Auto Racing Sponsorship & the Drama of Pit 18

Last weekend, my husband and I spent the day at Dover Speedway photographing a car in the NASCAR Nationwide Series race. The following is an excerpt from the article my husband wrote and a couple of photographs from the day. Please follow the link at the bottom of the excerpt to go to the complete article.

      The story began as a note on Facebook. An old acquaintance contacted the Desk through one of the Desk's former bosses. A sponsor of a Nationwide Series car was looking for a photographer, and the Desk's wife happens to be one (see link to her site at end of part 2). The resulting email exchange involved submitting information to NASCAR for credentials that didn't come through until Friday afternoon for Saturday morning. Something "far beyond" the "last minute", but it worked!

      The primary goal of the mission was to get some good photos of the sponsor's car with their logo on the hood, in action if possible. The second reason is... well, this. The Desk promised the lady at the sponsor that it would write it up as a photoessay and mention the sponsor several times!
      
Well. OK. Here goes.

      The sponsor was RepairableVehicles.com (links at end of part 2 to outside entities and to the Photo Pages).
      RepairableVehicles.com had purchased single event advertising on Jeremy Clements' number 04 Impala in the Nationwide series 200 mile race at Dover from RaceDaySponsor.com, for Jeremy's first run at the Dover track. Did I mention that the sponsor was RepairableVehicles.com?
      The usual sponsor is Boudreaux's Butt Paste who has been in the sport for about five years or so, but for today, and probably at other races as well, they will step back to the associate spot and let RepairableVehicles.com ride on the hood. We'll come back to how this all works and where RaceDaySponsor.com figures in later. (is that enough sponsor plugs for now? if not there's more on photo page 2).
      First things first. Who is Jeremy Clements? (see photo on the photo page as well)
      Well, the twenty-something Jeremy comes to racing naturally. It is, to coin a phrase, in his blood. His grandfather was Crawford Clements who, with his brother Louis, produced racing engines and owned a race team during the Golden Age of NASCAR through the sixties and into the seventies. Later Crawford focused his family business on producing top-flight engines for the various Sportsman's racing series. Which they still do today.

      Today, the family is actively back in racing with a Jeremy as the public face of the effort driving the Zero Four. And it really is still a family business with the Clements name throughout the crew on race day as well as on the driver suit. Team owner Tony Clements is a spotter on race day while Glen Clements is one of the mechanics, both at the track and in the shop.


The rest of the story and more photos can be found on The Media Desk.