Dan Lowry is Having a Blast

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Naval engineer Dan Lowry is the title sponsor, Grand Marshall and virtual king for the Sprint Cup race this weekend at Richmond International Raceway.

Dan was the winner - out of 10,000 plus entrants - of the Crown Royal “Your Name Here 400″ contest. So the official name of this week’s race is ” Crown Royal Presents The Dan Lowry 400″. How cool would that be?

Thanks to a heads up from Darren Fauth of One Bad Wheel and the Champs, Chumps and Sleepers game, I had a chance to talk to lucky Dan this afternoon as he was getting to the track.

Mike Maruska of Trouble in Turn2 wanted to know if, as an official title sponsor of the event, was Dan able to veto any rival sponsors. Dan said no, but he was pretty sure that the Crown Royal folks would have approved of that had he been allowed.

Jamie McMurray has been very involved in the promotion and Dan told me that he has been a McMurray fan for as long as Jamie has raced in Cup. Jamie was with Dan in a helicopter high above the Las Vegas desert when a tarp was pulled from a 10,000 square foot mosaic on the desert floor that showed Dan’s name as part of the official Richmond race logo.

The contest winning Crown Royal experience that Dan submitted involved him being in Venezuela on business. Going out at a local restraunt he spotted the familiar purple Crown Royal logo among the mostly unfamiliar setting and it reminded him of home.

So now Dan Lowry’s name will be emblazoned on race tickets, race logo merchandise and the trophy that the winning driver will take home Saturday night. He will enjoy pace-car laps and watching the race from the top of the #26 pit box. He is also getting a feel for the sponsor commitments that drivers like McMurray are subject to every week.

The best part? Dan gets to make the call of the most famous words in racing - “Gentlemen start your engines”.

We’ll get a chance to ask Mr. Lowry how the whole week went when we interview him ON PIT ROW next Tuesday, May 6th at about 6:15 pm EDT. If you have any questions for the luckiest guy in NASCAR this week, send them to [e-mail] and we’ll ask Dan for you.