Forum Activity for @dave-fulton

Richmond Loses Crown Royal Sponsorship to Indy

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The one caution I would give Crown Royal about anIndy sponsorship is that the venue and its previous Brickyard 400 name may well be bigger than the Crown Royal name. Don't know how many folks remember the year STP tried to buy into the Daytona 500 as the Daytona 500 presented by STP. The press was not real quick to pick up on that and STP spent a bundle. Ditto a Mountain Dew Southern 500.... say, what? To me it's the Southern 500 still. I had a little easier time in 1981 when Wrangler Jeans gave Richmond its first event sponsorship. We, as many other sponsors, had paybacks to make. The Sanforized Company (owned by Cluett Peabody) who owned the rights to the no-shrink Sanforized denimprocesscontributed $40,000 to the sponsorship, thus we billed it as the Wrangler Sanforset 400, which quickly became the Wrangler 400 to the press corps. I suspect the spirits folks will have a difficult time getting the media to call their event anything other than the established Brickyard 400 name.

Richmond Loses Crown Royal Sponsorship to Indy

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spot on

Richmond Loses Crown Royal Sponsorship to Indy

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Wonder if this had anything to do with Doug Fritz losing his job as head honcho at Richmond? PattyKay several weeks back well documented the Crown Royal sponsorship situation up to that time. And the rich get richer.

AP Reports:

RIR loses sponsor

Crown Royal is moving its "Your Hero's Name Here 400" Sprint Cup race from Richmond International Raceway to Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2012.. The whiskey maker says it has a multiyear deal to become the title sponsor for what has been known as the Brickyard 400. Financial details were not released. The company plans to hold a contest to select the name of a member of the U.S. military or a police officer or firefighter to be incorporated into the title. The announcement came Thursday at the historic 2.5-mile oval, which is hosting its annual Sprint Cup race Sunday. The official name of the race is the "Crown Royal Presents the [honoree's name] 400." Speedway CEO Jeff Belskus says he expects a race day crowd that will be about the same size as last year's, more than 100,000, though five sections of grandstands will be closed. He says ticket sales have been better over the past month. Crown Royal became the title sponsor of RIR's spring race in 2006, when the event was known as the Crown Royal 400. At that race, Crown Royal announced that subsequent races would be named for a person, based on judging of essays submitted by fans. Starting with the 2010 race, the event was named for members of the U.S. military. Crown Royal said 17,000 people voted on the 2011 race, which was named for Matthew and Daniel Hansen. In a statement after the Indianapolis announcement, Heather Boyd, Crown Royal's senior brand manager, said, "For the past six years, we have had a fantastic partnership with Richmond International [Raceway]. They've been wonderful partners in helping us to build this program to what it's been today. "We'll continue to look at different ways to partner with them." Dennis Bickmeier, who became president of RIR in early July, said in a statement that he is confident the track can find another race sponsor. "We've had fun promoting the 'Your Name Here 400' at Richmond International Raceway," Bickmeier said. "Our track has a very unique branding position, and this race added to the uniqueness of that brand. The 'Your Name Here 400' was not just a fun event to promote; it was a source of tremendous pride for us as a brand and a track promoter." In June, Crown Royal announced that it would drop its sponsorship of Sprint Cup driver Matt Kenseth and the No. 17 Roush Fenway car after the 2011 season.

updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:02:07PM

Fire at or near the NASCAR Hall of Fame

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Robbie, speaking of catalytic converters, do you guys remember when they burned up all those cars in the Atlanta parking lot in the tall grass shortly after catalytic converters were mandated?

Today vs Yesteryear and why

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On Sunday, I'd hope the preacher would not be longwinded at ourSouthern Baptist church in Richmond. I'd get dad to give me the car keys, rush out of church to the parking lot and turn on Universal Racing Network on the car radio (after dad finally let me get a radio - AM only, of course, at the junk yard andinstall it myself in our '57 Chevy). It'd usually be another 15-20 min. before mom, dad and my sister got to the car. We used to have a 30 minute radio show in Richmond on WXGI Radio (the station was formed by two WWII Army buddies, ex-GI's, get it?) in the 60s named "The 5th Turn" hosted by Joe Kelly and Eddie Anderson that aired for 30 minutes before the radio broadcast. Oh, to hear URN's Bob Montgomery open a race radio broadcast was a treat not to be missed. Back in those days, the lineup would be read (last to first), starting with car number, hometown, car make and year, and driver name. Even if we hadn't seen the starting lineup in the paper, and some of these races had qualifying the same day, we would anticipate the driver's name by the hometown. You could almost picture those different towns in your mind. Those towns would roll off Montgomery's tongue like melting chocolate:

Bridal Veil, Oregon

Hueytown, Alabama

Rhonda, NC

Inman, South Carolina

Skyland, North Carolina

Christiansburg, Virginia

Gastonia, North Carolina

Norfolk, Virginia

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Keokuk, Iowa

Cross, South Carolina

Manning, South Carolina

Arden, North Carolina

Jacksonville, Florida

Daytona Beach, Florida

Spartanburg, South Carolina, and on and on....

If we didn't get the driver's name by hometown (i.e. Jabe Thomas & Clyde Lynn were both from Christiansburg), we'd get it on the car number.

And then, sometimes if they were doing a joint feed with the track PA system, they'd announce:

"in car #43" and the rest of the announcement would be totally drowned out by a rumbling cheer of thunder like a gathering storm unlike any I haveheard since at a racetrack. You never heard the Randleman, North Carolina or 1964 Plymouth or the driver's name at the wheel of that electric blue entry. I can't ever again imagine hearing a crowd respond the way they did anticipating Richard's name being called out. It was amazing and gave you goosebumps all over! We shall not pass that way again.

Today vs Yesteryear and why

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A lot of truth to what you say about oversaturation. Back in the 60s we just lived for the Saturday afternoon that ABC's Wide World of Sports would show a stock car race, even though we already knew the outcome of a usually several weeks old race and had to endure having it broken into 3 or 4 disjointed, heavily edited segments between arm wrestling. tiddlywinks, etc. However, the first racing action I ever saw at Daytona, Charlotte or Atlanta was on ABC Wide World of Sports. Used to see the Darlington "movie" of the previous year's Southern 500 every year when Buck & Buddy Baker would come to Richmond and show it at Tiny Town Bowling Alley's Tantilla Garden to promote it. That was the first time, also that I ever laid eyes on Sonny Hutchins' Junie Donlavey-built #90 1961 Ford Starliner Daytona Sportsman car.

The Name Game

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Was a good thing Annie B wasn't still living to crackKW over the head!

The Name Game

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yes to all you say.

The Name Game

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Yep.... and, it was Winston Cup Grand National Series, then just Winston Cup Series as the GN nomenclature was appropriated for the former Sportsman, Late Model Sportsman, Budweiser, Busch Grand National Series, Busch Series Grand National, then just plain Busch Series before it became Nationwide. I guess Grand National is back to National Velvet stuff these days. They can call it Sprint or Nextel or whatever, but today's announcers will NEVER equal Ray Melton describing the Grand National drivers of NASCAR in their cars carrying all the colors of the rainbow from the country towns and crossroad stands....clap your hands and stomp your feet as they pass in review!!!

The Name Game

General

Agree, 100%, NB. When I used to have to prepare Media Guides, I tried diligently to use the correct as used at the time of the actual event and series name and find the correct car owners. Winston was infamous for having bad information in their press materials after they stopped using Gene Granger for research. Of course a lot of their material made it sound like stock car racing was invented in 1972. Had a kinda row in the Richmond press box one night with Ty Norris of RJR/Winston when I collected all of the Winston media guideinfo that had been prepared by Len Thatcher and threw it away. It was just plain wrong. I substituted my own. Winston stuff always had Ned Jarrett, for instance winning at Richmond in the Capital City 300 of September 1963 driving a Bondy Long Ford. WRONG... Winston info was full of wrong stuff like that. Ned, as he personally confirmed to me when I prepared the Richmond track media guide, was driving a Charles Robinson-owned 1963 Ford for that race... the famous Burton-Robinson Construction Company sponsorship that Jim Pardue carried on his '64 Plymouths. After that, Winston said that I was difficult to get along with in the press box. They were right. If your stuff is wrong, I don't want it passed out. Keep up your campaign, NB. That Coke 400 that used to be a Pepsi 400 was still a Firecracker 400 the first time I listened to it.