Much horsepower. Such speed. Wow.
Nascar teams are famously reliant on sponsors, but while big-name drivers are well-cared-for, not everyone has a reliable backer. Josh Wise is one such driver; he’s good enough to drive in the Sprint Cup but not enough of a contender to attract a solid sponsor. So when the folks at r/dogecoin discovered that his number 98 car was without a sponsor, they went to work.
“Imagine a Doge,” the original Reddit post exhorted readers. “A Doge that is going 200 MPH into victory lane. Anyone can win Dega. Underfunded or not, for example last year’s race where David Regan and the underfunded team brought home the win. Now imagine on TV. DOGE DOGE DOGE DOGE DOGE every time he talks about his car. ‘This Doge Ford Fusion is fast today.’ Every time they talk about the car.”
“Dega” refers to Talladega, a tri-oval super-speedway where drivers stand on it and don’t let off until the checkered flag flies. It is wickedly fast, and as the poster noted, anyone can win, which is why it’s the race the Dogecoin community targeted.
Sponsoring a Nascar Sprint Cup car isn’t a cheap proposition – it costs about $55,000 for a full-body wrap – and it took Reddit all of about a week to get the cash together. r/Nascar gave it a big push, as did Fox Sports, which publicized the effort shortly after it began. Wise himself has been tweeting about it, naturally, and is also slated to do an AMA at 9 pm EDT on March 26.
The @dogecoin community is rallying to help fund @Josh_Wise and the No. 98 team » http://t.co/YdkMGmmQGM #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/K8mEcebTSe— FOX SPORTS: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) March 19, 2014
With the money raised, organizer Kevin Dusenberry said the Dogecoin car will run in the Aaron’s 499 on May 4 at Talladega. All that’s left at this point is to put together a design competition in order to come up with the final look for the car; a couple of ideas have already been floated on Reddit, and while they look suitably silly – I especially like the “wow such racecar” on the back of the Chevy – it’s also going to attract an awful lot of attention, which is the whole point of a sponsorship in the first place.
“If our goal is to get as many people involved with Dogecoin as possible, to spread the net wide and be the digital currency that lowers the entry ramp for anyone to get involved, then this is exactly proof of concept. Heck, this is where we rule. And I can pretty much guarantee you Bitcoin and Litecoin aren’t chasing this train. They’re out there chasing ‘serious business’,” Redditor “GoodShibe” wrote. “Bitcoin is big largely because it was first – its got the most name recognition… amongst people who know about it. This is a chance for Dogecoin to not only be ‘the first’, it’s a chance to connect with a whole swath of people in an arena that matters to them, supporting a driver and team who, frankly, seem like some really good people.”
With funding complete (and still growing at Doge4Nascar.org) , Reddit is now working to get an official scale model of the Dogecoin car licensed and produced, with a percentage of sales earmarked for charity.
