Amid the off-season blues, waves of drivers being burnt out are flowing through the community. The 283-day-long NASCAR calendar has become a cumbersome affair for many as the year nears its conclusion. It’s not a far-fetched thing that reluctance would become evident from the very beginning of the season, which is something to worry about.

Adding to the misery, former team employees have broken their silence and have taken center stage as they spilled the beans about the “real, but not new” factor troubling the NASCAR fraternity for decades. And it’s gaining more traction than ever!

Commitment issues arise within NASCAR

From waking up early in the morning and doing point-to-point inspections of the cars to traveling places in between the races, a job in motorsports leaves little to no time for anything else. 

Unveiling the dire “burnout” situation to the community, NASCAR insider Pete Pistone took to Reddit and wrote, “Understand many Cup and even NXS teams are having a tough time filling positions internally with burnout factor becoming more of a tangible challenge over the length of the season – one principal believes it’s even reached the level of drivers not wanting to commit to full season”

[Pistone] Understand many Cup and even NXS teams are having a tough time filling positions internally with burnout factor becoming more of a tangible challenge over the length of the season – one principal believes it’s even reached the level of drivers not wanting to commit to full season
byu/LBHMS inNASCAR

The 36-race-long calendar, which concludes within just 9 months, becomes hectic for the entire team, not just the drivers. With only a fraction of the time to relax and unwind compared to the contribution made, the commitment to give one hundred percent through the entire season starts to fade away. 

The former owner of Last Five Motorsports, Matt Tifft, shared a mutual belief and emphasized that the employees can get better pay and facilities at a less hectic job, so why would they devote their entire schedule to NASCAR? Tifft replied to Pistone’s same post as Reddit on X, “The issue rising is for how long and intense the season is, there are fewer and fewer people who want to commit when you have guaranteed time off and can see your family and have more home time with equal or better pay working for bigger corporations, dealerships, Amazon, etc”

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The revelations are striking but not new. Following Pistone’s disclosure, former team employees have come forward as they take center stage with their bad experiences with jobs in motorsports.

Former employees dig up the less-heard past 

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In usual cases, fans are the ones to take the discussion into their own hands, but it’s the former team employees this time, who didn’t shy away from exposing jobs in motorsports for what they truly are.

A former intern mechanic expressed his woes and wrote, “I was an intern mechanic for Petty Enterprises in 2007 for 6 months and lord was it rough…alarm went off in the hotel at 4am, bus left at 430, at the track by 5am to do a 100 point checklist on the car. There all day until about 8pm.”

Another intern spilled his concerns at the job and revealed, “I interned at RFR/RFK in college, and graduated with a sport management degree. That 4 months I spent in Concord showed me it wasn’t the career for me…My professor always told me that a career in sports is 5-10 years of grinding with low pay, no weekends, and 60 hour work weeks.”

This fan shared that his father took a huge risk and left his road crew job, just because the burnout was too severe to handle. He wrote, “The burnout is real, but not new. My family moved to NC for NASCAR and my late father quit his road crew job for a shop position to help raise me; this burnout is nothing new and has been happening for more than 20 years now if you travel.”

One fan, whose friend used to work as a sponsor representative for a NASCAR sponsor knew what happens on the inside, wrote, “I had a buddy that was a sponsor rep for an official NASCAR sponsor that also sponsored a team…I said “this has to be the best job ever” and he responded “it actually sucks. These 2 weeks are the longest I’ll home till the off-season and I haven’t had lunch or dinner at home in 6 days.”

One fan unraveled how full-time workers’ condition swayed him away from a motorsport dream. He wrote, “The complaints I heard from full-time workers drove me away from not pursuing a racing-related job…Not once have I regretted that decision.”

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The matter seems more serious on the inside than it looks on the surface. The revelation dug up the extremities faced by motorsport workers and could prove detrimental to the sport in the long run. What are your views?