The PubGuys Sponsoring a NASCAR Entry??

Posted on | February 23, 2010 | 4 Comments

PubGuys sponsoring a NASCAR entry…crazy you say?! Well..maybe a little, but it could happen..in fact if the PubGuys wanted to…it may have been able to happen last weekend. Believe or not, there are still “mom and pop” operations in NASCAR. These are mostly in the lower level Nationwide Series. Morgan Sheperd (who has been in NASCAR forever sponsors himself..or more precisely he is “Racing for Jesus”. Last week, Kenny Wallace (who drives the #28 in the Nationwide series) was working all the social networking tools to try and find sponsorship. According to Kenny, $7,200 will get your company as the primary sponsor for his car for 1 weekend. What does $7,200 actually do for the team? It buys 4 sets of Goodyear Racing tires. Without that sponsorship money, the team would be forced to scrounge for used tires. Can you imagine the PubGuys logo racing down the track, and when the race is over, Kenny Wallace is your spokesperson for a day? THAT WOULD BE AWESOME! If you have never had the chance to follow any NASCAR, I would encourage you to listen to Kenny for a while. He has personality enough for 3 people, and just loves to race.

Speaking of this past weekend, the racing was at Auto Club Speedway in SoCal. I am not sure whether it is an indicator of the economy or that fact that SoCal really isn’t a very good sports area..the stands were MAYBE half full. I know many will say that NASCAR is just too redneck for SoCal and THAT is why nobody was there..but let’s face it, the NFL isn’t even in SoCal because they fail to support the teams that do come there well enough. I chalk it up to having too many other options to occupy their time, and therefore, the pool of fans is depleted quickly.

Remember in last weeks blog, I said that you can’t really project the rest of the year based on Daytona..I have 3 examples of how that came true. Jimmie Johnson went from finishing 35th to winning the race. Dale Earhnardt Jr. went from a surprising 2nd place finish at Daytona to 32nd in Cali. Maybe more telling was Danica Patrick. While she performed very competitively in Daytona, she struggled hugely in Cali. She was never really comfortable in the car, and looked like someone who just doesn’t quite understand how to drive that kind of car yet. Not her fault at all…but it does show that Daytona is really all about the car.

Thats it for this week…they are in Las Vegas this week..should be a good show!

~Cheers

Comments

4 Responses to “The PubGuys Sponsoring a NASCAR Entry??”

Kyle
February 23rd, 2010 @ 10:11

While it is true that Southern California cannot support an NFL team nor, apparently, a NASCAR race, it is not true that they cannot support sports. The Home Depot Center is the home to not one, but two professional futbol teams in the MLS and consistently sell out. Also I would have to say that USC consistently packs them in.

I was disappointed in Danica this weekend. She really did look woeful in her car. I had/have higher hopes for her in NASCAR.

PGK
Bryan
February 23rd, 2010 @ 10:14

K…good point on MLS..got to say though..college sports don’t count. That is different ballgame altogether.

Don’t worry about Danica, this just reset the path of trajectory for her. She is a good race car driver, but you can’t expect to go from open wheel to NASCAR and have no learning curve (see Juan Pablo Montoya). I suspect she will need about 4-5 years before we can truly project her talent level.
Terrill
February 23rd, 2010 @ 10:49

Don’t mean to turn this into a SoCal sports discussion, but if I think the issue is a bit bigger. Bryan is correct that there is a lackadaisical attitude for sports in SoCal. While I will buy that MLS sells out due to the cultural make up of the area, other sports suffer greatly because quite frankly, LA only supports winners! It is the attitude of the town. Not only in sports, but in business.

As for USC… they rarely sell out the Coliseum – capacity 93K.
Jorge S.
February 23rd, 2010 @ 17:21

To be clear NASCAR is now considered a sport right

In all seriousness though, I really want to see how Danica does this year. My personal opinion is that she’s better as an idea (woman NASCAR driver) than as an actual driver. I’ll go on the record to say I don’t expect much from her, or not any more than a rookie driver, but I’d be happy to see any Woman driver break the tradition and do well in NASCAR.