[vincesanity82]

Adrian Fernandez, 45, is a veteran driver who has been tapped the last three years to drive in NASCAR's race in Mexico City. He's one of six Latin American drivers who have been recruited for the Nationwide race there. That's the least number of Latin Americans in the race since it started. Fernandez said one reason for the lack of Latin drivers is the challenge in finding sponsorship. But he's lucky, he's got Lowes - a Hendrick sponsor - which is planning on opening stores in Mexico in 2009. -- NY Daily News



Adrian Fernandez readies for two-country race odyssey

[NASCAR Gnome]

Juan Pablo Montoya's a Latin driver so what's Fernandez's beef?

Lack of sponsorship? C'mon now...

Aside from being popular in Mexico, the sad truth is, drivers like Fernandez are unknowns and the sadder truth is, if someone like Jacques Villeneuve could not get sponsorship, how will someone as obscure as Fernandez succeed?!?

Win some big races like the Indy 500 and a few F1 races and then you can moan and groan about not being in the show... otherwise... shhhh...

[Fireball]

Adrian may be right. This is a "one race event" for Mexico. To get drivers to commit for a one race situation there's no real chance they will be competitive because of the lack of seat time in these cars. Mexico has a lot of good drivers in all sorts of equipment - just not NASCAR Nationwide cars. Below is a list of Latin drivers entered in the race. Notice their sponsors. All but Frenandez has Mexican operations. Trying to get a sponsor for a one time event has got to be hard.

• 5 Adrian Fernandez Mexico City, Mexico Chevrolet Lowe's Rick Hendrick
• 22 Ruben Pardo Mexico City, Mexico Dodge Fitz Motorsports Armando Fitz
• 32 Michel Jourdain Jr .Mexico City, Mexico Toyota Visit Durango / Visit Mexico Todd Braun
• 184 Jose Luis Ramirez Mexico City, Mexico Dodge TW Motorsports Troy Williams
• 186 Antonio Perez Zapopan, Mexico Dodge Chivas Racing / Telmex Troy Williams
• 198 Alex Garcia Caracas, Venezuela Chevrolet Dixien / OmniSource Corp. Alex Garcia

[WestCoast]

I would think that "if" there were full time Mexican Drivers than Mexican Advertisers would follow. The Spanish population is very prevalent in the Southern US.
Looking back at the old CART series, I believe there were several cars that had Full time sponsorship: Herdez, Tecate, and others I can't remember...

[BiscuitMan]

Originally Posted by WestCoast

I would think that "if" there were full time Mexican Drivers than Mexican Advertisers would follow. The Spanish population is very prevalent in the Southern US.
Looking back at the old CART series, I believe there were several cars that had Full time sponsorship: Herdez, Tecate, and others I can't remember...

WestCoast, I think the issue for sponsors may be the cost related to the car. Nationwide series does not run on road courses that often, (Just the Canadian track and Watkins Glen). Audiences for each track are very different (Mexico, US and Canada). Road courses require a different set up for the car because they turn left and right. Also, the pit wall is on the right side of the car, opposite from the normal NASCAR tracks. That means the gas inlet needs to be on the right. So, this tends to be a “special built” car just for the Mexico City, Watkins Glen and the Gilles Villeneuve courses.

Teams usually build two cars to take to the track, in the event they have problems in practice and/or qualifying. This also ups the cost. Some teams elect not to “sticker” the backup car preventing them from removing the old sponsor’s stuff from one race to another. Its not easy for this “also ran” teams to prepare for these type races. The HMS, RCR, Roush, and Gibbs teams should not have problems with already existing sponsors.

[WestCoast]

Your quit right, but I was thinking of Mexican Drivers and Sponsors making inroads in Nascar as a whole, not just on limited 1 or 3 race outings.
I think they tried with Michel Jourdain Jr a year or two ago, but it fell apart.
Also Nascar was pushing for "diversity" at one time or another, but I guess they just decided to have things run their own course, and not force the issues.

[kcoruol]

I was thinking the same for Asian and African American and female and . . . . . drivers

[BiscuitMan]

Maybe NASCAR should allocate so many starting positions in each race for Latin drivers, Chinese drivers, Mid-East drivers etc.

Then they could change their name to IASCAR for "International Association for Spec. Car Automobile Racing".