Coach Joe Gibbs (1 Viewer)

[vegasnitro]

Coach Joe Gibbs was on Dale Earnhardt Jr's podcast this week and let a few interesting nuggets slip about his time in drag racing. Coach Gibbs, before he got his first job in coaching drove a Top Fuel dragster, he said "luckily it blew up and I got into coaching". He also explained his time in NHRA saying that Drag Racing was his first love as a Southern California kid, that he setup the team in Indianapolis and that he loved it, but what happened was "It's not for profit, they way they run things over there (NHRA), and in those days it was not very well run really, so our sponsors that were in it with us, Interstate Batteries and McDonald's, wanted to get out of it and go back to NASCAR, it was bigger crowd, bigger attention, bigger everything." He also said he thinks his NHRA team held the record for "most parts blown up" while they were in NHRA and he is proud of the 30 races they won there.

John Force was on Dale Jr's podcast a few weeks ago (after the 4 Wides in Charlotte) and it is worth a listen too. If you are a fan of NASCAR at all, I would say it is on the short list of must listen podcasts.

 

[Dave]

That's a shame to hear. The mid to late 90's seemed like the peak of sponsorship across the board in NHRA. I remember a few years ago at Joliet, Alex Laughlin had M&M's on his car trying to pull them into the sport. It must not have turned out favorably.

 

[qtermile14]

That's a shame to hear. The mid to late 90's seemed like the peak of sponsorship across the board in NHRA. I remember a few years ago at Joliet, Alex Laughlin had M&M's on his car trying to pull them into the sport. It must not have turned out favorably.

Probably because of what Tami Powers alluded to a month ago.

SUSAN WADE - LET’S HAVE THAT UNCOMFORTABLE CONVERSATION | Competition Plus

“Hi! Thanks for being here! Come on in, have a seat, and make yourself uncomfortable.” If Tami Powers, director of business development/operations at Alan Johnson Racing, could gather team owners, sponsorship-procurement specialists, and the NHRA marketing department and top executives, that’s...

www.competitionplus.com

 

[T.Smith]

Coach Joe Gibbs was on Dale Earnhardt Jr's podcast this week and let a few interesting nuggets slip about his time in drag racing. Coach Gibbs, before he got his first job in coaching drove a Top Fuel dragster, he said "luckily it blew up and I got into coaching". He also explained his time in NHRA saying that Drag Racing was his first love as a Southern California kid, that he setup the team in Indianapolis and that he loved it, but what happened was "It's not for profit, they way they run things over there (NHRA), and in those days it was not very well run really, so our sponsors that were in it with us, Interstate Batteries and McDonald's, wanted to get out of it and go back to NASCAR, it was bigger crowd, bigger attention, bigger everything." He also said he thinks his NHRA team held the record for "most parts blown up" while they were in NHRA and he is proud of the 30 races they won there.

John Force was on Dale Jr's podcast a few weeks ago (after the 4 Wides in Charlotte) and it is worth a listen too. If you are a fan of NASCAR at all, I would say it is on the short list of must listen podcasts.

I had been told this awhile ago, very unfortunate.

 

[sammi]

Boy, he could have been the leading edge of something really grand, as far as attracting nontraditional sponsorship. The football coaches I have known have all been sharp eye'd pragmatists with an extremely low bullsh1t tolerance. When dad and I went to Indy in '91, having a McDonalds mobile kitchen at the track was awesome.

Doesn't Gibbs have his own airline to move his people quickly and humanely? Not bad for a guy who, as a young man, was a SoCal T/F rat.

 

[mick]

mr. gibbs races with other people's money, and he delivers......linked this same story recently in another thread
mbna.....free t-shirt for signing up for card at midway display.....what a novel idea. haven't seen it since

Podcast: Why FedEx says a NASCAR sponsorship is worth a billion

That's the number of brand impressions generated annually by its presence on Denny Hamlin's No. 11 Toyota.

nascar.nbcsports.com

 

[Nunz]

mr. gibbs races with other people's money, and he delivers......linked this same story recently in another thread
mbna.....free t-shirt for signing up for card at midway display.....what a novel idea. haven't seen it since

Podcast: Why FedEx says a NASCAR sponsorship is worth a billion

That's the number of brand impressions generated annually by its presence on Denny Hamlin's No. 11 Toyota.

nascar.nbcsports.com

At Indy, the Chevy Performance tent has had a promo where if you go on one of their monitors and answer some questions, you get a Chevrolet Performance T-Shirt.

 

[mick]

rite, i have that chevy t-shirt. it was sooper hot in brainerd and for some reason i didn't pack a white t-shirt; was pretty grateful for chevy's display that day, and so were a few hundred
other fans if i remember rite........but what mbna did, if i recall, was hand out free t-shirts as you signed up for their card (and they sponsored tf'r driven by cory mac). i could be wrong, but the
fact you were signing up for the card pretty much guaranteed mbna a future user........10,000 people sign up. 25000 actually use the card. 500 never pay the balance......it's a numbers game
where mbna wins........the chevy t-shirt IMO doesn't guarantee future GM sales; unless of course the list of emails generated at the chevy displays is sold.....which is entirely possible.

 

[Sean D, shondoo]

That's a shame to hear. The mid to late 90's seemed like the peak of sponsorship across the board in NHRA.

I have a hard time getting past this. He was in during what I thought was a pretty strong era for the NHRA, and he's essentially saying even then it wasn't good. From a marketing quantification standpoint, anyway. That's kinda' scary to think about.....

Sean D

 

[Bob G.]

Looking at a lot of the races this year on NHRA.tv the stands are pretty empty. Are attendance figures public?