Submitted by NASCAR Ranting and Raving Blog

Well, Tony announced his new sponsors for next year along with his team’s car numbers.
When I got to interview Tony a few weeks ago, one of the questions I was going to ask him (but ran out of time) was about his new car number for next year and whether it was going to be the 4 or 14. As it turns out, I was kind of right as he will be driving the 14 himself while his still unnamed teammate will drive the 4 car.

Tony picked the 14 for himself because it was his childhood idol’s number as well. The idol you ask? A.J. Foyt.

He picked the #4 for his other team car because that is the number he started with in go-karts when he was a kid.

I wrote a comparison between Foyt and Stewart over a year ago, and now that things have come full circle (sort of) it is worth a re-read.

Tony also announced that he will have a shared sponsorship program for his car (14) next year. To no one’s surprise they are Old Spice and Office Depot.

Having a multiple sponsorship program for his car is no news to me because, in that same interview from a few weeks ago, I asked Tony about sponsorships in NASCAR nowadays and he replied;

“If you look at the (sponsor) program that Dale Jr has this year, it makes sense. You can’t keep asking the sponsors to keep spending more and more and more, but it costs more and more and more to go racing each year. The program that they’ve got where they’re flopping a couple of sponsors around on a car makes sense to me. Seems like a pretty good formula that’s working good for them over there. I don’t think you’re gonna see one sponsor that can keep affording to spend 20-25 million dollars for the primary sponsorship of a car and have a whole car to themselves anymore. It’s hard for one sponsor to do that, especially when the economy is bad, it’s hard to get the return on your investment. So [multiple sponsors] seems to be the better option for a lot of corporate America right now.”

There you have it. What’s your take?

“Tony and the 14″ Photo by Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR and “Tony with his Dad” Photo by ? - help me out.

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