When the subject of finish line interviews and the like come up remember, no one forces any driver to don a Full Throttle hat, nor do they force him to start drinking it. That's the choice of the racer.
As far back as the Winston days I saw a number of instances when Winston hats were handed "into the TV picture" during a finish line interview, and the driver either ignored it outright, or in some instances, pulled his own hat out of his firesuit to help his team sponsor reap the benefits of that interview.
It is also possible for a driver to resist wearing a Full Throttle hat during driver headshot photos at the beginning of the season, but few appear strong enough to actually do that.
I can only speak for myself here, and don't honestly know how NHRA might react, but if I owned a team that was sponsored by Company X I would be telling my driver that if they wouldn't let him wear the Company X hat for the photo he should wear no hat at all. Again, I have no idea how NHRA might react to that, but from the prospective of the team owner, Full Throttle may be the series sponsor, but it's Company X that's paying to keep our car out there, and it's Company X that's spending a significant amount of money advertising their involvement with our team, not Full Throttle. My first loyalty would be to Company X, not the series sponsor.
When Budweiser sponsored the Funny Car Shootout/Showdown or whatever else you want to call it, drivers did agree to wear Bud hats even if they were sponsored by a rival brew. That happened twice, when Frank Hawley in the Huslter had Old Style backing, and in 1984 when Mark Oswald was driving Paul Candies' Motorcraft/Stroh's Ford.
After his first round win Oswald said to finish line interviewer Steve Evans, "We'd like to thank Budweiser for putting on this race, but it looks like it's going to be a Stroh's Light night tonight!" Evans turned to me and said, "That'll never make the air."
Oswald was no dummy. He said the same thing after winning each round and obviously, after winning the finale, it made the broadcast. One assumes the A-B folks weren't exactly thrilled.
The battle over hats and exposure is very real, and even though we might see one of these little incidents as being no big thing, that's not how they see it in the board room. Every mention, every visual is critically important.
It's probably safe to say that as long as NHRA has full fields of cars nothing will change, but if entries decline things could change.
We could also suggest that if Full Throttle had a real belief in the strength and value of their own product they wouldn't care if rivals were involved in the series. But, considering their sales position, I doubt if Coca-Cola has ANY faith in the product. They sure don't now, and didn't seem to ever have real belief in POWERade. They actually gave up on marketing the product.
IN the dream world Full Throttle would welcome entries from their rivals -- but that's not reality.
Jon Asher
Senior Editor
CompetitionPlus.com
