Kevin Butler, TRG Motorsports, Typifies Clever New-School Owners
You can be sure of it: When conventional wisdom insists that MegaTeams shall rule the NASCAR domain, someone is going to find ways to poke holes in the logic. One of the most intriguing things we’ve seen so far this year is an influx of small “underfunded” teams biting at the edges of the monoliths-rule mentality. Jay Busbee’s “Chrome Horn” feature on Yahoo’s In the Marbles blog featured one such car owner.
Jay did a great audio interview with Kevin Butler, car owner of David Gilliland’s current ride, the No. 71.
In it, Butler pulls back the tent flap just a little to reveal how sharp, hard working car owners are figuring out the single car team model, step-by-step. It’s a long road ahead, and Butler’s story includes plenty of frustration and obstacles.
But the important thing is, these guys are coming to the track, they’re figuring out how to make their cars go fast enough to get into the show, and they’re racing.
Right now, the conventional wisdom holds that one of them could never win on Sunday. But conventional wisdom had them out of business a year ago … and now they’re more visible than ever! And more popular, too.
The problem every one of these teams has, of course: Sponsorship. They’ve got to figure out how to attract sponsor dollars, but they can’t quite guarantee big exposure numbers for branding purposes.
They need a better model. Direct response branding could be a great answer for them. Stay tuned and we’ll explore how it all works.
