Tournament Pay and Nascar Racing
Tournament pay refers to pay being based on relative rank order performance. One of the major downfalls to this type of pay scheme is too much competition. Employees may get so concerned with the need to be first they may forfeit the needs of the company. This article about Nascar racing is a perfect example.
Juan Pablo Montoya spun teammate Scott Pruett to take the lead with eight laps left for a NASCAR Busch Series victory.
Since tournament pay lead to such aggressive competition among teammates in nascar racing, what other options do they have?
2 comments:
I think that NASCAR could institute some sort of pay bonus structure based on the points system over periods of time rather than the tournament pay system if an alternative method of pay was needed in the sport. Maybe all drivers could be paid for making the field in a race, and then their performance by the month or by portion of the season (i.e. first quarter of races or maybe every 4 races) could be measured, resulting in a bonus based on their perfromance over that period rather than on a race by race basis. This could work, as it would reward drivers who were consistantly good, rather than encourage too much competition on a week to week basis. Given that some tracks (like Daytona or Talladega, which are superspeedways where speeds go over 200 miles per hour for long periods of time) are more inherently dangerous than others (like short tracks or road courses, where the top speeds barely get above 120 miles per hour at moments), the bonus pay system would encourage a bit more caution for the drivers by reducing some of the risk for having a lower finish in one race, as the pay can be balanced out by better performance in another race in that period of time.
NASCAR is a "sport" and sports are supposed to be competitive.. take away money incentives for placing highly the "fun" of watching NASCAR will be lost... then see how much money is in it when people stop watching
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