Ganassi

[andyllc]

http://66.223.111.192/Images/2008/IR...hursday153.jpg

Anyone else care to study the pic and share their thoughts on how crazy or overboard in branding this seems?

[TimW]

They likely
1) are using oil that is not made by their oil sponsor (Havoline 1 anyone?)
2) don't have an oil sponsor and don't want what they buy to get inadvertent implied endorsement
3) have developed an oil blend they believe is an advantage.

Adobe InDesign on avery labels is not exactly rocket science nor prohibitively expensive. If your motive is to cover the label, might as well look semi organized about it.

[andyllc]

I figured that if they had an oil sponsor that they obviously weren't using them. The labels are easy to make as you say, Im just surprised that they went that far in making them.

[Charles Warner]

This has been a common ploy for decades in CART, WDC, F1 with everything from oil and brake fluid to power drinks, etc. Anywhere a sponsor's product can be obvious - even to the point of filling the sponsor's container (say a MOTUL brake fluid bottle) with your chosen brake fluid. How is the public to know?

[R. Pare]

Refilling bottles with another brand of oil is very common. At one time (late '80's) we had the entire CART field using NEO oil in the transmissions. Teams would send empty cans, jugs, etc., to NEO and they fill them up and send them back. I actually had a bit of fun getting teams pissed off by slapping NEO stickers over their oil sponsors stickers on their trailers. Thankfully I never got caught!

TWR Jaguar almost lost their Castrol sponsorship when Castrol found out that it was NEO in the cans instead of their product (oils and greases). TWR's rejoinder was that if Castrol wanted favorable publicity from race wins and finishes, they couldn't do it with their current lineup of product!

In the case of Ganassi and that picture : teams also do not give away free publicity to manufacturers that are not sponsors. They make their living off of sponsorship deals, so to publicly display a product that they are actually having to pay to use is verbotten.

[jerry freeman]

This isn't overboard or crazy. Like the post above mine say, they are using something they want instead of what they are getting money from someone else to advertise. This has been going on since there have been sponsors. Instead of just using a bottle with no label
Ganasi is doing a better job of making sure his sponsors get as much publicity as he can give them. That's why he's doing what he's doing and we're here talking about.

[Rick Kirchner]

At Indy, the motor oil is tested on a mass spectrometer by the certification comittee, against a known fingerprint. So, in the crankcase at least, you can't get away with a swap.

There's big money at stake there.

[andyllc]

I wasnt really surprised that it was an unbranded (as in no motor oil branding) bottle of oil but was surprised they went to the effort (even if not hard to do) to make a label for the oil bottle. I would have figured they would just use a blank bottle.