LV’s Vasser struggling to find sponsor

Thursday, April 19, 2001 | 10:18 a.m.

Two races into the 2001 CART FedEx Championship Series season, Jimmy Vasser of Las Vegas has two top-six finishes and ranks fifth in the championship points standings.

He also has no primary sponsor.

As one of only three American drivers (of 28) in CART, Vasser is in his first season driving for one of the most successful teams in the series, Patrick Racing. The 35-year-old Vasser has nine career wins and also is a former series champion, having won the title in 1996 for Target/Chip Ganassi Racing.

With those credentials, why hasn't team owner Pat Patrick been able to secure a primary sponsor for Vasser's Toyota/Reynard?

"I wish I had an answer," said Henry Rischitelli, who handles marketing for Patrick Racing.

It certainly isn't for a lack of effort on the part of Rischitelli, whose Continental Group of Companies has been involved in pairing race teams with sponsors for 15 years.

Rischitelli even has approached many of the major hotel-casinos in Las Vegas in an attempt to land a sponsor for the "hometown" driver.

"We talked to many companies in Vegas ... we talked to the casinos -- most of the major ones -- thinking there might be some interest in Vegas because Jimmy's home is there (but) we were unsuccessful there," Rischitelli said.

"We can't get people to even listen to us in Vegas, to (allow us to) come out and say, 'Hey, here's why this makes sense.' "

Instead, Rischitelli will head across the Atlantic Ocean next week to discuss a possible sponsorship with a European company he declined to name.

Many of CART's critics point to the lack of American drivers in the series as a reason for its relative lack of popularity (compared to NASCAR's Winston Cup Series). Having one of its high-profile American drivers struggling to find a sponsor is a concern for CART.

So is the series' lack of American drivers.

"The American driver issue is something that cycles up and down," said Ron Richards, CART's group manager for corporate communications and marketing. "We're at what we perceive is a low point in that sense but we see that number going up over the next few years.

"It's an issue because it's something that we understand that there is an interest from the country where the majority of our races take place and it would make it less difficult than it is to market our series if we had some more American involvement."

But, Richards added, foreign sponsorship may be the rule rather than the exception if CART gains a foothold in Europe when it begins racing there (twice) this summer.

"We really believe that when we go to Europe this year, it's going to further reinforce what CART is and how big it is and it will help attract more sponsorship from Europe," Richards said.

"As we become more of this series that's better known around the world, we expect that we're going to get more involvement from companies outside the U.S."

Rischitelli agreed.

"CART is a far superior value for a sponsor -- better than Formula One, better than the IRL as an open-wheel series," he said.

"The issue we're wrestling with here is we're struggling with identity; we have a great product and what we're chasing now is companies in Europe that see enormous value in CART -- even with an American driver."