Kentucky Speedway ahead of Saturday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Quaker State 400 has become the first facility in the sport to pay homage to outgoing title sponsor Sprint, which vacates the role after ‘16. The SMI-owned track has a couple of non-TV-visible billboards that it uses for marketing purposes and decided to dedicate one outside the venue near Turns 1 and 2 to the K.C.-based wireless carrier, which has been title sponsor since ’08. Sprint GM of NASCAR Sprint Cup Sponsorship Kimberly Meesters said to her knowledge, this is the first time this year a track hosting a Cup race has undertaken such a measure. The billboard was the idea of Kentucky Speedway Exec VP & GM Mark Simendinger and VP/Corporate Sales & Marketing John Cox, who noted the facility holds the record for generating the most traffic out of any track for Sprint’s now-shuttered Sprint Experience activation display that it used to take from race to race. Cox said, “It’s just been a great partnership overall for us, SMI, the whole sport. We said, ‘Thank you, Jeff Gordon’ last year, we are saying, ‘Thank you, (Tony Stewart) this year.’ It only makes sense to thank Sprint. We did it just because it’s the right thing to do.” As part of the move, the track will bring Miss Sprint Cup out to the billboard on Saturday to take photos that will be shared on social media. Cox said they did not need to get approval from SMI to put up the billboard. ISC in a statement to THE DAILY said of its own plans, "We are working closely with Sprint and NASCAR on creative ideas and a proper send off with several ISC tracks hosting races in the last half of the season."
