“My Sponsor’s a DotCom
For Byte’s Sake!”

The 50th victory of the career of Rusty
Wallace at Bristol Motor Speedway will be remembered for many things to be sure,
including his Polish Victory Lap in memory of Alan Kulwicki. And then there were
those politically incorrect rants in the heat of victory: “My sponsor’s a
beer company for Chrissake!” which was preceded by “It’s about G** D***
time!” Hey, we will cast no stones at old Rusty. It had been a long drought
between checkers for him after all. He was entitled to break from the
hypersensitive decorum considering the circumstances. We won’t hold it against
him, but surely we will speak of it for a long time to come. This is too bad
because there was even a more interesting story unfolding at Bristol that
afternoon that will be overshadowed by Rusty’s exuberance.

The story is that of Former Busch Grand
National champion and ASA standout Johnny Benson. It’s a story with two takes
to it. Take one is the success he is having since moving to the single car
stable of TylerJet Motorsports. We find it of interest that he as achieved this
great turnaround outside the Roush camp. Supposedly, he had all the resources he
needed there to win. That didn’t happen during his stay under Jack’s wing.
If not for the Blue Oval guys ganging up on him the closing laps of Daytona
2000, much like the Hendrick Bowtie guys did to Bill Elliot a few years earlier,
we might be calling Benson the winner of the Daytona 500, and a sparsely
sponsored car would be on display at Daytona USA. It begs the question if indeed
those super teams aren’t so super after all, and are spreading their resources
too far to the detriment of the teams in house with lesser experience. That’s
a take will explore in another column another day. On to take two.

TylerJet Motorsports rolled into
Speedweeks 2000 virtually sponsorless, but was competitive all week. This edge
was enough to entice Lycos.com to lend their banner to the quarter panels of the
#10 machine. I guess we could call them Lycos the Launcher from this day
forward. They did much the same thing in the Busch Series when the #17 Reiser
team was in sponsor trouble with another ASA standout at the wheel. Now Matt
Kenseth is a household word in racing circles. Just ask Little E. So thank you
Lycos from the garage stalls of TylerJet and Reiser Motorsports. Someone very
high up in that organization has an eye for racing talent. And thank you Johnny
Benson for continuing to scare the hell out of the NASCAR heavyweights.

So where are all the other dotcommers and
their sponsorship dollars? Recently, the CEO of monster.com pulled some sort of
Guinness Book of Records stunt, probably to get more free pub for his web site.
Normally, we would scoff at such antics, but after seeing the monster.com
sponsorship on an ASA car during the season opener at Lakeland, this CEO has my
blessing to ride a unicycle around Talladega while surfing the web on a laptop
in the buff if he so chooses. At least he is investing in the future of
motorsports.

Where are the others? Where are THE
dotcommers? Why is there no Apple Computer Chevy? No Microsoft Ford? Jobs and
Gates are supposed to be the brightest and the best, yet they ignore this
billion dollar opportunity. Race fans are cruising the web several times a day,
seeking information and spending money, yet the dotcommers are far and few
between as sponsors. Let’s hope soon the day will come that racing rules the
internet in place of porn spammers and black helicopter advocates (currently
numbers one and two). THEN will the Johnny Bensons of the world get dotcommer
dollars to go racing with?

Rusty Wallace will, in some circles, take
some heat for his politically incorrect remarks in Victory Lane. That is the
face of the future, political correctness, and there are two big sponsor
categories that will eventually fall to this p.c. pressure. Beer and Tobacco are
on the bubble, that’s no secret. Winston feels this pressure already and has
been forced to scale back the support of regional and local racing series. If
Winston falls, who will replace them? Now little Billy Gates, like Ted Turner,
seems to want to own a chunk of everything. Why not racing? Why not the
Microsoft Cup Racing Series? Or maybe the Apple No Bull Ten? The promotional
opportunities are endless. An Apple Menu on every racing web site. A Microsoft
banner that says “Where Do You Want To Race Today?” What part of cubic money
doesn’t Gates and Jobs, and whole host of other dotcommers understand? It
would be almost like stealing once they realize just how brand loyal the racing
faithful really are.

All we really want is for the dotcommers
to at the very least test the waters. Some have by sponsoring a race, but how
about a team now? Follow the Lycos and monster.com leads. It’s bigger than you
imagine and beats the heck out of quibbling over free web browsers. Until then,
Penske and Miller Lite will issue a press release for damage control, and Johnny
Benson can beam a smirk of satisfaction in the direction of General Mills.
Cheerios, bad! Lycos good!