AVONDALE, Ariz. — During the November NASCAR weekend at Phoenix International Raceway, an atmosphere akin to that of the final week of grade school settles into the garage area.

There is, after Phoenix, but one race left on the 10-month, 36-race schedule. Travel-weary officials, drivers and crew members normally turn giddy with thoughts of the approaching offseason.

This year, however, giddiness is down considerably. Pushing it aside — and, to a certain degree, replacing talk of actual racing —are angst and gloom about a global economy in tatters.

On Friday, news swept the garages that General Motors was running out of money and facing bankruptcy.

On Saturday, Kyle Petty was asked if he would describe the situation facing NASCAR as a crisis. With the look of a condemned prisoner, he said yes.

Big-time racing has an intricate and intimate relationship with the world economy. Truly, the business of NASCAR is business.

When a company sponsors a car or a race or a track, it is advertising by buying rolling billboards. For the past couple of years, there has been plenty of billboard space available.

"Certainly this is the hardest time I've seen in terms of available sponsors," said Bill Davis, owner of Bill Davis Racing.

In recent weeks, the deteriorating economy has begun to take a personal toll on NASCAR teams.

Teams have announced job cuts — and not just teams on the second tier of success. Hendrick Motorsports announced last week that it was making cuts. One of those cut will be Stevie Reeves, the spotter for Jimmie Johnson, who is going for his third straight championship.

"The thing that has gone on at Hendrick Motorsports, a lot of it has just been trying to make the company better," Johnson said. "Everybody is always looking at how you can do it for less and more lean and different things like that. So those all apply to what has gone on at Hendrick, trying to make the team better, trying to be lean and more efficient. I think that is the way any business operates."

Nearly every team polled by The Kansas City Star in Phoenix said it has or will cut jobs.

Those plans will surely intensify with Friday's news regarding GM.

Jay Frye, the president and general manager of Red Bull Racing, got the news about GM early Friday morning.

At mid-morning, Frye, whose team uses Toyotas, said, "I would say we would be very concerned. Car manufacturers are a very, very important part of what we do."

Davis, also affiliated with Toyota, said of the GM news: "It's a sad time for our country. Here we are with one of our mainstay corporations ... facing something like that."

Another event of the past week sent ripples through the garages. That was the election of Democrat Barack Obama as president.

That event, Petty said, created a large amount of uncertainty in the sport.

"Ninety-nine percent of the people in this garage are Republicans," Petty said. "They were convinced that when they woke up on Wednesday morning, that if Obama was president, the world would start spinning the other way. With the economic and political uncertainty, they don't know what to do. That does affect this sport."

Jeff Burton said he was intrigued by the prospect of Obama's presidency.

"There are a lot of good things that I see there, and there are a lot of things that concern me. ... But I think for our country, and even for the world, it's a remarkable thing for a young guy like that with little experience to be elected president — and of course the first African-American to be elected president. That's some special stuff. That's real special stuff," he said.

One thing that seemed to unite everybody in the garages is the view that somehow, some way, the costs of racing must be contained.

To be competitive in Sprint Cup currently, it can cost up to $25 million a year per car. Rusty Wallace, a former driver and current television analyst who also owns a Nationwide series team, sneered when he talked about costs.

"We got to do whatever it takes to get a huge cost saving right now," Wallace said. "This thing is spiraling out of control financially. End of story."

Some think it is up to the teams to do that. Others think it is up to NASCAR to find a way out of the economic mess.

NASCAR chairman and CEO Brian France says his organization is concerned and is taking steps to reduce costs for teams.

"There are none more significant than the new car," France said. "What we said is once you get through the spooling up process of the teams figuring out that they don't need to build 15 or 20 cars per season. ... So as we go along into 2009, the teams will be building less cars, hiring less engineers or that kind of expertise."