Hendrick company to back trio of teams

Three NASCAR teams are adding sponsorship from HendrickCars.com for select races in 2012. For the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway, the company will sponsor Phoenix Racing with 2004 Sprint Cup champion Kurt Busch. He will also carry the logos in the Nationwide Series race at Daytona. The Hendrick group will also be the primary sponsor of JR Motorsports and driver Cole Whitt in the March 17 Nationwide event at Bristol Motor Speedway. In addition, HendrickCars.com will be a major associate sponsor of the Richard Childress Racing No. 33 Chevrolet with driver Elliott Sadler in the Daytona 500. The sponsorships will promote the new-look retail automotive website, which re-launched Feb. 1, and coincide with the HendrickCars.com "2012 Indy Dream Weekend" sweepstakes. "Last year's Daytona 500 broadcast alone averaged more than 15 million viewers, and we expect 2012 will be even stronger," said Rick Hendrick, chairman of Hendrick Automotive Group, which owns HendrickCars.com. "Combined with our sponsorship in the Nationwide Series, that's tens of millions of people seeing our brand, hearing our message and then visiting HendrickCars.com. We wanted to showcase the new site, and there's no more effective marketing tool than NASCAR." In 2009, when the site sponsored driver Tony Stewart in the Daytona Nationwide race, he won the race and drove record traffic to it.