Hey, check out some of these business points: Looks like big cash may be on the way!

  Atlanta pres Ed Clark is hoping for another blue-sky NASCAR weekend (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   ATLANTA
   The headlines screamed out of Thursday's Wall Street Journal, with good news for stock car racing team owners and with pointed questions for NASCAR and Detroit's car makers:
   --- "With Fistfuls of Cash, Firms on Hunt," referring to billions of dollars in idle cash reserves that many of the nation's top-500 companies are now ready to spend....perhaps on marketing sponsorships for North Carolina's many stock car teams.
   -- "Why Nobody is Racing These Cars...Detroit's Showroom Muscle Used to Run at Top Tracks, but no more; a Marketing Blunder?"
  And tucked on the inside pages, a parallel story perhaps, about yet another shakeup at General Motors, and ace marketeer Bob Lutz' decision to resign.
   Yes, the issues out on the track are easier to read: Kevin Harvick and the Richard Childress bunch regrouped and on the charge...the amazing run of luck Jimmie Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus are on....the curious stumbles over in the Joe Gibbs camp...and the moves upward by Greg Biffle and teammate Matt Kenseth. And of course there are the aerodynamic rear spoiler issues to debate, and more new tires to discuss, for the aficionados.
   But those stories in the WSJ look at a different side of the sport. Consider them: http://bit.ly/d7QCwz
   And while we're linking to outside-of-the-track topics of NASCAR interest, consider this one too: http://bit.ly/9CThE2
   The business of NASCAR racing can be an intriguing labyrinth of storylines.
   Just ask Jimmie Johnson.
   Yes, JJ is two-for-two coming into Sunday's Atlanta 500, and this track is typically a good one for him.
   But Johnson, with four straight NASCAR championships now, and running a marketing treadmill, says life as a NASCAR sports hero has become more than hectic. It's almost "crazy," he says.
   Hey, and it's only the first of March. This thing will run through Thanksgiving.
   Johnson is critical of some of the pre-race marketing he's been pushed into doing. And he says he's "not sure" that the weekly pre-race marketing game "is working as it needs to."
    "Some tracks are a pleasure to work with, and other tracks are not," Johnson says.
   Of course NASCAR promoters are under the gun to produce fans in the stands during their individual race weekends, and – long-term – eyeballs on the TV in their market throughout the 10-month season.
   For example, California's Gillian Zucker is charged not only with running her two Sprint Cup weekends, promoting and selling tickets, but marketing the sport itself to that region so that Los Angeles adds to the TV ratings numbers each week.
   "The goal," Johnson says of pre-event marketing, "is to sell tickets. And if somebody can show me how a paint-ball fight is going to sell tickets and fill the grandstands, I'll gladly be a part of that paint ball fight.
    "I don't believe that's the case though.
    "Do hot dogs really sell tickets?
     "There are a lot of questions out there that don't made sense in a lot of ways.
    "At the end of the day we need people in the grandstands, and we need to figure out how we do that.
    "There has been a lot of pressure put on the garage area (drivers in particular, and team owners and crews) to fill the grandstands.
    "And if you really look at what's gone on in the garage area -- the teams have had to step up and build new cars....all the money it took to build new cars and develop them...and Goodyear has built a new tire.
    "You look at the competition side of NASCAR, and the field is closer than it's ever been.
     "Drivers are being encouraged to speak their minds.
      "You look at everything that goes on in this fenced-off (garage) area, and we're tapped out in there.
    "We're doing everything we can to put on a great show. People may think we race for points, which is absolute crap. We're out there to win.
     "So everything in that garage area is tapped out.
      "What happens over here in filling those stands -- that responsibility needs to go back on the tracks and the promoters, and they need to understand what it takes to sell tickets and put people in the stands.
       "Needless to say, there is a lot of stuff (drivers and teams have to do) that doesn't drive grandstand sales.
     "There is a lot of stuff that improves the position with the track and the local market and the local media, and favors that seem to be taking place.
     "But I really find it hard to believe we actually are impacting the people who are going to be at the ticket counters buying the tickets. That's where the shift needs to take place."
 
   

    

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   Greg Biffle: Overdue for some good luck. But he'll have to match Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick again this weekend (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)