[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 ...

[mitchntx]

One counter point is that the race lasted another 2 hours after Waltrip's wreck. Yet the twirling NAPA logo was on every sports show, both local and national for the rest of the day. It seems the 97 car was running WITH the top 5 almost the rest of the way. Funny how he never got mentioned much, especially after the race.

But Chris, let's get past the Waltrip/NAPA analogy.

I only brought up the wreck as an example of, if it were a so-so driver with an "on the fence" sponsor, how a driver/team could conspire to get sponsor air time they wouldn't have normally gotten because of where/how they were running at the time.

I'm also not saying that it's actually happening ... but, it is an intriguing theory.

The theory being that race teams are clammering for a dwindling pile of money in any genre of racing. At some point, it is possible, that someone could do something desperate in order to stay in the game.

Just a theory ...