cuz he has a sponsor that was in direct competition with the race sponsor.. kinda BS IMO.. and it was his personal truck that was towed outta the driver/owners lot in the infield.
cuz he has a sponsor that was in direct competition with the race sponsor.. kinda BS IMO.. and it was his personal truck that was towed outta the driver/owners lot in the infield.
Robby Gordon has personal vehicle towed: Robby Gordon said track officials had his pickup towed out of a private driver/owner lot at Talladega apparently over a sponsorship issue. "It's gone," Gordon said. "I guess it's at some impound yard somewhere. But it's my personal truck." This weekend, Gordon unveiled his own brand of energy drink, Speed Energy, and the company's logo was on the side of his truck and on his race car. Sunday's race at Talladega is sponsored by a rival energy drink, Amp Energy. "I can appreciate Amp Energy sponsoring the race, but they don't sponsor me," Gordon said. Gordon said other drivers have personal vehicles that feature logos of sponsors that are competitors with official NASCAR or track sponsors. "I just talked to a couple other drivers," Gordon said. "They're Coke (sponsored) drivers, and they're like, 'Well, can we not have Coke on our golf carts or not have Coke on our cars?' This one's a confusing situation for me
Why don't they tow the two friggin' Red Bull haulers then? Robby is broke and trying to get publicity for his new drink is all.
he gets all the bad breaks- he's the last independent owner/driver in NASCAR.. a few years back, he got penalized and fined at Daytona because the nose on his Dodge Charger had the wrong part number- it was an identical nose from the previous year with an indentation for an "Intrepid" decal but was otherwise identical to the Charger nose they were supposed to run. he bought the complete car from another Dodge team- Penske, i think- and painted/decaled it for his use. that was when he decided to switch to Toyota..
NASCAR has gotten a little too picky about allowing sponsors in since Nextel/Sprint took over the title sponsorship when the government said Winston had to stop. there used to be all sorts of cell phone companies with cars out there, but they weren't allowed after a year. now that even the big teams can't find sponsors, they are starting to complain to NASCAR about it. there are still a lot of big companies that want to sponsor a top level NASCAR team but can't.. back when Winston was the title sponsor, there were cars with Joe Camel, the Marlboro Man, and whatever other mascot a tobacco company wanted to put on a car. i blame the NHRA for setting this precedent- when the Coca Cola company took over series sponsorship with the Powerade brand back in 2000 or so, they no longer even allowed fans to wear Pepsi gear in the stands, let alone have Pepsi, Doritos, or Gatorade on a car that was racing..
i did find it funny that all the Coke sponsored drivers were making a point to take a swig of Coke on camera (with the label properly facing the camera, of course) after the race at a race that was sponsored by Amp- which is a Pepsi product. it seemed they were trying extra hard today- maybe it was because of this whole deal?
turbojunker wrote: Why don't they tow the two friggin' Red Bull haulers then? Robby is broke and trying to get publicity for his new drink is all.
OTOH, has there not been a story, I would have never known that Robby has his own new drink.
Sometime bad publicity is better than none.
Not that I drink Energy drinks... but for sure I would not have ever heard of Speed Energy.
(see what i did there...)
Eric
"Speed Energy....so good it's worth getting your truck towed."
"Speed Energy...makes my truck so fast it doesn't stay where I parked it."
"Speed Energy...gives you enough energy to walk home after a 500 mile race."
one could argue that NASCAR has the right to do this on the basis of the fact that they are sanctioning the event and thus can control who gets in and what they advertise when they are there, but I highly doubt that it was outlined anywhere that you couldn't advertise for a product competing with the event sponsor's product. I wonder what sort of penalty they gave the Red Bull cars? hey, it's a competing product... same thing with every vehicle in the track complex that has decals for products competing with official NASCAR sponsors. if I have a Formula 1 or ALMS or SCCA or Speed World Challenge sticker on my car at a NASCAR race, will my car get towed? if I'm at an event sponsored by Chevy and I drive a Ford or a Dodge to the event, will that get towed? I wonder if NASCAR knows just how stupid they made themselves look with this...
With Robby's track record of getting along with Nascar officials I wonder if he forgot to mention it was parked on top of a tech inspector or something.
turbojunker wrote: Why don't they tow the two friggin' Red Bull haulers then? Robby is broke and trying to get publicity for his new drink is all.
Probably because Red Bull has a larrger army of lawyers on staff and retainer than NASCAR. And they are a world-wide recognized brand HIGHLY associated with motorsports, so, if a Red Bull fan see a Red Bull sponsored car, he might take a second look--and maybe get hooked into following NASCAR a bit.
barnca wrote: Robby Gordon has personal vehicle towed: Robby Gordon said track officials had his pickup towed out of a private driver/owner lot at Talladega apparently over a sponsorship issue. "It's gone," Gordon said. "I guess it's at some impound yard somewhere. But it's my personal truck." This weekend, Gordon unveiled his own brand of energy drink, Speed Energy, and the company's logo was on the side of his truck and on his race car. Sunday's race at Talladega is sponsored by a rival energy drink, Amp Energy. "I can appreciate Amp Energy sponsoring the race, but they don't sponsor me," Gordon said. Gordon said other drivers have personal vehicles that feature logos of sponsors that are competitors with official NASCAR or track sponsors. "I just talked to a couple other drivers," Gordon said. "They're Coke (sponsored) drivers, and they're like, 'Well, can we not have Coke on our golf carts or not have Coke on our cars?' This one's a confusing situation for me
It is garbage like this which gives NASCAR it's low-class redneck image in much of the country. There are many talented drivers, engineers and crewpeople involved in the sport, but they are all overshadowed by narrow-minded crap like this.
What would Wayne Campbell say about this?
So- what happens if I go to a Nascar event with a bigass Monster sticker slathered all over my car? They gonna fish that out of the lot too? (In all fairness, they probably would anyhow- it's a Mazda)
I seem to remember jeff gordan swiping a coke logo off the top of his car in victory lane once
on the subject of Nextel/sprint sponsoring NASCAR.. I have a sprint smart phone.. the NASCAR app is perminently installed in the OS cannot be deleted...
they actually mentioned this on nascar.com- they said that officials did it because he got one of his golf carts in a tv shot of the Amp Energy stage and then had the audacity to post a tweet bragging about it..
the guy is just trying to compete at the highest level of racing in the US without any sort of corporate backing- it really must have really impressed NASCAR when he was in a position to lead the race yesterday with the bright orange Speed Energy Toyota. i'm sure he was a man on a mission yesterday and really, really wanted to get his car in the Amp Energy victory lane. i think that would have been the best possible outcome...
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