Workin’ Within The Rules

You know , when I heard Verizon was buying out Alltel I was wondering how they were going to get their name on the car without having to go to court like AT&T did when they bought out Cingular on RCR’s #31 car.

Well leave it up to Roger Penske to come up with a plan. You can call Penske whatever you want, but can’t deny the fact that he is one shrewd businessman.

Here is the plan, Roger gives Verizon their own Nationwide team through him called Verizon Championship Racing with the car number 12 and team name Verizon on the side and then Roger paints his #12 Sprint Cup car exactly the same way as the Verizon Nationwide car with one exception; he puts Penske on the side instead of Verizon.

So when you go to NASCAR events all you’ll see is images of the #12 Nationwide car everywhere with little to no exposure to the Penske Racing #12 car.

Even the crew members will all be wearing the same uniforms with the exception of team name on the back.

Can you say “end-run”?

Penske did something similar to this with his Indy car teams and Marlboro when new government regulations limited big tobacco company advertising exposure back in the late 90’s/early 2000’s.

Penske is one cool cucumber.

For the complete story on this go here.

Photo Credit: Nationwide car - nascar.com (Getty Images), Sprint Cup car - speedtv.com