August 13th, 2010 
Journo It’s not often I see press releases that truly catch my attention. I mean something beyond the standard pre-race and post-race (which are both useful enough). The last couple of weeks I’ve seen two that had me talking – one for the good, the other for the bad.
Something different? Go Red Bull!
This one was a first – and something I’ve been advocating for for a long time. Why not get creative with your communication efforts? Everybody puts out the same formulaic pre and post-race releases with a ridiculous amount of spin. We get it, you’re trying to turn a 30th place finish into a positive thing.
Lest we be disappointed by yet another post-race we’re probably not going to read, someone finally did something about it. Thank you Red Bull!
You may have seen this – it made the rounds on twitter – after Pocono the folks over at Red Bull, instead of doing a recap of the race that we all saw, injected some humor into their release with some fun facts.
The first bit on their release read:
Haha. What? The Death Star? It continues like that, but I had to finish reading. They even managed to sneak in some information about their teams and drivers. All in all, not bad. Check out their turn by turn Watkins Glen post-race – equally entertaining.
The beauty of this is, they’re not running great, but they’ve got people buzzing about something positive. A win-win for the team.
The clock starts now to see how fast someone steals this from them – or tries to outdo them.
Bad luck? Or the funding fell out?
Generally start-and-park teams don’t put out pre and post race releases. It’s obvious why. But I found an exception.
Michelle Theriault has been running a start-and-park for Andy Hillenburg’s Fast Track Racing. After Theriault’s first race at ORP the sponsor’s marketing company (yes, a start-and-park with a sponsor) put out a release claiming it was bad luck that forced Theriault out of the race.
A kink in the line? Bad luck? Sounds to me, as Michael McDowell put it on his twitter page a few weeks ago, the funding fell out on the front stretch.
What’s worse than being a start-and-park? Trying to pretend you’re not one. This was just plain insulting to anyone who read it – and it all but guaranteed I wouldn’t be looking at another of their releases.
Luckily, though they’ve been putting out pre-races, they quit doing the post-race.
Sometimes its just best not to say anything at all.
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This sort of has to do with start and parks. Scott Riggs left the #36 Tommy Baldwin Racing Team because he didnt want to start and park. And I just saw on Jayski.com that Scott is gonna be driving the #66 Prism Motorsports Toyota at Michigan. Why would he go there if he doesnt want to start and park? Because as we all know the #66 is HUGE into start and park. Just wondering if you guys know why this is. Thanks.
First guess: It is possible that PRISM could run the full distance with Riggs. They’ve done it on rare occasions over the last season and a half. This is a shorter race, which gives them more incentive to try it.
Second guess: Riggs may be okay with doing an occasional start-and-park just to try to keep his name out there. Sadly, drivers who aren’t doing anything are quickly forgotten.
Ya I forgot that they do run the full distance sometimes.