NASCAR New York Office - NASCAR's Secret Weapon

Far away from the rumble of high-octane-fueled V-8s and talk of spoiler heights, Goodyear's latest tire, and common body templates, a group of 38 men and women in New York are doing high-dollar business for NASCAR. The concept of NASCAR operatives working in New York City may be hard for some die-hard fans to imagine, but hours away from the nearest racetrack, big business is done in a nice, yet nondescript office on Park Avenue. This office has changed the face of stock car racing.

"The average fan probably doesn't know about the office," says Andrew Feit, director of alliance marketing for NASCAR. "We kind of reopened the office in 1998, and our mission has been the same: Facilitate corporate interest in the sport."

That new Nextel deal? While it was Mike Helton and Bill and Brian France who fronted the news conference, it was the folks working on the front lines in New York who secured the deal.

When R.J. Reynolds announced publicly that, despite having a five-year deal to sponsor the Winston Cup Series, the company would be willing to leave early to allow NASCAR to find a new title backer, the folks in the New York office went to work. In a sense, Winston's announcement was a liberating moment for NASCAR, and more important, its New York office.

Though NASCAR officials would have never said it publicly at the time, the reality was that being backed by a cigarette maker severely limited the advertising efforts of the series. The sport couldn't be marketed directly to kids or teens, and other restrictions on the promotion of tobacco brands proved to be a hindrance to the overall growth of the sport. These restrictions became all the more apparent at a time when major national publications and news programs were paying attention for the first time.

Within weeks of the R.J. Reynolds announcement, major corporations were identified as potential sponsors, and in a matter of months, NASCAR officials stood before a jammed room at the NASDAQ market in Times Square to announce the Nextel package, worth an estimated $750 million over the life of the deal.

Seemingly overnight, the NASCAR fan base knew there was an office in New York.

"I think it validated the New York office," says Brett Yormark, NASCAR's vice president of corporate marketing. "I think it validated the sport."

It was a major step for the office, which since 1998 has been working well out of the bright lights of NASCAR, but doing significant work for the sport in general. Yet, long before the folks in the office were able to convince Nextel to come on board, they had to set out to convince those in the sport that they were friends, not foes.

The idea to open the Park Avenue office was raised by Brian France in the mid-'90s, when racing was starting to capture the attention of the national media. It was, he thought, important to be near Madison Avenue where many of the advertising deals were done.

More importantly, the sport needed to be represented on the same footing as football, baseball, and hockey. That's because early on in the current boom in racing, NASCAR officials struggled to overcome the perception that racing only appealed to folks in the Southeast. The difficulty in doing so was hampered, in part, by the fact that there isn't a big-league track real close to New York.

For example, a marketing executive for the National Football League can easily plop the CEO of a major national firm into a car and within minutes be at Giants Stadium to see, hear, and feel pigskin action.

Pocono Raceway is near the city, no doubt, but it's still a two-hour drive on a race day. Nevertheless, it was important to have a presence in New York. "Having the office in New York puts a Brooks Brothers suit on the NASCAR brand," says Craig Tartasky, chairman of the International Sports Summit, an annual event held in the city. "It gives them proximity. They now have the ability of networking on a daily basis, rather than doing road shows on a quarterly basis." It's not been a walk in Central Park, though.