re: 2023 NASCAR Season Thread - 2023-24 Offseason

It’s just something to occupy his time I’d imagine. He’s done it for so long it would be difficult to just stop.

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And for the poster claiming he needs the teams for advertising his dealerships; lol no.

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Okay…. LINK

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For HendrickCars.com which has sponsored Larson much of this season, the wins are more than just positive PR, they translate to a real ROI. According to the team release announcing the extension, five of HendrickCars.com’s six highest-traffic days of the year can be tied to its sponsorship of the No. 5 team, including four Cup Series race days when Larson led the most laps or won. In February, the reveal of the HendrickCars.com paint scheme drove the site’s highest one-day visitor count in more than 12 months. Since then, it has seen significant increases in overall traffic (up 27%), vehicle sales leads (up 18%), digital retail leads (up 37%) and trade evaluations (up 61%).

“More website traffic generates more sales leads, which ultimately help us sell more cars,” said Darryl Jackson, vice president of financial services for Hendrick Automotive Group. “Kyle’s performance on the track has delivered a measurable business return for us. The company is on pace for a record year in 2021.”

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Ever hear of a puff piece? That article ran because Larson couldn't get a real sponsor due to his "radioactivity".

In the 40 or so years that Hendrick has been in Nascar he's only put his own business on the car when he can't get a real sponsor. If the return was so great he would have done it long ago. The fact he didn't is telling.

Also, read that article a bit closer. All it talks about is leads and such. They don't say sales are up by whatever percent like the metrics they list.

eta-Larson has had different sponsors on his car through one race deals over the past couple years as I recall. This further proves that outside sponsorship has a better ROI for Hendrick. His name is on the car because a sponsor won't pay to be there.

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Moral of the story: don't cheat.

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That’s funny stuff. I know a guy who up until last year was a car chief in the sport since the late 1990’s. He moved back to the Midwest and a week ago we were talking racing stuff and he laughed his butt off about the amount of “rule interpretation” that occurs.

“There hasn’t been a car winning a race in the last fifty years that hasn’t been cheated up.”

Yup. It isn’t about “cheating” as much as it is about how good you are at getting away with it. If you get caught it means one of two things:

1) It was really obvious. 2) You are a moron and got caught.

It has been this way as long as I’ve been associated with dirt cars and will be as long as racing exists.

There are only three dirt tracks that could handle a NASCAR race and those are Knoxville, Eldora, and Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Missouri. They have the press facilities to handle an event like that. I could rattle off a dozen or more dirt tracks that would be phenomenal places for a NASCAR race but those don’t have the amenities needed like those other three have. Knoxville and Eldora to me are kind of blah. Throw a truck or cup race at Lucas Oil. That would be pretty neat to see.

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Why would Nascar go to Chicago, trying to chase woke dollars when wokesters have no desire for the sport.

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Esp when you realize Chicago had one of the best 1.5 mile tracks on the schedule.

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Heard this is what the 2 Hendrick cars were like when picked up from R&D this week

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No doubt. It was funny seeing a clip of NASCAR COO Steve O’Donnell discussing the process that led to the new Hendrick penalties and acting like those cars were just randomly selected after Richmond.

So is Hendrick appealing these penalties? Haven’t seen it announced anywhere.

For the old farts like me, there’s lots of conversation that Cale Yarborough is not doing well health wise and lots of requests for thoughts and prayers for his family. Toughest SOB there ever was but he’s 84 and the clock can be cruel.