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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – As Derrike Cope walked into Daytona International Speedway this week, he was greeted a little differently than some others.

After all, there aren’t a lot of Daytona 500 winners in the field for Saturday’s NASCAR Busch Series race at the famed 2.5-mile speedway; for that matter, there aren’t that many in the field for Sunday’s Daytona 500.

Success on the track coupled with Cope’s popularity among fans nationwide – his pleasing demeanor and outgoing personality notched him a few years as a national television analyst in addition to his driving career – makes him one of the top untapped sources in the NASCAR garage.

Untapped, that is, as a marketing source.

“Sponsorship is the lifeblood of the racing business, plain and simple,” said Cope, a Spanaway, Wash., native.

“A driver or a team who remembers that is one that is going to generally be successful. Let’s face it. As expensive as this sport is, you need the financial backing to be competitive. To get the financial backing, you have to have something pretty strong to give a corporate sponsor, a way for them to make money from that association,” Cope said.

“I think a lot of teams and drivers have forgotten that.”

That line of thinking – putting the sponsor first – has worked well for Cope throughout his career, and is working in his NASCAR Busch Series relationship with owner Jay Robinson, a veteran two-car owner based just outside of Charlotte, N.C., in Indian Trail.

“I’ve never had a sponsor or talked to a sponsor who had worked with Derrike before who wasn’t absolutely delighted with him,” said Robinson, who counts multi-corporate Wythe Industries among his sponsors.

“Derrike gets it. I’m not sure a lot of drivers coming into the sport these days do, but Derrike gets it. These corporations are looking for a way to make their marketing dollars work – and race teams have to help them find that,” Robinson continued. “If you do, then you have a great relationship for a long time. If you don’t, you are going to lose them.”

Granted, Robinson said, sometimes the marketing focus changes for a motorsports sponsor, or a new person comes into the company who feels another sport is more advantageous.

“You can’t always make it work but if you go into a corporate relationship thinking the right way, you can usually make it work,” Cope said. “People like myself and Jay Robinson, we put our sponsorship proposals together thinking, ‘How can sponsorship help this company move product?’ Too many teams go into these days thinking, ‘I need X amount of dollars to run. How can I talk them into paying it?’

“The result of the latter a lot of times is a company might come in and then realize it’s not getting a return on its investment,” Cope added. “So they turn around and walk back out, soured on the sport and soured on what we all have to offer. If they are moving product, if they are meeting goals and motorsports sponsorship is helping and doing its part, then you have a great deal going.

“As race teams, as drivers, we owe that to the sponsors. Just like we owe something to the fans, the ones who buy tickets and sit in the grandstands, we owe it to the sponsors to help them in any way we can,” he said.

Robinson is considered one of the most savvy business thinkers among car owners in NASCAR. Cope is considered one of the stronger business minds among those who wheel stock cars.

“Sponsorship is the base for NASCAR racing at the higher levels, and Jay not only realizes that but he uses that in his business model,” Cope said. “There have been a lot of owners come through this sport, spend a ton of money and have nothing to show for it at the end. They come in, spend what they have and then they are gone, most of the time never to be heard from again.

“You have to have a solid foundation, and Jay has done that with his race teams,” Cope continued. “We’re moving forward and using the resources we have pretty wisely. Our hopes are that we can keep building, continue moving forward and get even more competitive.

“The thing about Jay is he can take one dollar and make it look like he has two. A sponsor spends a dollar with Jay and get three dollars in return,” Cope said. “We’re not the richest team out here by far, but you look around at what we have been able to do and what we have been able to accomplish, and you would think we’re doing pretty well.

“With the financial backing of some of the top teams out here, I really believe Jay would have his teams right at the top of the charts every week.”

Cope, a native of Spanaway, Wash., is a former winner of the Daytona 500 and a two-time NASCAR Nextel Cup race winner. A top athlete whose professional baseball career was cut short by a knee injury in college, Cope has become one of the top athletes in NASCAR racing, and has become one of the top public spokesmen for the sport.

Jay Robinson Racing, in its fourth season of operation, is one of the fastest-growing teams in NASCAR. Robinson, a Charlotte, N.C., native who is a successful businessman, founded the team as a high-value endeavor that offers high-end equipment and efforts, while proving to be one of the most cost-efficient teams in the sport. Robinson fields two sponsored cars fulltime on the Busch Series.

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