Advance Auto to drop sponsorship of NHRA team

[Paul]

Jeff,

I totally agree with you. I'm in the business of marketing and sponsorships (Radio station owner/manager) and my guess is that Advance wasn't impressed with their meltdown and accussations towards John Force. That was a terrible representation for Advance. When you're sponsored you are then an ambassador for your sponsor. I'd say they were fired by Advance for poor and unprofessional ambassadorship.

On a related note, I met (personally introduced to) Cruz at the Applebee's in Topeka and found him to be an arrogant schmuck.

I buy my parts at O'Reilly and will continue to do so.

Shocker, someone who doesn't like Cruz posting this. Your guess=pure speculation unless you know someone at Advance. It appears you can't get past your "so called" personal experience with Cruz and that is impacting your flawed analysis of Advance not renewing with Cruz. With no facts to support what you are saying, your statement is flawed and hypothetical.

 

[CrewGuy]

Truth be known.......Cruz knew this was coming a long time ago.

 

[Professional Fan]

Sorry to hear Cruz losing Advance. My experiences with Cruz have always been positive but as a number of others have said, losing any competitive Funny Car in these times is not a good thing.

Doesn't bode well for next year:
1. Cruz out
2. No sponsors yet for Snake, KJ, WJ
3. Question about Antron
4. Buell issue with the bikes

I'm guessing we'll hear about others in the next few weeks.

I'm not saying the sky is falling but adding more losses of competitive cars on top of the ones we lost after the 2008 season is not a good sign, although it does represent the state of our current economy.

As a fan, not connected to any team or sponsor, I would also agree with several comments about making the sport cheaper. I'd rather see a field of 25 dragsters going 250 than 12 going 300.

 

[mick]

It is a shame people have no class and would try to get a company to drop sponsorship of a team. If I was like your friends, I should have e-mailed some people within BP and ask for their view on the Castrol brand throwing a race to a AAA car and ask them their view on how BP's code of conduct ...........

agreed paul...........negative comments actually end up reflecting poorly
more on the nhra and it's fan base than on a particular driver/owner/team.

i'd sponsor the pedregons in a second............
have no idea at all how the 3 brothers get along with each other, but
a pedregon team x3 would be flippin' awesome!

 

[rollingthunder]

Well since everyone is on the Karma train. I wouldn't want the bad karma of causing someone pain and lose of sponsorship. Sooner or later it is going to turn around on you.

 

[none]

Why does this have to turn in a Cruz bashing thread?

 

[PJ]

Its been known that Cruz and Tony both would have upcoming sponsor hunts on their hands. Advanced dropping is not a surprise and I doubt had anything to do with indy-gate or dive-gate or countdown-gate or wine-gate or whatever we are calling it.

 

[Bobby]

I always went to advance because of Cruz, in fact they had his hot sauce on display at the counter the first year. no matter what you think of Cruz , who cares really. He gave Al Hofmann the motivation to utter probably the funniest line I've ever heard in an interview

'well since I'm racing the greatest driver in the world in the final.....'

anyone remember that ?

LOL

 

[MM]

that was like the world finals in '95 wasnt it Bob?

 

[mike]

Shocker, someone who doesn't like Cruz posting this. Your guess=pure speculation unless you know someone at Advance. It appears you can't get past your "so called" personal experience with Cruz and that is impacting your flawed analysis of Advance not renewing with Cruz. With no facts to support what you are saying, your statement is flawed and hypothetical.

so I'm sure in the future you will apply those same standards when talking about the Force team right?

 

[mike]

Its been known that Cruz and Tony both would have upcoming sponsor hunts on their hands. Advanced dropping is not a surprise and I doubt had anything to do with indy-gate or dive-gate or countdown-gate or wine-gate or whatever we are calling it.

yup...the decision was probably made some time ago

 

[Meeks]

Well since everyone is on the Karma train. I wouldn't want the bad karma of causing someone pain and lose of sponsorship. Sooner or later it is going to turn around on you.

I'm pretty sure none of us here caused Cruz's pain or loss of sponsorship.

 

[paoldtimer]

He has a nostalgia car. He won't be "gone"

He can wheel a midget and a late model too. I'm not a fan but I don't like to see Cruz or anyone lose a (major) sponsor. It's a shame others revel in others misfortunes. Oh, and I do believe in karma..

 

[Dan]

Advanced Auto Parts didn’t sponsor Cruz so NHRA fans will shop there. They were involved with NHRA to create brand awareness; and are just allocating their marketing dollars to a different opportunity to create additional brand awareness to a different group of people. Probably wasn’t anything personal with Cruz, just a business decision.

 

[twok4hd]

Jeff, you don't know what the hell your talking about.

Tony, I have no clue as to why AAP dropped Cruz, but by this statement you do. So for all of us that have inquiring minds, please let us know what was said in the board room when this decision was made because obviously you do.

 

[marlin]

Ok ..First Advance Home office is here in Roanoke Va . not Richmond ..I'm somewhat connected to what has gone down .I have known this for ahile .

One of Cruz' biggest supporters who was very high in the pecking order in management left Advance about 9 months ago .

Also don't forget they just brought a new CEO on about two years ago ..Alot of things have changed with that company ..personel wise as well as marketing startegies etc.

Unfortunate yes, but hopefully Cruz and Tony can stay in the sport ..

 

[Paul]

Ok ..First Advance Home office is here in Roanoke Va . not Richmond ..I'm somewhat connected to what has gone down .I have known this for ahile .

One of Cruz' biggest supporters who was very high in the pecking order in management left Advance about 9 months ago .

Also don't forget they just brought a new CEO on about two years ago ..Alot of things have changed with that company ..personel wise as well as marketing startegies etc.

Unfortunate yes, but hopefully Cruz and Tony can stay in the sport ..

Thanks for the inside information. John, as you can see this blows your theory out of the water.

 

[twok4hd]

So, I will ask. Doug Wright you are connected with AAP how???

 

[rollingthunder]

I'm pretty sure none of us here caused Cruz's pain or loss of sponsorship.

This is true but don't have no trouble crowing about

 

[vegasnitro]

I know quite a few people who called and emailed Advanced Auto Parts and said as long as they were backing Cruz Pederegon they would not buy parts from them so if enough people did it, it might have played a part in the decision.

This is the second time in the last couple of weeks that I have read on this board that supposed "fans" have went to a NHRA nitro sponsor and voiced their displeasure in some form or another. I really don't understand this sense of entitlement that you people or your "friends" think you have.

You don't like X driver, fine.
You don't wanna support X sponsor because of it, fine.

What is wrong with going about your business without calling the sponsor out? You guys keep bad mouthing the people putting money into this sport that you claim to love, pretty soon you won't have any teams to root for or against ...