Red Bull Gives NASCAR wings.
The statement that NASCAR does not glean international attention may no longer be true. About ten years ago NASCAR tried exhibition races at Twin Ring Motegei and Suzuka Japan with little success. Fast forward ten years and NASCAR now has points-paying races for the Nationwide Series in Montreal, Canada and formerly Mexico City, Mexico. True, these sites are still in the Western Hemisphere and just north and south of the United States, but it is a start.
If you take a look at the drivers, many of their backgrounds are much different than the drivers of a few years ago. Sponsors have changed as well. The sport has moved from Winston and Goodwrench to M&M’s and Red Bull energy drinks. This is where the future of NASCAR lies.
Team Red Bull Racing is a new form of NASCAR team in the series. This team is not owned by a single owner or small group; it is owned by Red Bull. This is new to the sport because never before has a sponsor owned the whole team. From top to bottom, executives at Red Bull Racing make the personnel decisions, which brings us to the topic of Scott Speed.
Speed broke into the world of big-time racing when he got a ride with the Red Bull Formula One team after winning a driver-talent competition put on by Red Bull. After a couple of poor seasons in Formula One, Red Bull dropped Speed and put him in the stock car ranks. He came up through the ARCA ranks and is now poised to take the seat vacated by A.J. Allmendinger on the Sprint Cup Series team.
The interesting thing about this driver switch is that the decision was not made by the NASCAR team; it was made by Red Bull executives in Austria, the company’s home country. In my opinion, I believe this is what is on the horizon for NASCAR: powerful international companies owning teams from top to bottom and making driver changes in the board room far away from the race shops.
With Scott Speed on the scene, even though he is an American, Red Bull and companies like it may look to buy into NASCAR along with international drivers to make a statement in an American sport. The money is definitely there and the coverage is plentiful, enough to pull the likes of Jacques Villeneuve, Dario Franchitti and Juan Montoya over. Maybe in ten years the next Justin Wilson will be in a Vodafone Chevy and not a McLaren.
And that’s the view from here.
AT