NASCAR – the stock car racing behemoth that stages the Richmond area’s biggest annual sporting event – is getting some work done.

That’s “work,” as in much-needed cosmetic surgery. This past Sunday’s season-opening Daytona 500 was the first Cup Series race for NASCAR’s new advertising agency, Los Angeles-based 72andSunny. 

The agency’s task isn’t an easy one. NASCAR hired it to revamp the sport’s image, focusing on what NASCAR Chief Brand Officer Tim Clark has said will be a return to the NASCAR’s “rebellious, unapologetic roots, putting the sport back at the center of American culture.”

On race day, a commercial debuted with the new slogan, “Hell Yeah.” You ride with a tough-guy type speeding around town in his apparently stick-shift red Mustang, talking tough about NASCAR. In a dream-like moment, the car is dropped into the middle of a race. 

Was it an effective ad? Who better to ask than retired Richmond advertising stalwart John Adams. He was Chairman and CEO of The Martin Agency in the early 2000s when it had the NASCAR account.

Adams, long a fan of the sport and at one time a regular in the stands at Southside Speedway, helped guide Martin’s approach, which drew heavily on NASCAR’s rich history. 72andSunny’s “Hell Yeah” take is very different, but Adams gave it good marks.

“The punchline is a good fit for that particular ad,” he said. “It’s a high-energy ad, and the line underlines that energy.” 

The one drawback: “It’s not long enough.”

The commercial, which can be found in a two-minute trailer version online, was edited to 30 seconds for the race. Too short, Adams said, though it has an arresting look and feel that could be more effective, he said, if it were given more time to appeal to the sport’s emotional impact.

Adams also gave NASCAR credit for making sure its broadcast of the 500 involved fans. Not that featuring fans is new to NASCAR or to any widely televised sport, but Sunday’s telecast took extra time to sample the mood in the infield and the stands.

Bringing fans back in Richmond

Getting NASCAR’s mojo back sounds simple enough. Just reach out to the good ol’ boys and girls who already love racing, including the tens of thousands of fans who will show up when NASCAR visits Richmond Raceway for its 2026 Cup race on Aug. 15.

That’s a Saturday night race, 400 laps on the ¾-mile oval, prime time on the USA Network. And though NASCAR is coy about the seating capacities and crowd sizes at some of its tracks, 40,000 is a reasonable estimate for the 2025 sellout crowd, and a reasonable prediction for attendance this summer.

Although 40K is nowhere near the twice-a-year 112,000-fan sellouts that once inundated the track on the city’s Northside, a crowd that size would once again be the biggest paid admission for the year’s sporting events in the area.

No other area sports venue can accommodate a crowd of that size. Richmond’s soon-to-open baseball stadium, CarMax Park, will be second-largest, holding about 10,000 fans.

Richmond Raceway President Lori Collier Waran said that rather than changing the brand, "we are unleashing it.  That Americana heritage coupled with raw, bombastic emotion has fueled our past and will continue to fuel our future.  We saw that energy firsthand at the sold-out Richmond NASCAR Cup race this past summer and fully expect to see it again with the projected sellout this coming August 15th." 

NASCAR’s recent stumbles

What makes things so tough for 72andSunny – an international agency with a roster of major clients – is NASCAR’s recent appearance as a stumbling, bumbling organization, disappointing its fans and hurting itself with rules and procedures that distract from the basic on-track product: automobile racing.

To wit, here’s some of what NASCAR has handed to the new steward of its image.

1 – The organization recently settled an anti-monopoly lawsuit brought by two multi-car teams. Two of the owners of one of those teams are superstar driver (and Chesterfield County’s own) Denny Hamlin and basketball legend Michael Jordan. In the end, NASCAR gave much of what the teams wanted. Perhaps more importantly, the court ordered NASCAR to reveal text messages. In one text, NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps called iconic car owner Richard Childress a "stupid redneck."  Phelps is no longer with NASCAR.

2 – The sport’s long-criticized playoff format looked absurdly arbitrary in the 2025 finale. NASCAR has revamped the format.

3 – NASCAR’s season runs February to November – 26 regular-season events, 10 playoff races, an all-star race and a pre-season exhibition event. The pre-season race, held in Winston-Salem, was twice postponed for snow and brutal temperatures. The race, run in damp conditions that made passing nearly impossible, was plagued by many caution flags and drew what looked like a handful of diehard fans, fans scattered in 17,000-capacity Bowman Gray Stadium.

4 – For icing on that cake, in the victory celebration, winner Ryan Preece detonated a few uncensored F-bombs.

5 – Finally, the Daytona 500 itself was a dud in spite of (or maybe because of) the draft that kept the cars in a tight pack. For a long stretch late in the race, the whole field was saving fuel, drivers feathering the throttle in a three-wide parade. Only in the final few laps did drivers dare to make a few moves, and those moves led to the obligatory late crashes – crashes that have become so predictable that they render the rest of a race irrelevant. One of Jordan’s drivers won, putting an interesting bow on the event for NASCAR.

Into this mess waltzes 72andSunny and its new “Hell Yeah” tagline. You might have expected it to be, “What the hell?”

NASCAR was an interesting client when The Martin Agency had the account, Adams said, willing to embrace the agency’s creative approach. 

In retrospect, however, he wished NASCAR’s leaders had been less frugal, more willing to push the message by spending more money to further spread the agency’s product.

“That’s what every agency wants,” he said, smiling.

Listen up, NASCAR. Maybe that’s advice you should take to heart. It comes from a guy who has race-fan roots of his own from Southside Speedway’s glory days.

Think about it. John Adams was boss of the Richmond agency that for decades has been at the highest level of the ad industry. The Martin Agency gave us the Geico Gecko, helped Mercedes Benz hone its reputation as one of the world’s great carmakers, and popularized UPS by asking, “What can Brown do for you?” Oh, by the way, the agency’s UPS work included a NASCAR sponsorship campaign in which fans urged race driver Dale Jarrett to “Race the truck!”

NASCAR, you’re right, your brand needs some work. Don’t shortchange the outfit you hired to get the job done.