Chip Ganassi’s NASCAR team is teaming with Dale Earnhardt Inc. where Max Siegel has served as president of global operations
since early 2007, and the former Baker & Daniels attorney may be among many laid off in the merger.
A group of motorsports journalists stood open-mouthed along the wall of the Texas Motor Speedway in 1999 as they watched 19-year-old
Sarah Fisher, fresh from the sprint car and dirt track circuits, zip past veteran open-wheel racers Buddy Lazier and Billy
Boat. What happened to Fisher over the next nine years is equally amazing–and mystifying–to those same motorsports experts
who watched her in Texas.
In the end, the catastrophic sponsorship shift from open-wheel racing to NASCAR became too much to ignore, driving the long-divided
sides of Champ Car and the Indy Racing League back into a unified series.
Shows provided by IMS Productions, the video production arm of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, are among the top draws for Joost, a high-profile Internet provider of television content launched last October.
The Indy Racing League will roll out category sponsorship deals with soft drink, energy drink and motor oil brands in the
next two months. IRL officials declined to divulge which companies the deals are with, but said each are multiyear, multimillion-dollar
deals.
