[Don]

Excerpts from an article in the Boston Globe.com, which is too long for inserting the entire article, available by free registration only.


" The familiar sounds that emanate from Fenway Park -- the crack of the bat, the noise of a sellout crowd -- were replaced yesterday by the roar of a 3,400-pound stock car beneath the center-field bleachers.

Painted to resemble a baseball with red stitching and "Red Sox" emblazoned across the hood above a "Lumber Liquidators" sponsor logo, the red and white car slowly made its way into the park. It carefully rolled along the warning track in right field, made a right turn at Pesky's Pole, and came to a stop along the first-base line.

It was an odd but welcomed sight for NASCAR owner Jack Roush and Red Sox owner John W. Henry, the principles of Roush Fenway Racing, as they sat next to each other at the unveiling of the No. 99 Red Sox/Lumber Liquidators Ford Fusion that Nextel Cup star Carl Edwards will drive in Sunday's Lenox Industrial Tools 300 at New Hampshire International Speedway.

By running a car with a special Sox paint scheme and logo, Roush Fenway Racing officials hope this weekend's race will be a showcase event for this fledgling partnership between Roush's five-car Nextel Cup stable and Fenway Sports Group -- a wholly-owned subsidiary of New England Sports Ventures, the ownership group of the Red Sox, Fenway Park, and New England Sports Network -- which acquired a 50 percent stake of Roush's racing empire for $62 million, according to garage sources and racing industry insiders.

"One of the things in waiting four years, our owners were convinced that this wasn't an impulse buy and nobody could accuse us of going 'Ready, fire, aim,' " said FSG president Mike Dee. "We looked at the sport, the fundamentals of the sport, we looked at different ways to get in -- small teams, middle-sized teams, big teams, start-your-own -- we compared the valuations of NASCAR with the valuations in other sports and other alternatives for making an investment and growing some asset value. I think we were able to demonstrate that this was a great opportunity -- n

Appealing numbers
According to a NASCAR survey of Nielsen Media Research, NASCAR last year averaged better network ratings (5.4) than just about every televised sport (college or professional) with the exception of the NFL (10.4). On cable TV, NASCAR Nextel Cup Series was the second-ranked sport behind the NFL with an average weekly rating of 4.5, while the Busch Series ranked third (1.7). NASCAR also delivered a young audience, ranking second behind the NFL and ahead of the NBA, PGA, MLB, and NHL in three key age-group viewer demographics: 18-49 (3.617 million), 18-34 (1.182 million) and 17-under (616,000).

In the Boston market, NASCAR was the third-rated regular-season sport on network TV (3.6) behind the NFL (12.8) and major league baseball (6.0) and second on cable, with its TNT/FX telecasts drawing a 2.8/2.3 rating, trailing only the NFL's 8.4 rating on ESPN.
Locally, NASCAR data showed last year only the Patriots (634,000) and Red Sox (264,000) delivered more average households than the Nextel Cup Series (204,000) per televised event. "