won’t create a stable organization. This, I believe has been their problem from the get go. They are too focused on the secondary things, and less focused on creating a cohesive team.

John Monsam was hired early on as a crew chief for the team, but as far as a I know has since left to be a crew chief for one of Eddie Sharp’s ARCA teams. It would be very difficult for Monsam to do both. Beyond him they have Armando Fitz, a less than respected member of the NASCAR community (see Deadbeat Owners post).

I don’t doubt Patrick Shelton and his father Arthur have the tenacity to get this thing going, but they seriously need to prioritize. Among other things, they need a team manager who knows what he’s doing; mechanical knowledge would be a plus, as would prior experience running a successful organization.

Likewise, equipment would be helpful. In their first two outings with Chase Austin the team rented MRD Motorsports (their employees and equipment). This ended last weekend when Dennis Setzer climbed back behind the wheel of the truck. As far as I know Trail is limited in the equipment and resource department and as most know these things are the most vital part of racing.

In addition the team should probably consider the value of spending large amounts of money on a new facility (last week the team announced they would be taking a couple of weeks off as they prepared to move into the old Yates/Petty shop). ESPN quotes the younger Shelton as saying “we had to shift a lot of operating funds into capital funds,” to lease the building. A little piece of advice, a nice building does not translate into a successful team. Shelton should be more concerned about spending that money on racecars.

They need to do what Tommy Baldwin did and find a small, cheap shop somewhere nearby and call it good (lord knows there are plenty available in Mooresville). Trail is planning on running one Truck team, one Camping World East Series team, and a possible Nationwide team, not a multi-car Cup operation.

I can appreciate what Trail is doing on the fan side. Really, more teams should be doing things like this. But the fun stuff needs to be secondary to building good race cars (this is the biggest thing), finding sponsors and creating a solid employee foundation. If and when Trail does these things they will find they have a stable organization.

Related posts:

• Trouble At Trail?
• UPDATE: Trouble At Trail?
• Advice For First Time Race Goers