MOTORSPORT: Sponsorship conundrums in Oz and US

COMMENT

It ain't easy right now finding big bucks to go racing
It's been odd this year seeing a couple of cars running around in the V8 Supercar Championship without sponsorship. Tekno Autosports has conceded the cars of Jonathon Webb and Michael Patrizi may remain that way for the rest of the season.

Mostly the two Holden Commodores have been all white this year, although in Darwin recently Webb's car carried livery promoting V8 Nights -- dinner functions for fans at championship rounds. At best, it seems, Tekno may secure one-off sponsorship deals for the remaining rounds.

Its lack of full title sponsorship is strange on a couple of scores. It's a midfield rather than backmarker team. Webb is 17th in the championship and Patrizi 20th -- with nine drivers having scored less points than him.

Webb came into the V8 Supercar "main game" after winning the 2009 development series. At the end of his 2010 debut season, with Dick Johnson Racing, he won a memorable, crazy race at the season-ending Sydney 500 when others couldn't keep it all together in the wet.

Over the last off-season Webb's Tekno lost the Mother energy drink sponsorship its Ford Falcons had in 2011.

It's somewhat baffling that Tekno has not attracted another slice of the sponsorship pie when it was trumpeted this week, during Ford Performance Racing star Mark Winterbottom's visit to the new Circuit of the Americas in Texas due to host a V8 Supercar Championship round next year, that the category and its teams have "an estimated annual sponsorship portfolio well in excess of $150 million".

Even without title sponsorship this season, Tekno is committed to fronting up again next year with two new Car of the Future Commodores from Triple Eight Race Engineering, long the benchmark V8 Supercar outfit and now in the process of replacing its Vodafone sponsorship which will be gone at the end of this year.

For Tekno there's just the matter of sorting out its second Racing Entitlement Contract, or V8 Supercar team licence, as it's now using one of Paul Morris Motorsport's.

"We're focussing on next year now as far as a title sponsor goes," Webb told this week's Auto Action magazine. "We'll pick up a few little ones here and there [this year] but, as far as a sponsor for both cars goes, I don't think that's going to happen.

"I think everyone knows how tough it is out there financially, so it's not going to get any easier, to be honest... At this stage we're planning to continue doing what we're doing. We've ordered two Triple Eight chassis already, so we're fairly comfortable with our direction at the moment. The key is to get a naming rights sponsor on the side of both cars for next year.

"We're pretty comfortable about what we're going to be doing next year. The intention is definitely to keep two cars. Michael [Patrizi] has been doing a great job so far this year and we've both been fast. So there's no reason to believe we can't continue to do that."

While it's odd that the Tekno cars are running around unsponsored in V8 Supercars, even odder is something in NASCAR in the United States. Matt Kenseth is leading the Sprint Cup, driving a Ford Fusion for Roush Fenway Racing.

Kenseth was the series champion in 2003, the last year it was known as the Winston Cup, and he's won 22 races in NASCAR's top tier, including the Daytona 500 in 2009 and this year. He's made The Chase, the fight for the title between the top dozen drivers over the final 10 rounds of the 36-race series, in seven of the eight years since it was introduced.

Yet Kenseth's car -- owned by a team with the record of Jack Roush in NASCAR over 25 years and in which Fenway Sports Group, owner of the Boston Red Sox baseball team, has been a joint venture partner for the past five years -- is not fully and properly sponsored for the whole season.

For 10 of this year's 36 Cup races it is unsponsored, with Roush footing the bills from his own pocket. The team has a "patchwork" of title sponsors for the other 26 races. And it was announced this week that Kenseth and Roush Fenway will part at the end of this season.

The 40-year-old Kenseth's replacement will be 24-year-old Ricky Stenhouse Junior, reigning champion in the second tier Nationwide Series but with only a couple of Cup starts under his belt.

Just a month ago Jack Roush said: "There's never a question of whether we have wherewithal and commitment to stay with Matt Kenseth. He's a cornerstone of Roush Fenway and he'll be part of it as long as I am and as long as he wants to be."

Kenseth too had said it would be hard to imagine driving for another team. Now it seems likely that he'll join Joe Gibbs Racing, a Toyota team that already has Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano. It may expand to four cars, or perhaps young two-time Cup race winner Logano.

Ford's American motorsport chief Jamie Allison has conceded that Kenseth won't be in a Ford next year, even if he wins the Sprint Cup for the Blue Oval this season. Kenseth leads teammate Greg Biffle by 11 points, with Dale Earnhardt Junior three points further back, ahead of five-time champion Jimmie Johnson and reigning champion Tony Stewart.

Kenseth has raced for Roush in the Cup since 2000. Only four-time series champion Jeff Gordon's link with Chevrolet powerhouse Hendrick Motorsports goes back further, to 1993. Sports Illustrated says that Roush Fenway Racing "much like every other [NASCAR] team, has faced issues with dwindling sponsorship".

Kenseth's No. 17 car once carried sponsorship from DEWALT Tools, now on the No. 9 Richard Petty Motorsports Ford of Australian Marcos Ambrose. Irwin Tools and Crown Royal decals have disappeared from Kenseth's car in more recent times.

Roush Fenway's website proclaims that the key to its success has been "our world-class sponsorship base".

"No NASCAR team has more Fortune 500 partners than Roush Fenway," it says. Fenway Sports Group's "experience, relationships and large audience base" are supposed to "add value to Roush Fenway's sponsors". Yet even its "muscle" combined with Kenseth's record has not been enough to raise the money to make the No. 17 entry viable.

Associated Press writer Nate Ryan reported this week that "the price tag for a proven champion and winner in Cup [like Kenseth] usually starts at a base salary of $6 million annually (not including a percentage of the purse money)". Stenhouse will come much cheaper, although presumably at quite a bit more than the "low to mid six figures" Ryan reported him to be on now.

David Smith, editor-in-chief of MotorsportsAnalytics.com, says Roush Fenway has made "a pretty savvy business decision".

Sports Illustrated's Dustin Long reckons that, in the uncertain US economic climate, keeping Kenseth would have relegated Stenhouse to another year in the Nationwide Series and that, in turn, would have kept another of its youngsters, Trevor Bayne, the shock winner of last year's Daytona 500 for the Wood Brothers team, to a part-time Nationwide schedule, "potentially stunting his growth".

Savvy Roush Fenway's moves may be, but it is still a mystery that a team with all its resources could not source the sponsorship to keep Kenseth in its fold, as well as perhaps expand back to its former four cars to accommodate Stenhouse in America's biggest race series.

Image: teknoautosports.com.au

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