NASCAR today announced that driver Tony Stewart "won a competition fueled by social media to appear on the cover of next year's NASCAR '14 video game," according to Jeff Gluck of USA TODAY. Stewart "beat Jeff Gordon in the final round with 69% of the vote." He had the "highest vote total in all five rounds of the bracket-style competition and never had less than 64% in any matchup." That Stewart won "wasn't a huge surprise -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. wasn't eligible for the contest after appearing on last year's cover -- but that he prevailed by such a large margin was notable." Even more impressive was "how Stewart accomplished the feat without having a personal presence on social media." NASCAR VP/Licensing & Consumer Products Blake Davidson said, "We were shocked by the dominance and without him pushing himself." Deep Silver, which "took over the publishing of the game from Activision, plans to capitalize on Stewart's cover appearance with an aggressive promotional push." Though a release date has not been set for NASCAR '14, Deep Silver said that it will be "very early in the season" (USA TODAY, 12/3).
CHANGING THE DEFINITION: NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson appeared on FS1’s “Fox Sports Live” to discuss the recent comments from the net's Donovan McNabb that Johnson is “not an athlete” because he "sits in a car and he drives.” Johnson said, “Our sport’s been dealing with this for a long time and I feel like we’ve been winning people over each and every year, and I’m excited to win Donovan over. I really think that we can because he clearly has a microphone and people listen, and he’s a great influence to people.” Johnson added, “I’d love to change his mind.” He said, “When you understand the forces that are put on a driver’s body, you understand the heat that’s involved, the hand-eye coordination that’s involved, the mental aspect that’s involved -- it’s a far different animal. We’re wearing heart-rate monitors in the race cars and we’re averaging 140-150 beats a minute for 3-4 hours. So there is definitely an athletic requirement to drive a race car.” FS1's Charissa Thompson noted McNabb was not on last night's show for Johnson to directly address him because he was "on vacation with his family." (“Fox Sports Live,” FS1, 12/2).
