Off-Season? What Off-Season?

By Jessica Trippy, PR Rep for No. 88 Toyota Tundra

(Jessica Trippy is PR Rep for Matt Crafton and the No. 88 Menards Toyota Tundra. 2012 marks Jessica’s sixth as a NASCAR PR rep and her second season with ThorSport Racing.)

With Matt Crafton honeymooning in Costa Rica this week with new wife Ashley, I’m taking over his blog this week to offer a different take on the off-season: The off-season of a Public Relations Representative. Don’t worry, Matt will be back soon with a full recap of his beautiful wedding down in Mexico.

NASCAR is known for having the longest season in professional sports, which means the shortest off-season. But when the season comes to a close in late November, friends and family love to ask “What are you going to do with all your free-time during the off-season?” My response is almost always the same: “There really is no off-season.”

Even though we’re not racing at the track every week, it never slows down for any of us. The guys in the shop are hard at work building and improving trucks for the next season, drivers and crew members are busy testing, not just on the track, but also at the wind tunnel and the dyno, and team executives are managing the shop, finalizing sponsorship contracts and handling logistics of it all. And for PR, it’s all about preparing for the year ahead.

Although duties vary from team to team, there is always plenty to keep us busy when we’re away from the race track. We’re still scheduling TV, radio and print interviews and working on our drivers’ schedules (and occasionally filling in on a blog when a driver goes on a tropical honeymoon!) There’s NASCAR licenses and hard cards to apply for, media credentials to request from the racetracks, and websites and biographies to update. There’s the annual shopping trip for pants and shoes to wear at the racetrack (you wouldn’t believe how hard the track can be on your clothes and shoes!) We’re scheduling photo shoots, helping with team and driver apparel, and working with sponsors and graphic designers on paint schemes and firesuits.

There are a lot of really fun and important events over the course of the off-season that PR reps participate in, the biggest of which is the NASCAR Marketing and Communications Summit. This gives us an opportunity to get together with all of the reps and marketing executives that we haven’t seen in a while, hear NASCAR’s initiatives for the upcoming season and learn more about the resources available to us, everything from media websites and statisticians to at-track security and medical liaisons at infield care centers. New to our team this year is Toyota Media Training, where both the reps and the drivers are educated about our new manufacturer and how to represent them in the media. There’s also great events that our drivers are involved in such as this weekend’s NASCAR Acceleration Weekend and next weekend’s NASCAR Night at the Charlotte Checkers hockey game (be sure to come out to both and meet some of the ThorSport Racing drivers!)

Sometimes over the off-season you find yourself doing the tasks that you’d never expect: There was time I drove 200 miles in one day trying to match a color sample to a paint code so we had the perfect shade for our Daytona truck. There were the days spent hand-sewing patches on firesuits because of a last-minute sponsor addition. There was the time I had to stand in for a driver who was running late for a photo shoot so the photographers could test the light. There were the months of learning to speak Portuguese to work with the Brazilian media. There are the days when your sole purpose is to unravel the mystery of the missing pit wall banner, helmet or firesuit.

So the next time you’re wondering what NASCAR teams are doing in their time off, know that there really isn’t much of it. But the truth is, we wouldn’t have it any other way, because that’s what makes our jobs exciting, challenging and fun.