On Sunday, February 24, the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race rounds out the weekend’s NASCAR action as this series picks up where it left off at the exciting Daytona 500.
Tickets for the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 weekend can be purchased by calling 877-9-AMS-TIX or by visiting www.atlantamotorspeedway.com
Rick and Sully talk about some new NASCAR tech as the races come to Atlanta Motor Speedway this weekend
1. NASCAR Back in Atlanta this weekend.
Three big races. The only NASCAR races in Atlanta each year.
2. Kennesaw’s Ultimate Tailgating to Sponsor AMS Truck Series Race this Weekend
Kennesaw, Georgia-based Ultimate Tailgating will sponsor the February 23 Ultimate Tailgating 200 NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
“I can’t think of a better pairing than NASCAR and tailgating,” said Michael Bailey, CEO of Ultimate Tailgating. “We are excited to be on board with the Gander Outdoor Truck Series and there’s no better place than Atlanta Motor Speedway because that’s where we call home.”
Ultimate Tailgating is the nation’s premier event rental company specializing in all-inclusive tailgating, corporate, marketing and hospitality rentals. From concerts to football games and, of course, NASCAR, Ultimate Tailgating can elevate your tailgate. The company has eight locations that serve 40 states. NASCAR fans are familiar with Ultimate Tailgating on many levels. The fact that it is local to Metro Atlanta is the icing on the cake.
3. iRacing Gaining in Popularity
www.iracing.com
iRacing, an online simulation of the real deal each week in Nascar. The paint schemes on stock cars, the cockpit view of thick traffic, the detail of the tracks down to each tunnel turn, bridge and banking, are all so realistic it’s like watching a Nascar race from an in-car camera on broadcast TV.
iRacing is the ultimate global racing portal. Whether you want to experience a NASCAR Cup car, a World of Outlaws Sprint car, an open-wheel IndyCar, an Australian V-8 Supercar, an IMSA Prototype or Touring Car, or the ultimate: an FIA Grand Prix car, iRacing’s online racing simulations offer them all. All you need is a computer equipped with one or more USB ports, and a digital wheel/pedal, or gamepad backed by a high-speed Internet connection. iRacing does the work for you by organizing and managing more than 40 official series, or you can choose to race in more than 400 private leagues or launch your own hosted events.
4. The new "NASCAR DRIVE"
Nascar Drive, a 360-degree camera feed, and communications between drivers and their crew chiefs. Nascar Drive will be available not only in the Nascar Mobile app but also on desktop and the mobile web. For the Daytona 500, fans will get the 360 view for Bubba Wallace’s No. 43 car. And with daily fantasy sports continuing to grow as an industry, Nascar has revamped its Nascar Fantasy Live game, which generated a 74 percent increase in players year over year and a 100 percent increase in total game entries.
5. NASCAR's New Marketing Strategy
Nascar is ushering in a new era of marketing, and not just because of the new generation of drivers. Nascar has suffered some of the largest declines across major American sports during the last two years. In 2016, Monster Energy Cup races averaged about 4.5 million viewers, but that number fell to 4.1 million viewers in 2017 and just 3.3 million viewers last year. All but a few individual races saw viewership declines, year over year.
In addition to the dropping ratings, some individual tracks have had trouble filling seats. Notably, fan favorites like Charlotte, Daytona and Richmond have torn out tens of thousands of seats to avoid mostly empty grandstands.
Despite falling viewership and attendance numbers, Nascar’s top marketers tracked its brand health through a number of key markets from 2017 to 2018, which experienced a “big bump,” according to Nascar vp of brand marketing Pete Jung. Heading into the 2019 season, Nascar plans to leverage its crop of young phenoms—who he called the greatest influx of new talent the sport may have ever seen—in its marketing, tap new technology and improve the in-person racing experience to boost fan interest in the sport.
Marketing a new generation
Nasacar faces a unique problem. When a fan’s favorite driver retires, who does the fan now root for? The racing circuit hopes to answer that by marketing its new class of rising stars.
The sport has worked with partners like 77 Ventures and VaynerMedia to create unscripted, driver-centric content for drivers to share on social media. Using their stories, Nascar “can take that creative to the next step and create a deeper dive into some of these young stars like Chase Elliot, Ryan Blaney and Bubba Wallace,” Gregory said, adding, “We use digital and social content to let fans have a chance to get to know them better and more quickly.”
Nascar also developed a 24-hour content studio in its Charlotte newsroom where video can be shot and cut whenever a driver visits.
Teaming with media agency Crossmedia, Jung said Nascar has developed a proprietary database that has allowed it to become more sophisticated in its marketing across a number of media, from national spots to strategic investments in 30 markets, as well as buys on streaming services like Pandora and Spotify. Nascar has also improved its programmatic and out-of-home buys.
As fans interact with content on digital, Nascar builds a profile that identifies the style and personality of a driver the fan might relate to. So when a driver like Tony Stewart retires, Nascar can target fans with content about Kyle Busch because they gravitate toward a driver who’s rebellious and surly.
6. NASCAR plans 2021 introduction for new Generation 7 Cup series car
Road-relevance and controlled costs are two of the targets for the next generation of NASCAR machinery.
NASCAR's new-for-2019 aerodynamic package for the existing Generation 6 cars is a bridge to the Generation 7 car.
"I think it's important to note that the reason we headed in this direction with the 2019 rules package was really to line us up for where we wanted to go in the future from a racing standpoint, both on track from a car's look and feel and then under the hood from an engine perspective," said NASCAR's executive vice president and chief racing development officer Steve O'Donnell.
"If you look at a lot of the dialogue we've had with our existing OEMs, potential OEMs, there's a lot of interest to do some things differently in terms of making the cars look even more like they do on the street, making sure that we can evolve some of our engine technology as well.
"So what we've done is spent the better part of a year putting together a Gen-7 model.
"We're in process now of going out and talking to OEMs, talking in the industry and getting their feedback on what they like and what they may want to see tweaked, but the goal for us is to roll this out fairly quickly with an accelerated timeline to 2021."
Sunday, August 30, 2020 at 6:54PM 
