AT&T sues NASCAR over Cingular paint job on Burton's ride

Even diehard fans of gas guzzling motorcars making entirely too many left turns in succession know that its about more than just the racing, and AT&T is apparently fairly hot and bothered that its mega marketing bucks aren't resulting in a new paint job. The #31 car, which owned by Richard Childress Racing and driven by Jeff Burton, has been sponsored by Cingular for about six years, but as we all know, AT&T (and its blue sphere) are calling the shots now. Unfortunately, Nextel (you know, the folks who sponsor NASCAR) has been less than snappy in addressing the change in logos, and now AT&T is dropping a lawsuit on NASCAR in an attempt to hasten the change. Typically, we would seriously question the sanity of a driver refusing to abide by the wishes of its primary source of funding, but when you're cruising in second place (and a good bit of winnings), you roll however you please.

[Colin B @ Mar 27th 2007 3:28AM]

Actually, the terms of Sprint's deal with NASCAR's "NEXTEL" Cup allow only telecommunications companies to sponsor cars that were already sponsors when NEXTEL took over the name from "Winston". Thus, only Alltel and Cingular were grandfathered in. Hence, a switch to an AT&T sponsorship is essentially allowing a new competetitor of Sprint's to advertise, violating their contract and defeating some of the purpose of paying so much for the rights. This explains why AT&T is suing NASCAR and not the teams owners--they'd gladly change the paint job if NASCAR would allow them.

[MR @ Mar 27th 2007 3:40AM]

Dude, you better know what "dropping a lawsuit" really means. It's just sick to see words being misused all the time.

[Nick @ Mar 27th 2007 6:37AM]

I agree, I also didn't like the use of the English language in this way, it'll confuse the stupider of the readers.

Personally, I find it hilarious that companies 'drop' lawsuits 'on each other' in this way over such trivial matters - surely this will sour their future relationship?

[elan @ Mar 27th 2007 5:43AM]

Engadget.

[Eric @ Mar 27th 2007 6:53AM]

NASCAR SUCKS?

[Rick P @ Mar 27th 2007 7:17AM]

NASCAR - Non Athletic Sport Created Around Rednecks. What does this have to do with Engadget or is there a nascar.engadget.com now?

[Nick @ Mar 27th 2007 10:01AM]

just another reason why i will never watch nascar.

[matt @ Mar 27th 2007 7:43AM]

It's also misleading to refer to NASCAR vehicles as "gas-guzzling". Because refueling is a very expensive act in the midst of a race, there is a serious incentive to engineer these vehicles to be as efficient as possible. In fact, many innovations that have been developed for high-performance racing cars have made their way into the cars you and I drive, resulting in improvements across the board. Elitist attitudes towards NASCAR are very popular: don't succumb to them!

[Jon Kelly @ Mar 27th 2007 9:27AM]

Fuel Efficient? How's this strike you? http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=700065

[strider_mt2k @ Mar 27th 2007 8:06AM]

Doing this stuff with aircraft is so much cooler.

[Nusm @ Mar 27th 2007 8:41AM]

Actually it's on Engadget not because it's about Nascar, but because it's about AT&T filing a lawsuit. It's a tenuous link at best, but it's about telecommunications.

[Michael @ Mar 27th 2007 9:51AM]

John-

the 4.5 mpg rating is DURING a race. Personally, I think that is pretty amazing for a carburated car, turning a nearly constant 9,000 rpm (generating 850 hp). I guarantee that even the most fuel efficient cars out on the road would put up horrible numbers if they were running at redline constantly.

And, in case you were wondering, F1 cars get about 4mpg.

[gork @ Mar 27th 2007 9:33AM]

Get it right Engadget. NASCAR and sprint won't let RCR change te paint job. RCR is not at fault. Why don't you cover tech and not NASCAR news that's vaguely related to tech. Also, this suit is OLD news.

[Karl @ Mar 27th 2007 9:42AM]

@gork:

This suit is not old news, it was just filed Monday (yesterday). You are probably thinking of the similar issue involving Nextel opposing Robbie Gordon's Motorola sponsorship. That one is really a strange deal, considering that Sprint/Nextel partner with Motorola.

[Mojo_Yugen @ Mar 27th 2007 9:45AM]

I think all professional sports should follow the example of NASCAR and past advertising over every exposed surface on all athletes. It's so classy.

[The Big Fudge @ Mar 27th 2007 10:20AM]

http://www.bustedtees.com/shirt/boringnascar/

[matt @ Mar 27th 2007 10:25AM]

It strikes me as irrelevant. You can't compare absolute miles-per-gallon numbers of race cars (~4.5) and regular cars (~25), given the fact that race cars are moving at much, much faster speeds. Mean speeds for race cars vary by track, of course, but 150 MPH is probably a safe estimate.

[PDubNYC @ Mar 28th 2007 12:16PM]

Do they guzzle gas? YES. End of story. It doesn't matter that they are redlining. They use a *lot* of gas. No one said the engineers were intentional burning fuel at that rate, and certainly they are trying to lower their fuel use, but bottomline, they get about(according to that website above) 4.5mpg, which is gas guzzling for a car. period.

Enjoy your next NASCAR event.

[matt @ Mar 27th 2007 4:41PM]

If the only point was that racecars use a lot of fuel, then you would be correct. However, that was not the point; the real point was to use this fact as support for the implicit conclusion that racing is irresponsible and eco-unfriendly. The phrase "gas-guzzling" is never used in a positive way, and was used by the author of the story to pass judgment on the activity. This is unfair and misleading, because while you are correct in writing that they use a lot of fuel, you are wrong to judge them for that, because the net effect of the existence of NASCAR and the general popularity of other racing events has contributed to a vast *reduction* in the aggregate use of fuel.

To give you some numbers: an environmentalist estimated that NASCAR consumes 2 million gallons of fuel per season (an estimate which has been criticized as being way too high). COmpare this to the 375 million gallons of fuel used by the US *each day*. That puts NASCAR's fuel use at roughly 1/100,000th of the total fuel consumed in the USA. In other words, basically nothing.

For the record, I have never been to a NASCAR event, nor will I ever go. I think racing is boring. But thanks for your judgment. It's really cool to make fun of NASCAR (as evidenced by many of the comments on this story), so you must be really cool.

[Grant G @ Mar 27th 2007 11:58AM]

ahhh, nothing like a bunch of rednecks slowly polluting our atmoshpere worse than hummers. i would give it some credit, but it's a big circle, at least F1 has interesting shaped tracks. I hope nascar is the first thing to get a slap on it's wrist when actual CO2 reduction laws go into effect.

[Nahum @ Mar 27th 2007 4:35PM]

Well, F1 Cars pollute more, AND Nascar has interesting track shapes too (Watkins Glen & Infineon)... And you cant compare Nascar with F1, i mean, last grand prix at Australia, there was 1 pass for the lead, and that was when Kimmi Raikkonen pitted and Hamilton took the lead. In nascar, you have like 35-40 passes for the lead...

[Frankenstein Black @ Mar 27th 2007 1:06PM]

Hey, hey, hey! We are all Americans here (except for our international visitor of course ;^) and its talk like this that keeps us polarized. It’s also what allows the “Grand Viziers” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Vizier) of the world (KR - http://www.bushsbrain.com/book.htm) to fooling folks into thinking that they “care” with slogans as they laugh their azzes off smoking cigars, sipping whine and circle jerking their corporate pals. “Divide and conqueror” is the oldest trick in the book. DON’T FALL FOR IT!!

[Dan S @ Mar 27th 2007 2:52PM]

For all those complaining about Racecar MPG, let me give you a real-world example. I drive a SpecE30 ( http://www.spece30.com ) -- on the track, I get about 8.9 MPG, on the street (it's nominally street legal), the same car (1987 BMW 352iS) gets 35 MPG highway / 26 city.

But then again, I have the added challenge of turning RIGHT and using the horizontal pedal.

[PreGHz @ Mar 27th 2007 3:44PM]

I roll in an e28.

[Grant G @ Mar 27th 2007 5:56PM]

my point wasn't to praise F1, it was that nascar has little entertainment value, and they both pollute horribly. the only nod i gave was that at least the largest F1 race of the year doesn't involve cirlcing a track 500 times.
i think they are both horribly wasteful, and in our current state of burning petroleum fuels as fast as we can, it's probably the worse idea ever.

[Peter @ Mar 28th 2007 9:20AM]

@Matt

"In fact, many innovations that have been developed for high-performance racing cars have made their way into the cars you and I drive, resulting in improvements across the board."

When was the last time you had a car with a carbureted engine? NASCAR is not about new engine technology, it's about taking outdated engine technology and trying to squeeze as much out of it as they can. If you want to see where new engine technology comes from, take a look at Audi's ALMS racing. Technology used in those engines three or four years ago is now standard with almost all of their engines.

[Robbie @ May 23rd 2007 1:03AM]

Also,

RACECAR backwards spells RACECAR

lol

[PJW @ Jun 18th 2007 4:28PM]

Interesting set of posts about NASCAR fuel usage. Perhaps though the discussion is misdirected. The problem is not likley to be the left-hand turn only cars going endlessly around the track. More likely, it is the average 100,000 people driving to see 30 events each year. If they average 3 occupants per vehicle, that's 1,000,000 trips. At an average trip length of 25 miles (probably way too low), that's 25 million miles. I have been to one NASCAR race and my Honda Accord was way out of place in the SUV and pick-up truck covered parking lot so I'll guess average NASCAR fan fuel economy is about 15 MPG. That's about 2 million gallons right there. And that's just for Nextel series races. Add in the Busch and truck series. Plus fuel spent while idling in lines to get in and out.

Good things our armed forces are overseas protecting vital American interests in the Persian Gulf. Some day Iraq too can have NASCAR.