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Jimmie Johnson's first Cup start


Bmargo11

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  • 1 month later...

Very nice build!  I have a soft spot for Jimmie Johnson...

and the story:

Back when I was facility manager for Bristol-Myers Squibb New Brunswick NJ site, the company was very proud of their foray into Busch League racing with the Excedrin car..  We'd get regular emails about the racing stats and encouraged everyone to have company spirit and follow the races!

One of the emails said that the car would be doing an appearance at a local car dealer on a Saturday.  I got a bright idea and called up the promotions manager and asked if the car could appear on a company property... he was very excited!  The car was already in the area with the promotions company just sitting in a motel... so they'd be more than happy to come to our site on Thursday.   Like clockwork the hired team showed up at 8am. We rolled the car (it wasn't set up to run) onto the lawn outside the site cafeteria.  They had 8x10s of the car and driver, and 1/64 cars to hand out.   The promotions guy asked me to get site clearance for one more person... he had the rookie driver... one unknown Jimmie Johnson  who would attend a bit later.    Cool!

This was done on short notice, like the afternoon before!   I quickly made a color flyer to advertise the event.  I met with someone in the printing department and arranged for it to be printed and posted on every building door and bulletin board on site by 7am.   I got in that morning and... nothing!   I stormed off to the printing office and one know it all manager said he stopped my order... and started lambasting me that the photo I used was copyrighted by Excedrin... I responded, "And who owns Excedrin?? WE FRIGGIN DO! It's OUR copyright!"  He quickly scrambled!

I was worried the word wasn't out, but spread quickly!  We got bombarded!  From the time we set up, there was a line of people to see the car and driver, and get the freebies.  We had a raffle for shirts too.   As things winded down after everyone went back to work after lunch the promotions guy told me Jimmie was hungry and could we feed him?  Absolutely!  I took him into the company cafeteria and we had lunch!    He was the nicest most respectful young guy!   I will always remember that day!

 

 

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