Waltrip thrilled NAPA giving his team chance; company plans to return as primary sponsor
WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. – NAPA and Michael Waltrip Racing announced Friday that the auto parts store chain will return for a ninth consecutive season in 2009 as the primary sponsor for Michael Waltrip’s NASCAR Cup car.
NAPA began its sponsorship of Waltrip in 2001 at Dale Earnhardt Inc. and later followed the driver to Bill Davis Racing and Michael Waltrip Racing, which debuted in 2007.
Waltrip, who owns Michael Waltrip Racing and competes as one of the team’s three Sprint Cup drivers, carries the sponsorship on his No. 55 Toyota.
“When you’re a new business and you’re building your business, you have to have a foundation and they’re part of our foundation,” Waltrip said. “I think what it says more than anything is that the sponsorship works. Their store owners appreciate the car, the commercials, the performance at times. Obviously they want to perform up front every week but they’ve seen us up front, they’ve seen us win the Daytona 500 and they believe in our direction.
“To me it’s important for two reasons: one, just because the business has to have sponsorship to go forward. Two, it says we sponsor MWR and it works for us - we’re able to market our products through them so therefore we’re going to keep sponsoring them.”
How does knowing NAPA will return make Waltrip feel given the uncertain economic climate in which many teams don’t have sponsors in place for 2009.
“It makes me want to work harder,” Waltrip said. “It makes me want to be driving down the road and pull into a NAPA store and say, ‘Thank you,’ like I’ve done before. It makes me want to do every TV show, any interview, anything I can do to help them because they’re giving us a chance.
"I like to look at it as they made our runway longer. Like, we’re going down the runway and we feel like we’re getting ready to take off, we’re doing a bunch of good things but if it ran out we would never get to show anybody. They’ve made our runway longer so we’re going to be able to continue to develop and grow our young team.”
Waltrip has earned all six of his career victories with the sponsor, including his first career win in the 2001 Daytona 500 and his second Daytona 500 win in 2003.
“NAPA just really means everything to us because they’re such a cornerstone,” said MWR Vice President and General Manager Ty Norris. “They’ve been together with Michael for a long time and what NAPA shows is they’re still believers. They’re believers in what Michael started, they’re believers in NASCAR, period. They’re believers in sports marketing.
“When you have options to either leave or get out and they make a conscious decision to stay, I think it’s a good sign not only for MWR but a good sign for the whole garage that companies are still seeing a very good value in this sport as a marketing platform.”
