[mitchntx]

After watching a some of the coverage of the Daytona 500 this weekend and hearing a lot of discussion about the costs associated with feilding a competitive team and hearing the gnashing of teeth surrounding the dwindling sponsorships and hearing the concerns about enough cars to field a full grid and seeing Waltrip's wild tumble and seeing that tumble re-played on network after network after network ....

I began to wonder ....

Because it's all about the number of minutes a specific sponsor get's it's name on TV, when will a driver, who is an "also ran", purposely wreck his car, just get gleen a few extra minutes of sponsor coverage?

Is it cost effective to spend a $100,000 race car in order to keep a $10 million sponsor?

NAPA received tons of exposure from networks to local TV stations replaying his wreck. I would hate to see that happen on purpose, but ... it has to be there in someone's mind ...

[Chris 96 WS6]

Fights and things...if you know your NASCAR history you know that sort of thing was common 20-30 years ago. Now it is not. Sponsors don't like their drivers getting suspended from races, and NASCAR cherishes its image more now than ever, so some of the wild antics that were part of the sport years ago have been replaced with politically correct stuff.

No driver today could be as aggressive as Dale Earnhardt was in his prime. Dale himself mellowed quite a bit over the years. But today you see guys like Harvick taking out Rudd last year and it is just not tolerated, it is a good way to miss a race, lose championship points, and have your team owner and sponsor mad at you PLUS earn retaliation on the track next week.

I guess what I lament about the sport is that it is so money driven now. The new points system is stupid an to me renders any championship earned under it totally incomparable to past championships.

I know most of you Road Racers probably don't like the sport, but I enjoy Nascar. maybe they are not the best talent in terms of turning left AND right out there, but there are a few that more than hold their own at the two road courses and at events like 24hrs of Daytona. The fact that guys like Boris Said and Robby Gordon cannot just walk in, sit down in a Cup car and dominate an oval track event suggest to me that great road racers do not automatically make good stock car racers, so it would seem to me that talent is relative to the venue.

I find the similarities between the Nextel Cup cars and our Fbodies to be more meaninful than say F1 cars, simply because they are running 2v per cyl cam-in block pushrod V8s, live rear axles, etc. No they are not "stock" cars anymore, that is just a term for the type of racing. More importantly, it is the personalities that drive Nascar. Yes, I guess that's sort of like WWE, but I think personalities drive every sport. Who was a Bulls fan but not a Jordan fan? Who was a Yankees fan but had no favorite players?

As for the wrecks vis a vis sponsor exposure. The "new" TV contract with NBC and Fox has created some tough things I don't care for. Basically they are trying to sell everything they can get their hands on. Now you have races with "presenting" sponors, like the Cracker Barrell 500 presented by Kraft Foods. How are they presenting anything? Seems to me NASCAR is the one putting on the presentation. Just stupid stuff like that, or how they would not allow ESPN to report trackside because only TNT and FOX were allowed magazine-type race show coverage. Now that RPM tonight is gone ESPN is allowed back in instead of getting driver interviews in the parking lot.

Sponsorships are tight because its too expensive to justify to companies that can't draw the line between the sponsorship and increased revenue. You're going to give $12M to a team, you want to see at least $20M in increased revenue. Certain products/sponsors are not going to be able to generate that kind of crossover from the race car to the grocery store or whatever. I think Bud has more than made their money from Dale Jr, but how has CAT benefitted from the #22 sponsorship? Its a little harder to quantify for certain sponsors I think.