Justin Marks is known for breaking the mold as a NASCAR team owner, and his potential move with SVG may be his most ambitious yet. He had some very telling comments to James Pavey of Supercars.com, and it gave some insight into Marks’ idea for what an SVG NASCAR deal would be. Marks also gave some insight into how he feels about the charter system.
“I don’t know if it matters,” Marks said of the NASCAR charter system. “…The charter thing is a funny business right now. Look, I’m running a racing business here. I don’t have a billion-dollar company that I can lean on or anything like that. We’ve got a lot of people that are interested…The barrier of entry is high financially right now and I’m not convinced you have to have one to go race. We’re going to try and expand and grow as a business, that’s not 100 percent dependent on us and our ability to buy a charter.”
Justin Marks via James Pavey
We have talked a length about the seeming necessity of Marks needing to buy a charter to bring SVG to the Cup Series full-time. However, Marks seems to be singing a different tune.
This can mean one of two different things. First off, if SVG is not running full-time, he does not need a charter in the Cup Series. It has been theorized that he could run multiple different racing series throughout the season and, in that instance, a charter is completely unnecessary.
However, the fact that he outright said that he is not convinced he needs to have a charter to race is interesting. Is he actually considering fielding a full-time NASCAR Cup Series team without a charter? No one is doing that at the moment in the NASCAR Cup Series.
That would be pretty crazy for him to do it, but that may be his only option to bring SVG to the Cup Series. Charters are very expensive, and Marks, by his own admission, does not have as deep of pockets as other owners.
Could this be the new way for race teams to operate? If Marks proves that you can run and be competitive without a charter, then what could that do to prospective team owners? A lot of interesting things could come about if Marks decides to go this route at some point.
If SVG were to run in NASCAR, then a lack of a charter would put him potentially in line to be bumped from the field at any race with more than 40 cars. That would make it all the more important for him to get experience on ovals in the lower racing series. If he has trouble qualifying for big-paying races like the Daytona 500, it could be hard to keep that team afloat.
All of this is just speculation, but Marks seems to be looking at other options to race with SVG not having a charter. That would be an interesting decision that could have a large impact on the sport.
