Racing faces a bumpy road.

• Position: Charlotte

When hard times forced a stock-car team to cut costs in racing's early days, it usually meant losing five or six grease monkeys. "Now, you've got to put another zero on everything," says Humpy Wheeler, former president and general manager of Lowe's Motor Speedway. Concord-based Chip Ganassi Racing laid off 71 last summer when it dropped a team. More than 100 followed a few months later when Ganassi merged with Dale Earnhardt Inc. in Mooresville. In December, Mooresville-based Petty Enterprises LLC laid off about three dozen employees, bringing its job cuts since the season ended in November to more than 70.

Racing, with an annual statewide economic impact of nearly $6 billion, hasn't hit the wall yet, but it's skidding that way. About 27,000 Tar Heels are directly or indirectly employed in motorsports. "You're going to see teams perform at the same levels with the same successes but with less money and fewer people," says Rep. Karen Ray, a Mooresville Republican and co-chair of the General Assembly's Motorsports Caucus.

The sport suffers from the same downdrafts as the rest of the economy, including inflated unemployment rates and shrinking discretionary income. Racing also depends on sponsors more than most sports, and the Big Three automakers, which pump in hundreds of millions of dollars a year, face calls from Congress and...