Way back in the summer of 1990, Tom Roberts, a legendary racing publicist, asked if I wanted to meet Rusty Wallace at a Philadelphia restaurant for an interview over lunch and a beer. Wallace ordered a Miller Genuine Draft, a smart move because it was his main sponsor.
I asked Wallace how he handled the delicate issue of drinking and driving, as a race-car driver who was the public face of a big brewery. Enjoying a beer, or several, was certainly part of watching a NASCAR race from the stands or on TV, he acknowledged, but definitely not before or while operating a motor vehicle.
“I don't go out there and say, 'OK, drink a beer, drive your ass off, and hit a brick wall at 200 miles an hour,'” Wallace said.
I was thinking about Rusty's memorable quote when I noticed that NASCAR has nearly 40 official sponsors, from automobile finish supply to non-alcoholic beverage to tires to power tools to chocolate to motor oil — but, as of yet, no official beer for 2018.
MillerCoors announced in December that, after 10 years, Coors Light would not continue as NASCAR’s official beer. Budweiser had been NASCAR’s official beer from 1999 to 2007, and Busch, another Anheuser-Busch brand, sponsored the second-tier series from 1984 to 2007.
The 2018 Monster Energy Cup season opens with the Daytona 500 on Feb. 18, with a shorter non-points race, the invitation-only Advance Auto Parts Clash, set for Sunday. Between 1979 and 2012, the race was known as the Busch Clash, or the Bud or Budweiser Shootout.
Wallace drove the Miller Genuine Draft Pontiac in all 29 Winston Cup races in 1990 for Roger Penske. The driver now in Penske’s No. 2 car, Brad Keselowski, will appear in just 11 races this year with Miller Lite as his main sponsor, down from 24 a year ago.
Kevin Harvick plans to drive 16 races with Busch beer as a main sponsor, but neither Keselowski nor Harvick plans to drive cars with beer logos splashed on the hoods at the Daytona 500. Any stock car with just one main sponsor is a rarity now, but how times have changed.
As NASCAR sponsorships began to reflect fans' buying habits at the supermarket, breweries became prominent sponsors of top cars, although Richard Petty famously said he’d never carry an alcohol logo on his No. 43 car — and has kept his promise.
When asked once what would happen if a beer sponsored his car, Petty quipped, "My mother would come back and haunt us home.”
Until 1972, many cars were sponsored by local garages and makers of car parts. Then Carling, the Canadian firm with a brewery in Atlanta, stepped in to sponsor rookie driver Larry Smith, making him and the car the centers of a marketing campaign for its Black Label brand.
Smith was killed a year later in a crash at Talladega, so Carling moved on to sponsor the Canadian rookie Earl Ross in 1974 and then Junior Johnson’s two-car team of Ross and Cale Yarborough, who finished second in the driver standings.
Miller, Budweiser and Coors wanted in. Yarborough later drove a Busch-sponsored car for Johnson, with Darrell Waltrip and Neil Bonnett later driving a red Budweiser car. The Bud car was made even more famous in the 2000s by the driver Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Bobby Allison’s car was painted gold, like a bottle of Miller High Life. Bill Elliott won his only Cup championship in a Coors car. Old Milwaukee, then brewed by Stroh’s, sponsored Tim Richmond’s car for three years. Mark Martin drove a Stroh’s Light car for Jack Roush. Other beer sponsors came and went.
But the beer scene changed, with dozens and dozens of smaller craft brewers proliferating. Breweries, like other corporations, had more places to market their products. They were not running away from NASCAR, only spending their money differently. Many technology companies that did not exist 40 years ago (pre-Internet) have signed on with NASCAR as a solid investment.
NASCAR was reported to have tried valiantly to keep Coors Light, but an agreement could not be reached, and there is no official beer as of now.
Oh, but wait: How about Fat Tire Belgian Style Ale?
