We just completed a big consulting exercise for a major NASCAR sponsor to help them figure out what they should do next season. It was a pretty interesting exercise and by doing so revealed some facts which may be of pretty broad interest to those involved in the sport.

For the first time some of the top teams in NASCAR are offering signficant incentive schemes to reward wins. Instead of paying $700K-800K per race, primary sponsorship for the Top four teams (RCR, Roush, Hendrick, JGR) and around half that for the rest, you can find some packages at a base rate of 50% of the price with the rest payable on a sliding scale, according to performance. Only if you win do you end up paying full whack, which means that since you don’t win every week, this is a way to cover up a pretty signif...