We all know the proverbial problem of money and motorsports. You can't have the racing without the dollars and that means sponsors unless you've won the lottery.

Sponsors? Just saying that word amongst racers makes them roll their eyes and cry out, "It's impossible to get sponsors these days."

Well I just spent the evening in the modest town of Pembroke Ontario to witness a driver who doesn't have just one sponsor. He has 18 sponsors and the last six approached the team asking to be part of the team's success. Really.

Now where this story gets even more interesting is when you consider the driver will be graduating elementary school this year. This is the story of Nathan Blok, a 13-year old Rotax Junior driver who's one third of the Racin' Nathan Team along with his dad, Steve and mom, Sandra.

Nathan began karting at age 6 in a 20-year od kart and never looked back. When it became obvious that Nathan's ambitions were exceeding the disposable income of the family they began to seek sponsorship.

"You have to approach the idea from the point of the sponsor, not the driver," explained Steve. "You can't just ask for money. You need to show what you're about, what the sport is about and what you can bring to the sponsor."

Sponsorship is all about the driver/team providing a service to the sponsor and that is normally increased exposure. Nathan has a public relations co-ordinator, Carolynn Levesque, who prepares a press release after each race and sends it out to all the sponsors and local media. The press kit given out tonight has 13 articles about Nathan from the regional newspapers. The kit also contains several quality photos and all the racing results in Nathan's career.

So just what took place this evening? With his new Mach1 Kart displayed up front, it began with Nathan making a brief speech wrapping up his 2007 season. He then thanked each and every sponsor by name and then posed for individual photos taken by a professional photographer with all the sponsor reps present. These photos are turned into plaques as a thank you gift.

Nathan takes an active role in every aspect of the team and earned enough money last year to buy his own driver's suits and shoes imported from Italy. He appears in local parades for Canada day and makes appearances at local institutions. There is a lot of effort but the results are undeniable but you must be persistent. Eventually that photo of you with the sponsors logo will appear somewhere.

So for every racer who needs money, here are the basic steps to finding sponsorship:
- Start locally with people who know you
- Explain what your sport is
- Describe how sponsoring you will benefit the sponsor
- Follow-up with a race report after every race no matter what your results were
- Send your press release to the local media and keep sending them even if the first few don't get published
- Thank your sponsors and show them everything that gets published in the form of a media kit

by Jim Leggett
Link to the website:
http://www.canadiankartingnews.com/ckn_news.php?id=2189