Big Apple fans...sour towards NASCAR?

By Krista Voda

NASCAR's marketing gurus have, for the last few years, had NYC media exposure at the top of their to-do lists, constantly pitching drivers and promotions to the national talk show circuits.

In the last month, alone, Ray Evernham and Erin Crocker were outside the New York Stock Exchange. Mark Martin and Carl Edwards appeared on "Guiding Light." Larry King's roundtable discussion with Jeff Gordon, Rusty Wallace, Kyle Petty, and Kasey Kahne re-aired on CNN, as the network heavily promoted its hourlong medical special with Dr. Sanjay Gupta last month.

The sport is banking on its popularity, its growth, and its transition from southeastern moonshiners to Hollywood city-slickers. Just look at today's drivers...how they dress, who they date. They are the future of a sport that's trying to change its image. Not because anything is necessarily wrong with the old one. But because that image just doesn't fit Manhattan, a city that speaks in dollar signs.

I was recently in the Big Apple for a day. Just enough time to see that in a city made up of residents from all over the world, NASCAR is the only thing that's foreign.

It's true. Mike...the taxi cab driver from Romania...has more in common with most New Yorkers than the sport built on American horsepower.

Some gentlemen who work in Manhattan asked me if I'm familiar with the city. I tell them just enough to be dangerous, as I've been to NYC a handful of times, including each December for NASCAR's awards banquet.

They seem shocked. "Why in the world would NASCAR come to NYC?" (Hmm. Exactly what the marketing folks DON'T want to hear). What my new friends don't realize is that the sport's top gala is a pretty big deal. It was first held at the Waldorf-Astoria in 1981.

Next, these guys ask me if I've always been a racing fan. I say no. The sport became part of my job, and it was only then that I came to appreciate it. I point out some of the changes and developments NASCAR has made in its effort to go "mainstream." One of the guys agrees, basically saying the sport has really taken off now that Danica Patrick is on board.

Seriously. Here's the kicker. These guys don't work on wall street. They work in sports.

These are the guys who snicker when they hear the southern twang of an Elliott Sadler. They are also the guys who stand in line at NYC clubs (and probably never get in) while Sadler and Jeff Gordon are escorted to private VIP tables. I imagine Gordon shops in stores that these guys have only read about in magazines.

Yet, Sadler and Gordon (and probably every other driver in the sport) will take the time to talk to someone on the street. Something most New Yorkers wouldn't fathom. After all, no time for small talk or casual observances. Barely enough time to choke down that triple-grande mocha-cinnamon soy latte, nonfat.

Maybe these guys just need some time to learn the sport.

After all, the city that thrives on speed is scheduled to get some of it around 2010. ISC has already slapped down a cool 100-million for a plot of industrial land on Staten Island. Plans are in the works for a state-of-the art NASCAR-sanctioned track.

Perfect. Maybe, then, they'll be able to meet Dan Wheldon.