May 14, 2008 - Fans Coming To Sarah's Rescue

My old friend Bob Kravitz, sports columnist for the Indianapolis Star, brought it to light recently that Sarah Fisher’s contracted sponsors for the 2008 IndyCar Series season had reneged on their deal.

That would be Florida-based Gravity Entertainment, the parent company of ResQ Energy Drink, and ResQ.

Without funds for May and the two other races Fisher’s fledgling race team had planned on running, fans of the three-time IRL Most Popular Driver winner have attempted to come to the rescue, so to speak. Fans have raised money, handing Fisher personal checks and cash at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

It would appear that energy drinks are this decade’s dot-com. Here’s what happens: Some small company gets some capital, a recipe and starts to produce an “energy drink” with the hopes of being first distributed and then bought by one of the big soda or food companies such as Pepsi or Coke.

The moral of that story is, of course, to get cash up front.

Fisher and her husband, Andy O’Gara, risked their life savings on Sarah Fisher Racing. Gravity Entertainment treated that like a punchline in one of its supposed movie productions.

Fisher told the Associated Press that her alleged sponsors were irritated when her fans started calling their offices with complaints about their non-payment. Though she made it clear that she did not ask for that to happen, she added nicely that she was a little "irritated, too." Nice.

Kravitz suggested Fisher needed a collection agency. I’m thinking maybe she needs a little muscle, if you know what I mean.

Seriously, I hope the folks at Gravity and ResQ keep their kneecaps intact. But I also hope the race fans they hoped to reach — and did reach with a big splash when signing on with Fisher — remember their names and act accordingly.

Then, one day, I hope the powers that be in those companies find their checkbooks. After all, a January announcement on the company’s Web site proclaims the start of a NASCAR Sprint Cup team to begin a very limited schedule this year.

If you thought it was tough to write a check for May in Indianapolis, just get a load of what it will cost to go Cup racing.

I’ll be holding my breath for your big debut.

In the meantime, Fisher has scrambled and found a couple of sponsors for Indy, including IUPUI’s new race-engineering program and Kansas-based Hartman Oil.

Fans can help, too.

Just follow this link to Fisher’s site and you’ll find instructions for making donations.

For the price of an energy drink or two, you can help someone who deserves it.

May 7, 2008 - Getting The Picture With T.

When you cover stock-car races these days — or any time over the past 50 years — one of the bonuses is getting to see T. Taylor Warren.

A lot of NASCAR fans wouldn’t know T. Taylor Warren if he hit them with his camera, but he is THE photographer in NASCAR, starting with an old-school medium-format camera in the 1940s and moving right along into the Car of Tomorrow era with a high-tech Nikon digital SLR.

He took what is still the most significant photo in NASCAR history — the photo finish that eventually named Lee Petty the winner of the first Daytona 500 when he edged Johnny Beauchamp at the wire.

I had the chance to eavesdrop on an interview Warren did with Martinsville Bulletin sports writer Drew Eary after Warren had been presented the H. Clay Earles Award, which is given to persons making an impact on NASCAR through their life’s work, and the Doug Agee Award, which is given annually at Martinsville in honor of Agee, who helped forge the longstanding partnership between Martinsville and Goody’s.

Like our own Chris Economaki, Warren has probably forgotten more about racing than most of us will ever know.

At 83, slowing down doesn’t seem to be much of an option for him either — this, despite a small stroke he suffered a short time ago. Warren braved an unexpected chilly weekend in Martinsville. A few weeks later, I caught up with him again at Rockingham for the ARCA Carolina 500 as Rockingham Speedway reopened. No doubt, Warren was there the first time “The Rock” opened its doors, it’s only fitting that he would be there for the second.

But why do it?

“In your early days you had to keep coming back,” Warren told Eary. “If you shot one (event) you had to bring (the photos) back next race to peddle them. Now it’s the people that I meet and my friends that I know at the track.”

I’m roughly half his age, and Warren is an inspiration — as he should be for just about anybody. I hope to be that vital at that age. I hope to still be doing something I love. As an amateur photographer of sorts, I'm amazed that he is still looking for great pictures through his viewfinder week-in and week-out — and getting them.

And the next one may be the best yet.