Newly available: Danica Patrick

I don't know Starman ... you go to a NASCAR track and her souvenir trailer(s) are crawling with people buying that stuff. She's got a pretty good base of people who'd like to see her do well. I'm not a fan, necessarily, but it would tickle the hell out of me to see her win a race (or even better, get into the Chase).

NASCAR as a marketing tool is far more volatile than it used to be. Sprint's pulling out, and I recall hearing some rumblings about Budweiser not sponsoring a car. The days where you have the same sponsor, week in and week out, for years seem to be long gone.

 

In this day and age of social media, you can get more mileage out of a "no means yes" media campaign than you'd get from an expensive NASCAR sponsorship.

 

I'm kind of surprised GoDaddy stuck it out as long as they did. All they can get from this kind of sponsorship is name recognition and they've pretty well maxed out on that. People may buy Budweiser regularly because they sponsor a certain driver, but no one is buying up web domains because GoDaddy sponsors a driver.

 

Without a sponsor to bring along, Patrick will have it tough finding a ride. Without a ride, Patrick will have it tough finding a sponsor. My guess, she drops down to a second-tier team.

 

It would be funny if GoDaddy drops Danica due to wanting more international marketing, only to have Danica be named the Haas Formula 1 driver for next year.

 

Least surprising racing story of the year: Danica's got a new primary sponsor that will keep her with Stewart-Haas for years to come:

http://www.racer.com/nascar/item/120388-nascar-new-primary-sponsor-for-danica-patrick-for-2016