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Walking down pit road a few minutes before the green flag dropped on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway earlier this month, it was easy to tell which of the 43 teams had no intention of running the whole 400 miles.

In the pit stall, those teams - called "start and parkers" - had a small rolling tool chest, two or three crewmen, and here's the guaranteed tipoff: Teams that hope to run the whole race have glued lug nuts onto the wheels of the spare tyres, which makes it easier and quicker to change the tyres during pit stops.

Start-and-parkers don't plan to change tyres, so they don't glue the lug nuts onto the wheels.

There were three such teams that weekend: The No. 36 Toyota driven by Patrick Carpentier and owned by Tommy Baldwin Jr.; the No. 87 NEMCO Toyota driven and owned by Joe Nemechek; and - the king of the start-and-parkers - the No. 66 Prism Motorsports Toyota, with driver Dave Blaney, owned by Phil Parsons, the former racer and current TV broadcaster.

So what's the point? Money, of course.

Though attendance, TV ratings and sponsorship have declined for NASCAR Sprint Cup races, the purses haven't. As Sprint Cup teams take a break before the circuit heads to Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Blaney and his team have won $1,242,900. The car has started 16 of 19 races this year, and his average finish is 40.6, out of 43 cars.

Reasons for dropping out: Vibration, or overheating, or rear end, or brakes, steering, electrical, engine.

But the one race Blaney and his team finished shows that running the whole race may not be the smart thing to do financially. Blaney finished 28th in the Coca-Cola 600, ran 226 of the 227 laps, and won $91,175. At the Toyota/Save Mart 350, Blaney ran only three laps but won $72,150.

By pulling out that early, you save money on tysres, fuel, crew - salaries and transportation - and the car is in good shape for the next race. Tyres alone are a huge expense.

Two laps and done

Blaney was the first car out in the Coke Zero 400, running only two laps, using only four tyres and a few gallons of fuel.

Most of the teams that ran the whole race used 36 tyres, the maximum allotted by Goodyear.

In addition, teams typically have to set their cars up one way to qualify, and a different way for the race. Start-and-parkers need only concern themselves with qualifying.

So Blaney pulled out after two laps, Carpentier after 18, Nemechek after 25.

No one wants to be a start-and-parker, "but you do what you have to do," Nemechek said.

Twice this season, Nemechek has qualified his car, but Red Bull driver Scott Speed didn't qualify. Both times, Nemechek stepped aside and let Speed race the car, since Speed is fully sponsored and needs the points, and Nemechek needed the rent-a-car money.

Start-and-parkers "are in a difficult position," Speed said. "I think it's just the economy. It's not that they don't want to run the whole race, they fiscally can't."

Kevin Buckler, owner of TRG Motorsports, which fields a Chevrolet for driver David Gilliland, said he is ready to run the whole distance every race, but sometimes can't afford it. Gilliland tried to run the whole race at Daytona, but started-and-parked at last week's race at Chicagoland Speedway.

"We have a limited amount of money, and we pick the races where we go the whole distance," he said. The other option, he said, "is to not race at all. Do I like it? No."

The team made 76 laps before a crash took them out. As the race neared the end, the TRG team was in 39th. Had the TRG car start-and-parked and finished last, instead of crashed and finished 39th, it's likely the team would have earned perhaps $800 less (the final purse won't be decided until after the race) - but they wouldn't have had to buy tyres or gas, or flown in a full crew and be stuck with a crashed car.

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