HOT DAMN! UPS Going Top Fuel Racing

[wkmac]

It's about freakin' time!

Best part is Bob's race shop is literally right up the street from our center. I'm pumped for both Bob and UPS.

I love the smell of nitro in the morning. Smells like VICTORY!


Current qualifying at Pomona and the WinterNationals

Going from an off the trailer 6.17 to a 2nd round 4.73 is a good step and looks like Bob's gettin' her dialed in. He needs a solid 4.50's run but the weather concerns me. Low 80's and strong winds may hurt the effort but Jim Dupuy is a good crew chief who can find the horsepower to plant the hides and rotate the earth.

If you've never been to a drag race and experienced 2 fuel cars with a combined 14,000 plus horsepower going down the track you should do so. Wear very good hearing protection and by all means leave your car alarm in the parking lot off. I've seen these ground pounders set off alarms of cars over a 1/4 of a mile away! I might have to burn an option day in early May to go watch Friday night qualifying when Bob brings her home.

ESPN and ESPN2 is exclusive home of NHRA drag racing.

 

[30andout]

Thanks wkmac I liked that pic better than the truck w/flames.

 

[worldwide]

While it's great that UPS is sponsorig something other than NASCAR, as an international company, shouldn't we be involved with something with international appeal? Something like world cup soccer, for example? It is hugely popular throughout the world. Does anyone outside the US care about NASCAR or the NHRA? Not trying to put thoses organizations down as I understand the affiliation brings in the bundles and the fans in the US, but where is our sponsorship prescence outisde the US? The winter olympics in China? A porsche in Europe?

There are only a few sporting events in the world that have global appeal. The FIFA World Cup is one of the biggest of them and the fascination and passion of the fans for the event is universal. 28.8 billion viewers watched the 2002 FIFA World Cup on TV in over 200 countries; the final game was transmitted by television to 1.5 billion viewers. The FIFA World Cup is the biggest single sport event in the world.

Some of the sponsors of the 2006 FIFA World Cup include: adidas, avaya, budweiser, coca-cola, fujifilm, gillette, hyundai-motor, mastercard, mcdonalds, philips, toshiba, and yahoo. Surely UPS fits in with these world-class companies.

 

[wkmac]

I think one would say UPS tried a one shot fits all approach to global advertising with the Olympics and I'd assume it didn't work since we are no longer sponsors. I see UPS like many companies spreading the ad dollars and target advertising to specific markets. My guess would be if you went to Asia or Europe or where ever the UPS ads would differ. Although I like soccer and played it in high school, like hockey it's just not fun to watch on TV and the US market has little interest in the sport. Now Hockey live and in person? Oh yeah baby!

Before UPS got into NASCAR they sponsored a race car in Europe but what the details are to that I don't know. FedEx in the late 80's and early 90's sponsored Sammy Swindell with the Outlaw sprint cars and have now followed UPS into the roundy/round world. As for Drag racing beyond America? Go to Europe or down under to Australia and New Zealand. All 3 areas have a rather active Drag racing world.

If for some reason you have no liking for motorsports then sit back and take a deep breath. I'd doubt very serious that UPS is in motorsports for the longhaul. My guess is as soon as demographics point elsewhere so will their ad dollars follow as any smart business would do IMO. It's cyclical and motorsports happens to be the hot ticket right now especially here in the US where it just so happens that the US ad folks have decided to invest their slice of the pie.

Just a side not that might bare watching. Bruton Smith and Speedway Motorsports either have or are about to make a proposal to Wally Parks and the NHRA board to purchase the NHRA and move it into the Speedway Motorsports Stable along with Bristol, Charlotte, Atlanta, Vegas, etc.

 

[rushfan]

AWESOME! Now UPS needs to sponsor an F1 team. Many other countries are into F1, such as Brazil, Italia, and others.

Now we need to get John Force to drop Castrol, and switch to UPS so we can have (finally) a winning race team.

 

[wkmac]

Now we need to get John Force to drop Castrol, and switch to UPS so we can have (finally) a winning race team.

Won't ever happen!

Vandergriff and crew missed the field by 2/1000th of a second. The good news it on each run the times improved so that in the 3rd qualifying round they nailed a 4.659 at 296 mph but in the 4th round they fell off just a tick with a 4.66 run but the mph jumped to a 319. Looking at the 3rd round mph number, looks like it either mixed up some cylinders or something and it click off early. Had he made the full pass I think he'd have at least bumped Bruce Litton from the field and made the show.

Unless Bob was testing under cover at Atlanta Dragway or made the pull to south Florida, I saw him listed nowhere for any pre-season testing so I'm going to assume those 4 runs over the last 2 days were the first runs for the car and not bad considering they may have started behind the 8-ball. The last 2 runs of both mid 4.6's were good in that this gave them a good baseline and I'd imagine they'll make more runs at Pomona on Monday.

The concern? NHRA and Goodyear are mandating a new tire for the nitro classes beginning at the GatorNationals. Like Team Kalitta, if I were Team UPS I'd go ahead and run the tire now as this option is open. I'd bet Bob and Jim will have the UPS car better dialed in at Firebird in 2 weeks.

 

[DS]

I liked this pic...from your original url

 

[ImpactedTSG]

Let's sponser another worthless racing loser like Jarret and waste even more money. Now we know what they are doing with the money they are saving by closing all the helpdesks.

 

[DS]

hey impacted...You sound very bitter albeit rightfully so.
But there are lots of other upsers that are not losing thier jobs.
Its not thier fault that ups is doing this.If you want to vent about it
please, post it in the appropriate thread.

 

[ImpactedTSG]

hey impacted...You sound very bitter albeit rightfully so.
But there are lots of other upsers that are not losing thier jobs.
Its not thier fault that ups is doing this.If you want to vent about it
please, post it in the appropriate thread.

If people have the right to post support for the sponsorship, why am I not allowed to disagree with it? Last time I checked, this was a discussion board where people expressed their opinions. Did I miss something in the rules that says only post if you agree with the thread topic?

 

[DS]

Ok TSG you`re right,it just seemed that the only reason you said anything was because of the layoffs.Post away,I just misread your comment as bitterness.I apologize for the oversight.

 

[ImpactedTSG]

Ok TSG you`re right,it just seemed that the only reason you said anything was because of the layoffs.Post away,I just misread your comment as bitterness.I apologize for the oversight.

My point is just that it seems to be a waste of money. If the company needs to save money by cutting jobs, then don't sponser another race team. That is contradictory to me.

 

[trickpony1]

Along the same line........the company paid Jarrett a purported $64 million dollars (over four years) to drive around in circles, smile and look good on the front of the soda pop machine. I wonder how much the company is pissing away on the drag race guy.

 

[pe_gal]

For those of you that are NHRA fans... Naylor Racing owner Max Naylor was a long time UPS manager in PA - he just quit 2 weeks ago when he got a full sponsorship from Jagermeister. He tried to get UPS sponsorship with no luck.

 

[wkmac]

Along the same line........the company paid Jarrett a purported $64 million dollars (over four years) to drive around in circles, smile and look good on the front of the soda pop machine. I wonder how much the company is pissing away on the drag race guy.

Trick,
The TF sponsorship is likely only costing a couple of mil a year at the most. NHRA only has about 20 races a year verses 38 plus for NASCAR and unless something bad happens, body damage is very rare although severe and costly engine failures are common. The other large cost of a fuel car is the 1/4 mile run itself. The car burns 15 to 20 gallons of nitromethane per run and with just general between round maintenance the average cost of a fuel car is between $3000 and $5000 per run. Each national event will have 4 qualifying runs although Indy has 5 and then if you make eliminations and go to the finals you'll make 4 runs on Sunday. So say the average run is $4000 then if you go all the way, a weekend of just running the car will cost you $32,000 plus in fuel and general maintenance costs. Bomb a motor or what they call "winder (that's window for normal folk) a block? $75k to $100,000! Nope, it's not cheap but it's not near the cost of running NASCAR either.

Impacted,
When I first saw all the posts about the TSG situtation I thought about our local guys because I've known them for years. I asked them about their situation and in our district everything is AOK and there will be no layoffs of TSG folks. Being very surprised I asked why not. My TSG guys told me for all these years whenever we were called by someone, their immediate boss (TSG division man.)had a standing policy that they could not respond unless the HelpDesk was called first and a log generated. Of course everyone in the building moaned and whined and complained but now it turns out that manager that we all use to @%#$^%&*^ about was dead on right and when it came time to cut our district was able to fully justify the need for TSG techs and therefore none of them are going anywhere.

I know what you guys are getting is likely a raw deal and the worse part is you'll get laid off and not to far down the road reality will set in and the need will be obvious. However the damage is done. UPSers who know the deal are gone and now many areas will have to start over from scratch and deal with that until time and experience get them up to speed.

The money being spent on NASCAR and now NHRA whether you like it or not can be shown to be cost effective in company and product exposure. In other words, the money can be justified. This may seem like a harsh question and I'll tell you upfront I think the company is making a terrible mistake of eliminating tech jobs if what I'm hearing is true but did you forego the helpdesk and generating a log and instead being the goodguy trying to expedite and help get the job done quicker in the end just cut your own throat without realizing it?

What happened to TSG should be a hard lesson to everyone. This ain't Jim Casey's UPS anymore I'm sad to say!

 

[ImpactedTSG]

This may seem like a harsh question and I'll tell you upfront I think the company is making a terrible mistake of eliminating tech jobs if what I'm hearing is true but did you forego the helpdesk and generating a log and instead being the goodguy trying to expedite and help get the job done quicker in the end just cut your own throat without realizing it?

Not a harsh question at all. We've never had the support of management with people just grabbing us and asking us to do tech work. They would call the manager or sup and request a tech. We would be told to go take care of the issue. Sure we complained about the practice (to no avail). But in the end we had to follow the orders given by our management team. So yes we cut our own throat, but we knew we were doing it and still did it anyway.

 

[rushfan]

At least with Jagermeister you can get bombed when you loose.

 

[lanham_20716]

UPS 6th Annual Car, Truck and Motorcycle Show

On October 14, 2006 at the Burtonsville location located at 14841 Sweitzer Lane, Laurel Maryland 20707. This is the biggest single day event in the state of Maryland with over 1400 vehicles registered. Please contact Jim Lanham at: [email protected] for event info and flyer. With 3 live bands, magician Jack Julius, Burn-Out Contest, Dyno competition, plenty of food, fun for the entire family and awards. Pass this on to our UPS brothers and sisters, this is the show of the year.

 

[wily_old_vet]

Hey Jim-Good to see you're still putting on the show. Hope it's a great success. Just out of curiosity where is the burnout contest going to be? The cops going to let you shut down Sweitzer.

 

[8Years2Go]

Its a shame UPS stayed with Jarrett! Yes he's a good spokesman, but I don't see that team doing much for a couple of years. I've always been a Jarrett fan, but lets admit it, he's a has been. And granted "its better to be a has been then a never was" (Quoted by Darrell Waltrip) but your past doesn't win races. And RYR isn't a much better choice. They should of persuded other avenues, like Kasey Kahne and Greg Biffle. Hope they have good luck in Top Fuel!