BUSCH: Blaise Alexander To Drive SABCO Car
LAS VEGAS (Jan. 7, 2000) Blaise Alexander will drive Team SABCO's No. 81 TRACFONE/World Championship Wrestling (WCW) Chevrolets for the full NASCAR 2000 NASCAR Busch Series Grand National Division season, team officials announced Friday at the ...
LAS VEGAS (Jan. 7, 2000) Blaise Alexander will drive Team SABCO's No. 81 TRACFONE/World Championship Wrestling (WCW) Chevrolets for the full NASCAR 2000 NASCAR Busch Series Grand National Division season, team officials announced Friday at the International Consumer Electronics Show here.
Alexander will team with former USAC standout Dave Steele of Tampa, Fla., who will drive SABCO's No. 82 Channellock Chevrolets. In addition, SABCO's NASCAR Winston Cup drivers Kenny Irwin and Sterling Marlin will drive limited programs in the NBS, while Marlin's teenage son Steadman will also make his NBS debut in a SABCO car at Nashville Speedway USA this spring.
"This is an opportunity I've been working towards for a long time," said Alexander, who won two ARCA Bondo/Mar-Hyde Series races in a limited scheduled in that division in 1999. "I was lucky enough to have a SABCO motor in my car at Pocono last year -- we sat on the pole and won the race. That's exactly the kind of success we're looking to have in the Busch Series next year."
Topp Telecom's TRACFONE, which attempted a limited schedule of races with Team SABCO in 1999, is the nationwide leader in prepaid cellular service while the WCW, which has also dabbled in NASCAR racing in the past, has more than 33 million viewers who tune into programming each week in more than 20 million homes across the United States.
"We looked at the demographics and found that the WCW fans and NASCAR fans share the same demographics as TRACFONE. It was a logical fit for us," said John Wiesehan, president and COO of Topp Telecom. "We developed a relationship with NASCAR and Team SABCO last year, and believe partnering with the WCW and Blaise Alexander we will get to the next level of competition."
Alexander started his career in 1989 racing karts at local tracks in his hometown of Montoursville, Pa. In 1992, he graduated to Micro Sprints before moving south in 1995 to pursue a stock car racing career. He competed in various NASCAR Busch Series and Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) events and even won the ARCA Rookie of the Year title in 1996.
The following two seasons, Alexander ran in limited ARCA and NASCAR Busch Series races. During the 1999 campaign, he posted two pole positions and two victories in the ARCA division, as well as seven top-5 and eight top-10 finishes in only 12 starts.
Alexander made 26 starts in the NASCAR Busch Series over the next two seasons in family-run equipment. In all, he has made 28 NBS starts in his career with a best finish of 12th at Darlington Raceway in 1998.
The sponsorship will include highlighting celebrity wrestlers on the hood of the No. 81 Chevrolet at selected NASCAR Busch Series races.
nascar.com
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