In Defense of "The Tabasco Fiasco"

 In Defense of "The Tabasco Fiasco"

By Brian H Cotnoir

One of the most well-known sponsorship debacles in NASCAR History the so-called "Tabasco Fiasco" is a legendary for its multiple failures in its short existence, including incurring the wrath of its primary sponsor, Tabasco Sauce, and the team being run by a group of unscrupulous owners.  Through this all, I feel way too much blame gets put on the Parent Company of Tabasco Sauce, the McIlhenny Company, when in all actuality they did nothing to cause the teams failure and shortcomings, instead the real problem cause of the "Tabasco Fiasco" can be attributed to some shady business deals, and a NASCAR legend who got in way-in over his head.

ISM Racing had made it's debut in the Indy Racing League during the 1996-97 season.  The team scored an impressive 3rd place finish in that years Indy 500 with Rookie driver, Jeff Ward.  The following season ISM's owner Bob Hancher decided he would run full-time in both the Indy Racing League and the NASCAR Cup Series.  Hancher's NASCAR Cup Series team welcome a new sponsor to the sport, the McIlhenny Company and their brand of Tabasco Products. The team announced Todd Bodine as their driver and he would drive the #35 Pontiac for ISM Racing, and would sport three unique and stylish paint schemes throughout the season promoting Tabasco sauce.  While ISM Racing had a lot of success at the start of the 1998 season in IndyCar, the same could not be said of their Cup Series effort.  Todd Bodine had failed to qualify for the first three races of the 1998 season, before he scored a surprising outside pole position and would lead 46 laps int he race, but ultimately finish in the 10th position.   Unfortunately, things didn't get much better for Bodine and ISM Racing, he failed to qualify for five-of-the-next-eleven races and didn't even attempt to qualify for the race at Auto Club Speedway.   Despite all these shortcomings the McIlhenny Company didn't seem to mind.  They were all in on ISM Racing and Todd Bodine; they even released a NASCAR Cookbook.  The downfall of the team unfortunately wouldn't come until midway through the season.

ISM Racing eventually let Todd Bodine go following a DNQ at Infineon Speedway, and the team would eventually be sold to Tim Beverly who merged ISM Racing with the assets he purchased from Darrell Waltrip's DarWal Inc., and the team became Tyler Jet Motorsports.  The team would eventually switch to Chevrolet and hire Darrell Waltrip to drive the #35 car for Tabasco Sauce; his Championship Provisional guaranteed the newly formed Tyler Jet Motorsport a spot for the remaining races.  The Problem with all this was that no one had cleared this with the McIlhenny Company, and they were not to pleased.  They agreed to sponsor driver Todd Bodine and wanted the team to run Pontiac's, and they did not agree to any of the new team changes.   It made no difference to McIlhenny that the team failed to qualify for one-fifth of the races that season, they wanted Todd Bodine back in their ride.  At the end of the 1998, the McIlhenny Company pulled their sponsorship from Tyler Jet Motorsports and hasn't sponsor a NASCAR team since.  Less than 2 years later, Tyler Jet Motorsports would be sold off.

So there are a couple of different factors I feel often get overlooked in the Tabasco Fiasco.  The biggest one was the teams sponsor did not seem to mind that the team wasn't having a lot of success, which is honestly still surprising to hear.  Today failure to run up front or even qualify for races can cause a sponsor to either jump ship and sponsor another driver or team, or leave the sport all together.  Two years later Busch Series driver Mike Borkowski would be SUED BY HIS SPONSOR AT&T for "tarnishing their brands image" after wrecking in four of the first eight races he ran for Bill Davis Racing.   Borkowski would even be fired by owner Bill Davis following the race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.  Meanwhile, you have a company more than willing to spend money to get it's name on your car despite failing to qualify.  Unfortunately for the McIlhenny Company, ISM, Tim Beverly, and--I'm assuming--Todd Bodine and Darrell Waltrip didn't care about selling Tabasco Sauce; they wanted to race and they wanted to win.

Today in NASCAR, you'd be hard pressed to find a team that wouldn't hire a certain driver or bend to the will of a Sponsor, especially one that's willing to pay to sponsor a team for the whole season.  Tyler Jet should have just gone along with their sponsors wishes and kept Todd Bodine and the Pontiacs.  As for, Darrell Waltrip, he was in the twilight of his career and his own failed sponsorship deal had forced him to sell his own race team, and was hired by Tim Beverly to, essentially, drive his old cars.  Beverly wasn't much of a Team Owner himself, after another sketchy sponsorship deal (this one courtesy of Lycos.com), Beverly would be forced to sell his team during the 2000 season.  

Don't feel bad for Beverly though he's not really the victim in this story.  You see Beverly was laundering money from his team "Tyler Jet L.L.C" (a company that sells and repairs private air planes) to finance this NASCAR team.  In 2004, Beverly would be sentenced to 6 years in Prison for defrauding banks of over 18 million dollars.   With all that being said, it's very clear that McIlhenny is not the root cause of the "Tabasco Fiasco" and instead you can blame Tim Beverly for merging of two failing race teams and pissing off his primary sponsor for everything that happened.