As hard as it is to believe, before the end of the Sprint Cup season the “Heartbeat of America” may be flat-lined for good. News that GM’s auditors have “substantial doubts” that the company can avoid bankruptcy have resurfaced fears that 2009 might be a very difficult year for motorsports. Complicating matters is the increased government oversight of the auto manufacturers in response to the loans they received to continue operations. It’ll be increasingly difficult to justify spending “bailout” money on racing programs, even if they genuinely do represent dollars spent on effective advertising.

Of course a NASCAR without Chevy is like corn flakes without milk; nevertheless, NASCAR racing could probably absorb the shock of losing Chevrolet. But if Dodge and Ford were quick to follow, the circuit would likely be drastically affected. I’m sure there would be plenty of available equipment to go around… at first. The lack of corporate financing would hurt the smaller teams most. Big teams like Hendrick Motorsports, who do their engine work in-house, would probably make it through the season relatively unscathed. But teams who purchase engines from Hendrick, et al, might not be in such a favorable position.

The big question mark surrounds short-track racing. Chevrolet provides the bulk of the engines at local short tracks and it’s unlikely that another manufacturer — especially a foreign one — could step in quickly enough to meet the demand. And call me Captain Obvious but… it’s hard to enjoy motorsports without motors.

General Motors has supported our sport for a long time. Just 20 years ago they fielded four different models in the NASCAR Cup Series. Chevrolet was there when Dale Earnhardt finally won the Daytona 500 in 1998, and that same year saw Jeff Gordon to an incredible 13 wins. Not to mention seven victories in the Indianapolis 500.

Hopefully they can pull through this and get back on their feet.

With Spring rapidly approaching it won’t be long until our local short tracks begin opening up for their regular weekly racing programs. Now would be a good time to check the schedules of nearby tracks and commit ourselves to attending several events in our area for the coming year.

Living in New Jersey, I’ve become quite familiar with seeing race tracks close their gates. And when they do, it’s almost always forever. With the economic forecasts looking rather bleak, now is the time more than ever to support our local tracks if we expect to sustain grassroots racing.

What can we do to support short track racing? There are two things in particular that I think will be most important this season.

The first is obvious: patronize our tracks. If we don’t show up and make it profitable for owners to run these events, they’re going to close up and move on to something else. Another thing to consider is that for the price of a typical NASCAR Sprint Cup ticket, one can instead attend four or five local short track races. Not only that, but the food is cheaper, the action is much closer, the grandstands are more comfortable, and chances are the races will be more exciting. If that isn’t motivating enough to ditch our Cup tickets, think about it this way: the less money we spend on NASCAR, the less money that ends up in Kyle Busch’s wallet. (Yeah… I knew that would clinch it.)

The second point is just as important: we have to be more willing to express to track operators — in constructive ways — what we like and what we don’t like. If there’s a particular show or event we enjoyed, we should tell them. If there was something that we didn’t think was so great, let them know that too. Having a pulse on what the fans want is pivotal to making good business decisions.

The tracks that understand that their primary customer is the racing fan, and work to expand their customer base by attracting fans (both hardcore and casual) based on their preferences, will, in my view, be more likely to weather the coming economic storm.

So dust off the blankets and goggles and let’s get ready for a fun year of racing in 2009.