By Jerry Jordan, Editor
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – A day after Kyle Busch decried unfair treatment by the sanctioning body because NASCAR is heavily promoting its younger drivers over its veterans, Steve Phelps, Executive Vice-President and Chief Global Sales and Marketing Officer, said marketing efforts target drivers of all age and experience brackets.
Busch said the older drivers have paid their dues and felt promoting just the younger drivers was “stupid” because it takes away from the veterans fan base.
“I don’t know, I am not the marketing genius behind this deal,” Busch said. “One thing that can be said is probably the younger guys are bullied into doing more things than the older drivers are because we say, ‘no’ a lot more because we’ve been there and done that, have families and things like that and want to spend time at home. So, maybe that is some of it. But some of these marketing campaigns and things like that pushing these younger drivers is, I wouldn’t say all that fair.”
Phelps conceded that NASCAR could have done better through the years of promoting all of its drivers and it has been trying to fix that. He also said Busch’s comments were “fair” in that NASCAR didn’t show him the save love it is now showing Chase Elliott, Bubba Wallace, Ryan Blaney or its other young stars.
“I think it was a miss on our part. Until four or five years ago, most of our marketing was about the racing itself and pretty pictures around the racing,” Phelps said. “It wasn’t about the stars of our sport. So, do I think that’s fair that when he came into the sport and started winning right off the bat? Yeah, I think it’s a fair statement that we did not give that kind of support.”
Phelps added NASCAR is promoting all of its drivers and pointed to a campaign currently in production that involved a number of younger and older drivers. He added that his remarks weren’t directly in response to Busch’s criticism.
“It’s not about Kyle’s comments, its absolutely about this is the direction we are going from a marketing perspective and it is as simple as this; the first piece is we have the greatest racing on the planet,” Phelps said. “The second part is about star-power, right. It is about our drivers and the crew chiefs and the crews and everyone that makes this sport go. And the drivers really starts with our veteran drivers, Hall of Fame drivers like Jimmie Johnson, Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr., Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano and all of these guys are such an important part of everything we do and it should be. But we also need to expose these young drivers, so our fans understand who they are.
“At the end of the day, it’s really good the story lines that are coming out of this, and for our fans, our research will tell you the majority of it is about winning, so what kind of success are they going to have on the racetrack. Making sure we are giving these young drivers a platform to do that is an important part of our marketing. So that would be the preamble.”