With a swallow from his Amp Energy drink, the rebranding of Dale Earnhardt Jr. began.
Earnhardt officially ditched longtime sponsor Budweiser on Wednesday, announcing deals with PepsiCo. and The National Guard to fund his No. 88 Chevrolet next season at Hendrick Motorsports.
Pepsi will market its Mountain Dew Amp Energy drink with Earnhardt, and NASCAR’s most popular driver was pounding the product after an early appearance before 1,500 bottlers at Pepsi’s annual convention. CanadianPress
It’s official. Dale Earnhardt Jr. will be racing the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevy sporting the colors of Pepsi’s Mountain Dew AMP energy drink and the National Guard in 2008.
“I’m excited about our sponsorship announcement today, most of all because we’re dealing with two partners that we’ve had inside our organization for a long length of time,” team owner Rick Hendrick said. “It’s always better when you’re dealing with people that you’ve been with and enjoyed working with and have been good to your company. To have an opportunity to partner them up with a guy like Dale Earnhardt Jr., it’s going to be a dream come true.” Shawn Courchesne, Courant.com
Dale Earnhardt Jr.: Well, when we first started working with a scheme, me and a friend produced something really close to what Darrell (Waltrip) had in the ‘80’s because I thought that was a great-looking race car. Brian Vickers ran it in the Busch Series last year. It’s still a great-looking race car. We massaged that quite a bit to come up with the scheme. I really am happy with it.
Just give me a little input, and I feel real good and comfortable with it, so that was really great. I got more than that. I got just about 90 percent control, and that was awesome. So I was really surprised. Lee Spencer, FOXSports.com
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