NASCAR Kinetics team hosting viewing party

The NASCAR Kinetics team at Central Michigan University will be hosting a viewing party this Sunday.

The group will be viewing Hollywood Casino 400 of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Several prizes will also be given away, including t-shirts and assorted gift packages.

The NASCAR Kinetics team is an internship targeted toward marketing students, where involved students are faced with a variety of NASCAR oriented tasks or case studies and evaluated on their performance. This year, the students were asked to promote “NASCAR: The Game” to CMU students and also promote specific drivers through social media.

The final task, which has consistently been an open viewing party, is the most important task, accounting for 50 percent of their evaluation.

Last semester, the viewing party attracted about 200 students, and CMU’s NASCAR Kinetics branch won the nationwide competition between 22 schools for the first time in their history, earning a trip to South Carolina to watch a race at the Darlington Raceway. This semester, CMU’s Nascar Kinetics team hopes to repeat the task, which would earn them a trip to Miami, Fla.

Team leader Adam Seals, a Carson City junior, said he found his involvement within the team an invalubale experience.

“I’m not personally a fan of NASCAR,” Seals said. “But I thought, what better way to get ahead of the rest of the pack. You have the opportunity to stand out to important people in a very succesful organization.”

David Johnson, a Jackson junior, said they picked the Hollywood Casino 400 because of its prominent position within the Sprint Cup Series.

“The later the race occurs, the higher the stakes are,” Johnson said. “We wanted to pick a race that was important within the Sprint Cup Series.”

Johnson said he recognizes that most college students aren’t avid NASCAR fans, in contrast to sports like baseball and football. The group, therefore, is focused on introducing students to the group and to NASCAR.

“We’re trying to drive it home that if you’re interested in marketing, that if you’re interested in business, this is something that you’re going to be interested in,” Johnson said. “… We know that not a lot of college students are into NASCAR, but we want to reach out to casual fans, we want to reach out to people who don’t watch NASCAR and introduce them to the sport.”