New Sponsorship Commitments Highlight Season of Growth for GRAND-AM

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla., May 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Motorsports analysts typically look at a few different areas when measuring the growth or health of a sanctioning body, such as attendance, television ratings and viewership, car count and sponsorship support.

By all measures, GRAND-AM Road Racing is having an outstanding season, underscored by a series of recent sponsorship announcements that reflect the sport's overall strength.

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Race attendance has been up at virtually every GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series presented by Crown Royal Cask No. 16 and GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge race this year, with record crowds reported for each of the last two stops at Barber Motorsports Park and Virginia International Raceway.

Television numbers continue to improve for GRAND-AM on its exclusive North American television home, SPEED, which kicks off a run of telecasts on six consecutive weekends with Monday's Rolex Series Memorial Day Classic at Lime Rock Park. Expanding the broadcast reach even further is a new relationship with Motor Racing Network (MRN), which offers live radio broadcasts of every Rolex Series race to all of its affiliates and through www.motorracingnetwork.com, as well as a combination of live and tape-delayed broadcasts on Sirius NASCAR Radio Channel 128.

In terms of car count, the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge has had an eye-popping average of more than 65 cars per race through its four events this year, while the Rolex Series is averaging nearly 35 entries through its first four races.

Those positive trends have translated to new sponsorship commitments for GRAND-AM and its teams. GRAND-AM continues to enjoy outstanding support from long-time partners such as Rolex, Crown Royal Cask No. 16 and SunTrust, among many others, and this season, several more high-profile partners have been welcomed.

Late last year, global tire manufacturing giant Continental Tire signed on as the title sponsor of the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge. In January, GRAND-AM and Continental announced an expansion of their partnership beginning in 2011 in which Continental Tire will also become the Rolex Series' official tire.

GRAND-AM has also signed several of the world's leading auto manufacturers – such as Ford, Mazda, Porsche, BMW and MINI – to promotional partnership deals, while also beefing up  contingency programs and bringing new contingency sponsors onboard for both series.

One of GRAND-AM's newest marketing alliances, with Corsa Car Care, came about through Corsa's existing relationship with the Starworks Motorsports team in the Rolex Series. Based in Arcadia, Calif., Corsa Car Care is a division of Miracle Sealants Company and manufactures professional grade automotive detailing products.

Corsa will begin running advertisements on MRN broadcasts beginning with Monday's race at Lime Rock. Corsa is also advertising on GRAND-AM.com and GRAND-AM newsletters and spotters' guides, and is offering product goodie bags as giveaways in car corrals at the Lime Rock, Watkins Glen, Mid-Ohio and New Jersey Motorsports Park GRAND-AM events.

Corsa is one of several companies that are working with GRAND-AM teams. Another one is CAP & Associates, which was announced earlier this week as a sponsor of the No. 6 Michael Shank Racing Ford Riley Daytona Prototype in the next two Rolex Series races at Lime Rock and Watkins Glen. The Columbus, Ohio-based CAP & Associates is a designer and manufacturer of fixtures and displays.

"To get the opportunity to be involved with the team like this is something we are very excited about," said Jason Prosnik of CAP & Associates. "We are proud of the work we did in helping Mike (Shank) make his race shop such a memorable place to visit, and it was a great way for us to show our other customers what kind of projects we are capable of delivering.

"With the group he has put together through the years, Mike's team is the kind of organization that we are very proud to be involved with. Hopefully, our involvement will help everyone enjoy some success on the track as well as off of it."

It's expected that Michael Shank Racing will be announcing another new partner in the near future.

Another Daytona Prototype team welcoming a new partner is Canadian-based AIM Autosport, with Pacific Mobile joining its No. 61 Ford Riley effort. Toronto-based Pacific Mobile manufactures affordable and user-friendly mobile accessories, and actively promotes its involvement in the Rolex Series on its website, www.gopacificmobile.com.

One of the leading teams in the Rolex Series GT class, Stevenson Motorsports, also has a new partner in Intersil Corporation of Milpitas, Calif. Intersil is a global technology leader specializing in the design and manufacture of high performance analog semiconductors. Intersil joined existing Stevenson partner VinSolutions, an automotive industry-leading developer of Internet-based customer relations management (CRM) and Internet lead management (ILM) software with offices in Kansas and Minnesota.

All of these team sponsors, and many others, look to GRAND-AM to grow their businesses. These companies utilize their involvement in GRAND-AM to entertain customers and clients, as well as to expose their products and services to a larger audience.

"Everybody involved in GRAND-AM – whether it's our teams, drivers or the sanctioning body itself – has worked diligently to identify and bring in new partners," said GRAND-AM Vice President of Marketing and Communications Kevin Hindson.

"Of course, the only way to get new sponsors and partners to come onboard is to offer them outstanding value for their investment, which is what we've been doing. We're able to offer our partners an opportunity to get involved in a form of motorsports that is clearly growing. We still have a lot of work to do, but we are definitely encouraged on many different levels."

The next event for the GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series will be the Memorial Day Classic on May 31 at Lime Rock Park (SPEED live, 2 p.m. ET) in Lakeville, Conn. Tickets are available now at www.limerock.com. A live race broadcast is also available on select MRN affiliates beginning at 1:45 p.m. ET and delayed broadcast on Sirius NASCAR Radio Channel 128.

About GRAND-AM

GRAND-AM Road Racing, which operates and sanctions the Rolex Sports Car Series and the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge, is the foremost sanctioning body of sports car racing in North America. The 12-race Rolex Series 2010 schedule and the 10-race Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge 2010 calendar deliver professional sports car racing to key markets throughout North America with televised distribution in the U.S. and Canada on SPEED and globally through ESPN International.  In addition, MRN radio will broadcast nationally through their affiliates and Sirius NASCAR Radio XM - 128. GRAND-AM Road Racing showcases emerging and legendary drivers from around the globe and thoroughbred racing machines from the industry's leading constructors and the world's top automobile manufacturers. Learn more about GRAND-AM at www.GRAND-AM.com.

SOURCE GRAND-AM Road Racing