CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Michael Jordan took his own advice and just did it: Air Jordan formed his own NASCAR team and expects the foundation will be in place to build a stock car Dream Team centered around Bubba Wallace.
Jordan has some company on the celebrity starting grid: Pitbull bought his own piece of a NASCAR team and “Mr. Worldwide” could have fans -- up to 30,000 of them at the Daytona 500 -- shouting “Dale!” at next week’s season opener.
“There’s no better time to be involved in NASCAR,” said Pitbull, who was attracted to the sport by the 1990 movie “Days of Thunder” and is now partnered with new team Trackhouse Racing, which along with Mexican driver Daniel Suarez provides a platform to reach a broader audience.
“In the same way that music is a universal language, I also see NASCAR as a universal language,' Pitbull added. “Everybody loves a fast car and a great story.”
ROYAL OAK, Mich. Royal Oak police said a delivery driver bringing groceries to a residence Tuesday evening was shot in the leg after two suspects robbed him and stole his car. Around 9:27 p.m. The Breakingviews Dream Team interactive tool scores a roster of candidates for government economic jobs. Biden’s team so far rates a relatively high 130 points out of a possible 210 for.
The fan favorites extend well beyond the owner’s box. Chase Elliott, NASCAR’s most popular driver, is the reigning champion and three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin -- who helped usher MJ into the sport -- has kids asking about his PJs in a national commercial tagline he can't shake.
Elite silicon drivers. The schedule underwent an overdue overhaul and now has a whopping seven road courses and five new venues. NASCAR is even set for an off-road detour through the dirt at fan-favorite Bristol Motor Speedway.
Perhaps in any other season, NASCAR could raise a glass to what its broadcast partner is billing as “The Best Season Ever.” But promising “best' anything in a pandemic seems as outlandish as a 62-year-old driver — 1990 winner Derrike Cope — in the Daytona 500.
Yet here we are.
While NASCAR can hope the racial reckoning from last season that led to its Confederate flag ban have eased, concerns that it can reach the season finale without interruptions to the schedule and drivers falling ill still linger.
NASCAR last year navigated the pandemic by first filling the free time with nationally televised iRacing and found a way to become one of the first major sports to resume competition in May. It was the first sport to complete its full schedule but got to November only by moving races, running without spectators or limited spectators, and trusting participants to monitor their own health.
At least four drivers tested positive for COVID-19 during the 2020 season, with Jimmie Johnson, Austin Dillon and Truck Series driver Spencer Davis missing races.
NASCAR again won't test competitors in 2021 but plans on having rapid tests at the tracks when needed. The bubble has been widened this season to allow a team owner into the garage for the first time since last March and NASCAR acknowledged it must be “nimble” with its schedule. The second race of the season scheduled in Fontana, California, has already been moved to the road course at Daytona because of pandemic restrictions.
NASCAR executive vice president Steve O’Donnell touted the momentum from a successful 2020 season but acknowledged the pandemic has challenged NASCAR going into 2021.
Drivers & Downloads. Identify your product to get the latest available updates. Dell standard shipping methods and payment via credit card, gift card or Dell Business Credit. Notification will be provided if there are payment delays which could impact shipping. Dell wireless wlan card. The Dell Wireless WLAN Card works with any IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi CERTIFIED wireless router/AP or wireless client network adapter NOTE: Not all Dell Wireless WLAN Card models support IEEE 802.11a (5-GHz) or IEEE 802.11n operation. The Dell Wireless WLAN Card works with any IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi CERTIFIED wireless router/AP or wireless client network.
“I think all of us hoped by this time we’d have full grandstands and be ready to rock and roll for the 500. That's not the case,” he said.
Daytona International Speedway can hold more than 100,000 in the grandstands and thousands more in the infield, but the speedway will be limited to roughly 30,000 spectators for the Feb. 14 season-opener.
Hamlin is seeking to become the first driver to win three consecutive Daytona 500s while also transitioning into team ownership. He still drives for Joe Gibbs Racing but has partnered with Jordan to create 23XI Racing (pronounced twenty-three eleven) and field a car for Wallace, the only Black full-time driver at NASCAR's top level.
Wallace had a tumultuous 2020 as he became NASCAR's face for racial justice and change. He successfully pushed NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag at its events and with it came a wave of backlash from traditional fans. Wallace weathered it as best as he could — even when NASCAR brought in the FBI to investigate a garage door pull in his stall at Talladega that had been fashioned into a noose months earlier — and it ultimately led to a millions in new sponsorship dollars that gave Wallace the funding to help get 23XI Racing off the ground.
He and Jordan become the only Black team owner and driver combination in the sport and the pairing puts Wallace in a glaring spotlight. Winless in 112 Cup races driving for underfunded Richard Petty Motorsports, Wallace knows it is time to deliver.
Drivers Gsm Dream Team Download
Wallace is seeking a balance in trying to be successful with a high-profile team while also using his platform to push for diversity. If he can do it all with fewer headaches, he'd be thrilled.
“I lost 7 pounds through everything that happened last year. So much stress and pressure, Lord,” Wallace said. “I have a goal every year to not be a part of the headlines. Every year I have that goal. And I've failed every year.”
23XI with Jordan and Trackhouse with Pitbull are two of three new teams entering the Cup Series this year in anticipation of a new car in 2022 that will make NASCAR more affordable for owners.
Kyle Larson returns after a nearly full-season suspension for using a racial slur and he will drive for Hendrick Motorsports, which in November celebrated its 13th NASCAR championship with Elliott's win. Larson and Elliott are two of the most dynamic young drivers in the series and hope to fill a void created by a rash of retirements, most recent seven-time champion Johnson.
New teams, new tracks, young drivers and an abundance of optimism has led broadcast partner Fox to market the 2021 NASCAR campaign as “the best season ever.” That remains to be seen starting with the Daytona 500 and ending with the Nov. 7 finale at Phoenix.
'I can’t remember, at least not as season that I’ve been a driver in Cup, this amount of changes ever happening before, and I think it’s a nice little shot in the arm,” NASCAR veteran Brad Keselowski said. 'As far as best season ever, I don’t think I’m the right person to judge, but I don’t know how you could argue that it’s not mostly good stuff happening.”
___
More AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
Dream Motor Group uses TextMarks SMS as an internal communications tool to build a solid company culture, enhance the guest experience, and protect property and employees. With 450 employees dispersed across multiple locations and departments, a centralized text messaging system has proven to be a more effective way to reach staff and drive employee satisfaction across all their Mercedes Benz dealerships.
Commitment to Excellence in Customer Experience
Dream Motor Group has built a reputation for excellence in the Mercedes Benz community largely due to their dedication to flawless customer service. “We are obsessed with our culture, which is laser focused on creating an unrivaled customer experience,” says Dream Motor Group owner Joe Agresti. “We are a luxury retailer,” he emphasizes, “not a car dealer.”
With 5 automobile dealerships in 5 southern states, creating a consistent luxury retail experience for customers requires careful cultivation of company culture, staff training, and positive reinforcement for employees who go above and beyond to take care of the dealership’s guests. With TextMarks mass texting service as an employee communications tool, general managers are able to curate and communicate the best parts of the company culture to enhance the guest experience.
An Employee-First Culture
For Dream Motor Group, it is employee satisfaction above all else. Alex Fox is the executive assistant to the CEO and is tasked with bringing his breadth of experience from the hospitality industry to Dream Motor Group car dealerships: “There’s a direct correlation between the ability of management to communicate information to employees and a better work environment. The employee is priority number one, even before the guest, because if we don’t have a happy employee it’s going to quickly go downhill from there.”
Drivers Gsm Dream Team
To facilitate an employee-first culture, owners Joe and Tom Agresti turned to TextMarks to make internal communications seamless. “TextMarks leads to better work environment, and I think that’s what’s being built [here].”
Image Source: Dream Motor Group
Email and Social Media Don’t Cut It
Although Dream Motor Group’s commitment to excellence is not new, the ways the management team has leveraged technology to aid in employee communication and satisfaction has come a long way. The time-tested strategy of meetings, bulletin boards, and person-to-person communication had obvious shortcomings.
“A bulletin board wouldn’t cut it because no one would know to look for updates,” describes Christine Sisson, Event Coordinator at Mercedes Benz of Music City, Dream Motor Group’s Nashville dealership. In order to get the word out about a company culture meeting or a new announcement without some sort of communication tool, “it would take me awhile to find everyone and create a lot of unnecessary conversations,” says Christine. “Email would be second option, but not everyone on site has access to a computer.”
” Not everyone on site has access to a computer.”
Christine Sisson, Event Coordinator at Dream Motor Group
With increases in mobile phone adoption, Dream Motor Group began exploring various communication methods in order to reduce the friction of getting the word out to employees. “We tried using Twitter but it’s tough to manage that platform. In addition, there’s no guarantee employees are going to have their Twitter notifications set up correctly and that’s complicated.” The team quickly abandoned the internal Twitter account and began looking for a simpler, more comprehensive solution.
Engaging Employees Through Text Messaging
The effectiveness of the SMS as an internal communication platform became readily apparent. “We moved to TextMarks and it worked so well at Music City, we rolled it out at all other locations. We have team members who don’t have email, and they all use mobile phones. Whenever we have urgent need to communicate with the team, we send a text. TextMarks has been working great for us.”
“[TextMarks] is a great internal communications tool if you’ve got a spread out team. It makes it easy to get communication out quickly, it’s super timely, and convenient. Over the course of the month it saves me at least 4-5 hours.”
Christine Sisson, Event Coordinator at Dream Motor Group
It wasn’t long before nearly all of the employees at the company were using the system. “Almost 98% of all our 450 employees are on the text messaging system. The best part of it is that TextMarks is easy to set up and operate,” says Agresti.
Much of the success has been attributed to carefully integrating TextMarks on-boarding into the training process, so that employees are included in internal communications almost from day one. “The company had us all opt-in to TextMarks as soon as we got hired,” Sisson says. “It’s a great internal communications tool if you’ve got a spread out team. It makes it easy to get communication out quickly, it’s super timely, and convenient. Over the course of the month it saves me at least 4-5 hours. We love it, we use it for any sort of announcements we have to give to the whole store.”
Improved Communication and Employee Satisfaction
The connection between improved communications and a stellar sales experience may not be obvious, but Alex Fox explains: “It’s a lot of training and reinforcement. You can use TextMarks to send reminders about things to focus on and reinforce culture. Every week we look for a great things that another employee did.”
By rewarding outstanding customer service, Fox adds, it’s not long before the customer feels a positive impact. “Before it would have been an email thing, but TextMarks allows us to quickly send a text to the whole team and it makes a major impact on employee retention.”
Handling Emergency Situations
Creating an outstanding customer experience isn’t the only purpose of utilizing a tool like TextMarks. Security during emergency situations across the dealerships has been enhanced by having a centralized form of communication and reaching everyone via mobile device.
“We’ve had situations where cars are parked in unsafe areas. We’ve found sets of keys laying around, and that’s a massive problem because someone could take a car from the lot. We send out a text message via TextMarks and immediately we get a response and it gets taken care of. We even text short-links to files and pictures.”
“It was most effective for the floods in Texas in August. It was a great way to communicate breaking information to everyone as quickly as possible.”
Alex Fox, Executive Assistant to the CEO, Dream Motor Group
Most importantly, TextMarks became an essential tool when Hurricane Harvey emerged off the Texas coast and dropped unprecedented amounts of rain along the southern coastline. “It was most effective for the floods in Texas in August. It was a great way to communicate breaking information like severe weather to everyone as quickly as possible,” says Fox.
The case was the same in Nashville, where storms can gather quickly and present major risks to employee safety on the lot or coming in to work. “It has been a big help, especially when we had bad weather. We were able to tell everyone stay home. In emergency situations it’s been crucial,” added Christine Sisson.
Protecting employees is certainly one of the most crucial roles the service plays at Dream Motor Group. Rapid SMS message delivery, effective engagement, and high reliability makes it a key player in employee protection.
Scratching The Surface
As Fox imagines the future of car dealerships, he sees many ways to continue to use the TextMarks text messaging tool. “The guest is more informed now than ever, so it’s a different style of sales. At Mercedes-Benz, our employees are tour guides and they need to have incredible technology to push out new information about inventory and make a unique guest experience.“
Fox imagines a future where highly customized offers are sent in realtime to staff. “Technology like TextMarks can help guests find what they want and along the way feel amazing about the customer experience. We’re only scratching the surface of how effective it can be.”
Interested in learning more about using text messaging for internal communications to increase employee satisfaction? Contact a TextMarks representative or call 800-696-1393.
Get our newsletter about all things related to SMS for customer and employee communications!