MELISSA BLOCK, host:
North Carolina is the promised land for people who want to make fast cars go faster. The Charlotte area is a major NASCAR hub, home to more than 60 racing teams. They employ engineers, welders, fabricators and mechanics. And over the past decade and a half, there have been lots of job opportunities. But the slow economy has hurt NASCAR, as it's hurt so many things, and corporate sponsors have pulled back. From member station WFAE in Charlotte, Lisa Miller reports.
LISA MILLER: This is one of dozens of shops in the area where crews turn frames and parts into race cars that can go more than 180 miles per hour.
Mr. TONY PRICE(ph) (Shop Foreman, Gates Racing): We've got Ryan(ph) over there. He's assembling dashes, wiring. We got Sean(ph). He's doing all the oil tanks for every car.
MILLER: Tony Price is a shop foreman at Gates Racing. There have been job cuts here, like at many other race teams. Over the past decades, sponsors were quick to write checks, and crews expanded as the money came in. Last year, nearly half the industry's estimated $3 billion in revenue came from sponsorships. Corporate spending has declined, but no one in the sport is saying by how much. Attendance at races has also dropped. Up to 1,000 racing employees have now lost their jobs. Dave Quasniac(ph) became one of them when two of the sport's longstanding teams, Dale Earnhardt Inc. and Chip Ganassi Racing, combined.
Mr. DAVE QUASNIAC (Unemployed Mechanic): They had six teams when they merged, and they basically had to get rid of two teams. So I was one of the lucky few that got let go.
MILLER: Since November, Quasniac's looked for a job at other shops, but nobody wants to talk to him. He moved to the Charlotte area six years ago to work as a mechanic at Joe Gibb's Racing, which meant he had hit the big time. Before that in New York, he toiled on the dirt track circuit. Quasniac hopes this latest turn means he won't have to leave racing. He loves it and the money, up to $100,000 a year. As more stock car employees find themselves out of work, one found an opportunity to lend a hand.
Mr. DON GEMMELL (Creator, DontCheckUp.com): This pile are the ones that we've already sent out to several people to help us.
MILLER: Don Gemmel sorts through a stack of 300 resumes he's received just in the last month. He created a free Web site, DontCheckUp.com, as a way to get out-of-work racers working again. He and a few others spend hours each week posting the resumes.
Mr. GEMMELL: When there's been a contraction or a team has had to cut back, you know, usually word of mouth was able to get you another position, or you just walked down the street to the next race shop and say, hey, I can do this, this and this. And pretty soon, the guys were back at work. But we aren't in that kind of situation right now.
MILLER: Gemmell says these guys aren't used to writing resumes. The documents require reworking before he can post them. One resume on his desk takes a third of a page to describe a decade in the racing business. Another is four pages long. So far, Gemmell has heard from about a dozen companies interested in the resumes, but only a couple of them are in racing.
Mr. GEMMELL: Some of these people worked for 10 years in order to qualify themselves to come down here and work for the man. And sometimes, you just have to console them now that that's over and say, hey, you got the opportunity to do that.
MILLER: Along with hundreds of others, Dave Quasniac hopes he'll have one more shot at racing. Before the NASCAR season starts next month, teams have another round of hiring. If he doesn't get a job then, Quasniac might return to New York to work as an excavator. He realizes it won't be racing, but it'll be a job. And in a rough economy, he considers himself lucky to have that option. For NPR News, I'm Lisa Miller in Charlotte.