Roush-Fenway’s marketing arm is free to seek sponsorship for Yates entries. But the question is whether the sponsors already affiliated with Roush-Fenway paid additional money to be on the Yates cars, or whether any of that sponsorship money came from existing contracts with Roush-Fenway. And if so, would diverting those funds count as one team underwriting another, thereby violating the rule?
A Roush-Fenway spokesperson said that issue should be addressed by Yates Racing personnel. And Yates Racing’s response through its PR staff was, “We do not disclose any terms of our sponsorships to media nor other teams,” later adding, “All of our activities with Yates Racing are in compliance with NASCAR rules.”
But what exactly are those rules?
Unless some of the Saturday night hot-shots start getting some time in the IndyCar feeder series we are soon going to see the Indy Car TV ratings and attendance numbers go the same direction as the zipper on Danica’s firesuit.
Fulfilling the sponsor obligations of the current contract can make inking the next one darn near impossible.
“Absolutely. If you can’t get to the office, there’s no way you can sit down and work out details,” said Biffle, who added that the deal might have gotten done this week if not for the trip to LI. “So that’s been one of our things. In May, I had one day off in May. We had something going every day. So it makes it difficult to actually get to sit down and think about it and look it over.”
Six months ago, during the negotiations between Indy Car and Champ Car to merge the two series, many were saying “don’t get your hopes up” because unification would not result in some “magic bullet” that would instantly catapult American open-wheel racing back to the prominence of yesteryear. And while that still might be true, two things we now know for sure is unification has already shown significant positive results and the people at the Indy Car Series offices are feeling very good about their prospects for the future.
Let’s look at a few of the positive trends that are shaping American open wheel racing since “the split” ended:
As much as NASCAR leaves the National Hockey League it its (brake) dust, there is one rulebook item in the land of puck that stock car racing needs to adopt. Hockey, like NASCAR, markets itself on its physical, take-no-prisoners play. It doesn’t want to feminize the sport by not letting the players police themselves. But in hockey there’s a difference between toe-to-toe fisticuffs and something that is considered an “attempt to injure.” The NHL has drawn a clear line between dropping the gloves and parting someone’s molars with a stick. NASCAR has not done nearly as good a job at defining what is aggressive and what is egregious.
Wendlinger took his 7th FIA GT pole position with a time of 1:23.748 in his nr 33 Aston Martin DBR9 ahead of his team-mate Alex Müller. Gianmaria Bruni took his second consecutive pole position for AF Corse.
“My sessions were quite good – I had a bit of understeer. I know the track quite well, from racing Porsches here, so I could get up to speed very quickly. The Corvette is more settled here than the Porsche was – the Porsche used to be very nervous in the high-speed corners"-- Alois Meir
With just a couple of minutes remaining, the No.10 Aston Martin pulled out a lap of 1:32.214 and tops the first practice session at Oschersleben.
TAKATA DOME NSX Wins Pole Position for the Second Consecutive Year!
With the Easter weekend break let’s take a look at the NASCAR Sprint Cup driver’s points heading into Martinsville.
