Brickyard 400 Gets a Title Sponsor

The venerable Indianapolis Motor Speedway has gone commercial.

The Brickyard 400, the stock car race that annually attracts the largest audience in NASCAR’s Nextel Cup season, has been renamed the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.

The insurance company announced Thursday that it had signed a multiyear sponsorship deal with IMS, and that it had signed another multiyear deal to be NASCAR’s official insurance sponsor.

“This whole matter only started a little more than a month ago, but we felt it was the perfect fit for the speedway,� said Joie Chitwood, president and chief operating officer of IMS. “Having an entitlement sponsor was something we had been pursuing for the Brickyard race and once we realized that Allstate was the type partnership we desired, the negotiations were like racing, they went fast.�

The Allstate 400 at the Brickyard will be run Aug. 7.

Until the first Brickyard 400 in 1994, only the Indianapolis 500, an open-wheel, open-cockpit race, had been held on the Speedway’s 2.5-mile rectangular track since 1911. In 2000, a third major race was added to the schedule, the U.S. Grand Prix for Formula One cars, on an infield road course that incorporated portions of the oval.

“I can assure you that there will be no new name for the Indianapolis 500,� Chitwood said. “It has had a great name since 1911, the Indy 500, and it is not going to change.�

Allstate is not the first entitlement at IMS. The Formula One race the first few years was known as the SAP U.S. Grand Prix. SAP was a German software company.

“We feel that Allstate and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway have a great deal in common,� said Joe Tripodi, chief marketing officer for Allstate. “We both have Midwestern roots -- we’re based in Chicago -- and both value one another’s strong heritage of innovation.

“Indy was the first to mandate seat belts, helmets and the SAFER wall concept. Allstate has the same long history in protecting drivers by promoting seat belt laws and mandatory use of air bags. And NASCAR, too, has constantly pushed the envelope in areas of safety.�

It will be the 27th Nextel Cup race with a title sponsor. Among the nine without sponsor titles are the Daytona 500 and the California 500 at Fontana.