The economic crunch has finally, finally hit Main Street.  For months now, Common Men have been interviewed on the television by serious financial reporters, and always their mantra has been the same: How does this affect me?  Well Fred, this is how it affects you.  The economic downturn has really begun to hamper this nation’s greatest invention: NASCAR.

For those of you too sophisticated to follow the stock car racing, it’s not a cheap endeavor to field a car.  Some of the organization’s top team owners include such notables as Clinton pardonee Rick Hendrick, truck rental magnate Roger Penske, and ex-Redskins coach Joe Gibbs.  Even with their vast trillions of dollars of wealth, they still need sponsors to keep the operation alive.  And funny thing, many companies are finding that pasting their logos onto a car that could well crash into a wall at nearly 200mph, and then catch on fire, is not terribly high on their to-do lists.

Teams with family names revered in stock-car racing like Petty, Waltrip and Earnhardt may enter 2009 with unfunded cars. The circuit might even have trouble filling 43-car fields.

“There’s maybe 26 teams that have sponsorship for next year, and five or six that have partial,” said Michael Waltrip, an owner and driver who shored up his finances by selling a stake to Fortress Investment Group LLC founder Robert Kauffman a year ago. Waltrip, 45, faces 2009 with only one of three cars fully sponsored. He said he might have to shut down one team.

Waltrip, two-time winner of the Daytona 500, isn’t alone. Dale Earnhardt Inc., founded by the seven-time Nascar champion and now run by his widow, has secured a backer next season for only one of four cars. Financial, automotive and consumer goods companies are balking at paying as much as $25 million to support a top team amid job cuts, seized credit markets and slow spending.

So there you have it, Main Street.  Dale Earnhardt’s company is hurting, and if that doesn’t bring it home to you, I don’t know what will.  We’re all screwed, even those of us without jobs who drive secondhand RVs to camp out at racetracks a week in advance.