Like all other sports, NASCAR and its tracks will stop at nothing to get fans through the turnstiles. This means these parties have implemented some creative measures to drum up interest. Today, we look at the strangest promotions in NASCAR history.
During the 2018 Playoffs, NASCAR decided to put social media logos and emojis on the side of Cup Series cars. The idea was to create personalized hashtags for different drivers that fans could post on social media. Did they work?
Martin Truex Jr. uses his profile picture on X to this day, so it sort of worked. However, it just looked out of place on the side of race cars during the race, and it was hard to make out what exactly it was when cars were going around the track at speed. NASCAR never tried it again, so that shows why they made the changes they did.
In the mid-to-late 2010s, NASCAR had a big problem. The stars of the sport’s heyday were retiring, and NASCAR had to build up new stars to market to fans. NASCAR decided to focus on the “Youth movement,” similar to the Gilette Young Guns from the 2000s. This group included drivers like Chase Elliott, Daniel Suarez, Erik Jones, and Ryan Blaney, who received heavy promotions.
This is an interesting concept with one major flaw: those drivers weren’t winning races. Martin Truex Jr. dominated 2017, and the 2018 season was all about the “Big Three” of Truex Jr., Kyle Busch, and Kevin Harvick. While the “Youth movement” eventually came into its own, at the time, it looked strange to see NASCAR not promoting the drivers that win races every week.
While NASCAR races had been sponsored by things geared toward kids before, Kansas Speedway took it all the way in 2015. SpongeBob SquarePants sponsored the spring race in Kansas, creating the SpongeBob SquarePants 400. The promotion was big, including sponge-looking wall paint on the SAFER barrier around the track.
Overall, this was an innocent and pretty solid promotion. Another NASCAR track tried this the following year, as Chicagoland Speedway had Tennage Mutant Ninja Turtles sponsor the 2016 Cup Series Playoff opener, with the Turtles returning for the 2017 race, newly titled the “Tales of the Turtles 400.” For a sport that has been known to need younger fans, why not bring in a property like Nickelodeon TV shows to sponsor races?
They say hindsight is 20-20. Before the 2024 Cup Series season, Stewart-Haas Racing was completely rebranded with a new logo and tons of social media posts highlighting who it is as an organization. The rebrand called out the “Doubters,” highlighting that SHR was ready to bounce back from a difficult 2023.
Four months later, the team announced it was shutting down at the end of the season, and the preseason promotion seems kind of silly now. This would have worked had SHR improved and stayed in the sport, but in reality, it was a prelude to one of NASCAR’s most accomplished modern race teams shutting its doors.
McDonald’s has been a part of NASCAR for a long time, and Tyler Reddick pulled off perhaps the best McDonald’s NASCAR promotion at Iowa earlier this year. Reddick raced a “Hamburglar”-themed paint scheme complete with a “Hamburglar” firesuit. A simply hilarious promotion and one that Reddick took in stride.
It’s always fun to see sponsors get creative with how they promote their products to NASCAR fans, and it’s even better to see drivers dive headfirst into it. Creativity at its’ finest.
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