Fifth Third Bank will enter NHRA as a new sponsor this season, via a multiyear deal with Kalitta Motorsports that will be announced Friday. Fifth Third will get branding on the Top Fuel dragsters and fire suits of drivers Doug Kalitta and Shawn Langdon. Fifth Third is largely focused on finding B2B deals from its motorsports sponsorships, and Kalitta Motorsports says it will incorporate the bank into its B2B hospitality efforts. Fifth Third, which also has deals in NASCAR and IndyCar, is believed to be the first bank to enter NHRA as a sponsor since MBNA in the '90s.
BRAND BUILDING: NTT Data Services has rolled out a new livery for the '20 NTT IndyCar Series season and says it will be using a company slogan, "The Culture of Speed," as the theme for its marketing in the sport this year. NTT Data is the anchor sponsor of Chip Ganassi Racing's No. 10 Honda driven by Felix Rosenqvist. The company unveiled the paint scheme online Thursday, where it touted how IndyCar is similar to its products in being based around speed.
FOR THE GRAM: Auto Club Speedway will debut a racing-themed pop-up museum at its NASCAR weekend this month, latching onto the trend of giving people Instagram-able photo opportunities at events. The track has spent an undisclosed, but small, sum of money to set up temporary structures with eight-foot-by-eight-foot bays that have decorations like a swinging tire and hanging cones that make for an eye-catching backdrop. The track will have volunteers on site at the bays on race weekend to help people capture their images at the right angle. Auto Club Speedway Senior Dir of Consumer Marketing Josh Avila said, "We really saw this as an opportunity to try to reach out to a millennial audience."
