by richard teague tinynascars@yahoo.com
I bet you that Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company wouldn’t want to use that part where Jimmie Johnson’s tire came off and wiped out a bunch of the leaders in the 600 Sunday afternoon. I can see it now, you’re watching TV and here’s the Goodyear blimp flying high overhead and those two guys are saying they want to get you there. Then down on the interstate a car is traveling along and one of its tires just flies off and takes out a half dozen cars. Not a good sign if you ask me. Now I know that Goodyear is the “Official Tire of NASCAR” and all but I have got to admit that I don’t run on them. I don’t think I have ever had a set of them on any car, truck, plane or bus I’ve owned.
OK, well I’ve never owned a plane or a bus but you get the idea don’t ya? I’ve always had a General or a Michelin and some times a Uniroyal tire and being NASCAR’s main tire hasn’t made me want them. Some of the teams aren’t even using them, but that’s only been for testing. NASCAR will not let Goodyear sell tires to teams and they won’t let teams use them either. From what I understand NASCAR doesn’t want Cup teams testing their cars, mainly the COT, but why in the world is that? If an owner wants to try new things on his cars then why can’t he? If Goodyear wants to sell new and used tires, how can NASCAR stop it?
When I heard about this a few weeks back, I couldn’t figure out why. Now that I hear that Michelin and Hoosier are going after teams to sell them tires so they can test cars. I really am lost. Has NASCAR got it into their minds that they can control all the aspects of racing from tires to gasoline to sponsors a team can have? Does being a “NASCAR Official Sponsor” mean that the companies have to do what NASCAR says and in return they will protect their product to the very end? Or just for so many court appearances?
Do you know how many NASCAR Official Sponsors there are under Brian France’s wing? Well I’ll tell you, but remember they are being added almost every week. I wish I could also say just what it costs to become one, but I would bet it varies from deal to deal. I got the count from the NASCAR media site and I think that it changes all the time, so don’t hold me to this, but there are over forty and it looks like NASCAR has got just about everything covered.
I will make a short list of these fine companies, and to be honest with you, I do use some of them, but not only because they are Official Sponsors. The first one is one I couldn’t use if I wanted to cause I ain’t never heard of them, much less seen one of their stores, and that is APlus, The Official Convenience Store. I did do my research on them and found out that they are a part of Sun Oil Company (Sunoco) so I wonder if Sunoco has to pay double for having two companies as NOSs?
They are located at a few select gas stations from Massachusetts to Florida and from New York City (NEW YORK CITY!!) over to Ohio. APlus started out as the official pit stop and now they’re the convenience store of NASCAR, sounds kind of convenient don’t it? You know how you once could go into a gas station and buy those little Official NASCAR goodies but now you got to go to a Sunoco station to get them. I guess that is an advantage for Sun Oil and a minus for us since they got the lock on stuff. Now for some you and I have heard of, there is Minute Maid, Powerade, Dasani, Coca-Cola and Budweiser, which are all the official beverage sponsors. We all know who the official home improvement people are, Home Depot, but do you know who the “Preferred Uniform/Uniform Supplier/First Aid Supplier” is?
That honor is bestowed upon Cintas, but since they are only preferred does that mean they don’t pay as much as “official sponsors”? The next ones you have got to know what they sponsor or you’ve not been watching the commercials during a race. Come on now, I’ll say the name and you say what they sponsor. UPS, Visa, Craftsman Tools, Bank of America and Tylenol. All right, since those were easy let’s get a few harder ones. Yardman, Oral B, International Truck & Engine Co., Kellogg’s, and, although I thought it was Pizza Hut all this time, Domino’s. All these fine companies fall into the “Official Sponsor” category but there are two other groups that are listed with NASCAR.
The first group is the “Official ‘Partner” of NASCAR (does that mean that Brian shares the money with them or not – not I would think): America Online (Brian’s free Internet), Best Western (never pay for a motel room again), DIRECTV (never have to use cable again) and then this one is a partner/manufacturer of NASCAR: Toyota. Just who said Toyota didn’t buy their way into the Craftsman Truck and the Nextel (formerly Winston and soon to be Sprint) Cup series? The third category is the “Promotional Partners” which is a mixture of companies that provide services from soup to nuts, or rather like Waste Management to Ragu to Hellmann’s all the way to Combos and Planters. Like I said, soup to nuts.
Looks to me, like Junior puts it, there is a big, big pile of money involved and it is going into the France’s bank account and he ain’t sharing with the teams at all. Just how much bigger can NASCAR and King Brian France get before the rules and laws they lay down, along with the court battles they get into, will get the better of this sport? What will it take to get it back to where it once was instead of the fastest growing sport on the planet? It may have started slowing down some in the past year or two. I’m just an old, tired fan that wants his racin’ back and not all the other crap that has been shoved my way for the past years.
One more little thing I want to ask about, just where do you think that Dale Earnhardt Junior is going next season? Seems that everybody has him going to one or maybe two places and Kelly says that no bets are off, which means he can do anything. She is right to a certain point. Something I have noticed when Kelly or Jr. are interviewed, at first it was that DEI wasn’t doing what was best for Jr.’s chances at winning races or a championship, so they wanted to go where a team would make it happen. Now when you hear or read about it, it’s all about trying to make a decision in time so that the manufacturers can have the correct car number and sponsor on his stuff in time for Daytona.
Well does that mean it is about money after all? I’m not sure how to take all that, but I guess I’m not supposed to am I? Junior, wherever you go the fans will wait until your stuff is made even if it is in July, so don’t worry about making a decision real fast, pick the right team and I hope it’s GINN RACING!! Well that’s it for this week and if you got the answers to my question about Jr. Please email me at tinynascars@yahoo.com and even if you don’t, I’m proud to hear from y’all. Remember, if it ain’t NASCAR it ain’t s**t!!
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