Tag: ryan newman

New Paint Schemes and Some IndyCar News…

We start off today with a unique story from IndyCar.  Ryan Hunter-Reay won the Izod IndyCar Series Championship last season, and as such has the right to use the number 1 on his car.  He normally used 28 as his car number, because 28 million people worldwide are affected by cancer, and his mother passed away from cancer in 2009.  So he is using a number 1 with a rather unique twist.  Also mentioned that Marco Andretti will switch to number 25 from 26 next year.

Moving on to NASCAR paint schemes, let’s look at the Nationwide Series first.  Two Chevy schemes and one Ford scheme have been released so far

Sam Hornish-#12 Alliance Ford Mustang  Could someone explain to me why in the world it has door handle decals?  And why does it have a blue line on the door that looks like race damage?  I really want to defend this scheme, but no, just no.  Final Grade: C

Kevin Harvick-#33 Hunt Brothers Pizza Chevy Camaro    First off, the Camaro looks really good on its own, and this paint scheme works quite well.  The door-handle decal is visible, but not as bold as the Hornish car.  The green/white contrast works well, and the decal package on the front looks really good.  The stripes on the sides work very well, and are not as haphazard of some schemes I have seen for this season.  Final Grade: A

Dale Earnhardt Jr./Cole Whitt-#88 Tax Slayer Chevy Camaro  Decent color scheme at work here, but what is with the pink roll cage?  The red black and white scheme has a similar color in the front stripe at the nose.  It’s visually distracting, and pointless.  The powder blue/pink stripe takes away from a great scheme and takes the final grade from an A to a B-.  Get rid of the blue, and it would be an A

Now we look at the Sprint Cup Schemes

Kasey Kahne-#5 Time Warner Cable Chevy SS  Awful color scheme, check.  Door and panel design that is supposed to be edgy but is really a cliche, check.  The most unoriginal sponsor logo in NASCAR, check.  Ok, I think we’re all done here, Final Grade: D

Ryan Newman-#39 Quicken Loans Chevy SS  Want to have some fun, open the Kahne link, and this link in two different tabs, and switch back and forth to see how “original” this scheme is.   Clearly both were designed by the same person, they look almost identical, except the fronts are a little different, and the color scheme on the Newman car is much better.  Final Grade: C-

Jeff Gordon-#24 Drive to End Hunger Chevy SS Yuck! They took one of the best color schemes ever and ruined it!  But these shots do feature a new design that will be used in NASCAR in 2013, and that is a sponsor decal on the roof.  The close-up of the rear-end shows the decent taillight decals, and the unnecessary tailpipe decals, as well as the updated Chevy logo.  Final Grade: D-

Been a long day, will be back tomorrow.

Phantom Sponsorships.

By David Firestone

12-stremme

At first glace, this driver suit looks like it has no primary sponsorship at all, but dig deeper and you find the real story behind it.

From 2000 to 2008, car #12 in the Sprint Cup was driven by Ryan Newman and sponsored by Alltel Wireless. In 2002, Ryan Newman’s first full season the series was sponsored by Winston cigarettes and called the Winston Cup Series. In 2004, Winston left the series and Nextell took over as the series sponsor. At that time, there were a number of wireless companies sponsoring cars in the Cup series, including Cingular and Alltel. As they were under contract with teams before the Nextell sponsorship took effect, they were allowed to stay as car sponsors in the Cup series under a grandfather clause.

The first phantom sponsorship happened in 2007, when Cingular merged with AT&T. That set into motion a chain of events that began early in the season, when AT&T tried to re-brand the 31 car driven by Jeff Burton, and Sprint said that it was a violation of the grandfather clause. After a number of injunctions and legal wrangling, came the 2007 Sharpie 500 at Bristol in August, when NASCAR, under pressure from Sprint told the 31 team that they could not have any AT&T logos on the car, hauler, pit shirts, driver or crew uniforms, or helmets. The result was this unique scheme.

800px-JeffBurton2007BristolAugustRacehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/98572459@N00

Eventually a settlement was reached where the Cup team could keep AT&T decals on the car for the rest of the season, but would have to find a new sponsorship for the next season. This deal was met, and the next year, Jeff Burton drove a Caterpillar sponsored car.

In 2009, the Alltel sponsorship changed because Verizon purchased most of Alltell’s assets. Instead of a long court battle, Verizon, who was also sponsoring Roger Penske’s IndyCar teams basically sponsored the team but focused on their Nationwide Series with car logos, as the restrictions on Verizon were not in effect in the Nationwide Series, and allowed car #12 driven by David Stremme to run a Penske Racing scheme for the car they were paying for. That resulted in this very stylish David Stremme driver suit, currently in my personal collection.

12-stremme

The thing I find interesting is the fact that even though the car was running Penske decals, no mention of Penske is visible on the collars or shoulders, and no television logos are present.

12-stremme-collar

I also think it is interesting that the red stripes across the chest look like Verizon logos, but are just different enough to throw Sprint off the scent.

12-stremme-flogo

Unless the primary sponsor of the series changes again, with seems unlikely in the foreseeable future, I can’t imagine this happening again. It also should be noted that both AT&T and Sprint took flak for their actions during the controversy. I really hope this doesn’t happen again in racing, ever.