“Nascar team sponsors again slow to put promotional muscle into Chase.” [Vo. 8, issue 20] by Kelly Brinker-Schaeffer

This article talks about the last 10 races termed the “post season” Chase. The article mentions how the chase was created to increase awareness for the Nascar sport at a time period where football usually dominates. It was also designed to create higher tv ratings and provide more revenue for sponsors. The tv ratings have improved greatly with a 12% increase in ratings from 2003 to 2004. However, the sponsors have been sidelined because of a lack of lead time. The sponsors claim that they are afraid to market a particular driver ahead of time for fear that the driver does not make the top ten.
Eric Pinkham, director of Motorsports for Newell Rubbermaid said, “Powerful activation and promotional programming often requires significant lead time and pre planning. The difficulty in executing Chase specific activation is that for most teams, marketing the Chase could be very last minute.” VanDerSnick, vice-president of marketing for Nascar, suggested that some sponsors may have to take a risk in allocating funds early on in hope that they will qualify for the Chase. But, Doye, president of motorsports marketing, thinks that over time the chase for the Cup will become one of the core marketing plans for Nascar sponsors.