The secret to presenting a uniform appearance

I've started designing my helmet for next year, but I won't know what to put on the uniform until we have a new sponsor.

It's definite that Betty Crocker and General Mills won't be coming back with us in 2007. We have a few other deals in the work that we're working hard on, but nothing concrete.

Erin Crocker drives the No. 98 Dodge in the Truck Series. Credit: Autostock

Erin Crocker Year-to-date statistics Race Start Finish Daytona 24 27 California 33 27 Atlanta 30 26 Martinsville 34 25 Gateway 30 22 Charlotte 2 18 Mansfield 25 28 Dover 25 24 Texas 12 33 Michigan 11 24 Milwaukee 33 25 Kansas 12 16 Kentucky 34 27 Memphis 34 30 IRP 33 27 Nashville 27 29 Bristol 31 35 New Hampshire 28 32 Las Vegas 12 24 Talladega 21 20 Martinsville 30 26 Atlanta 25 23 Average 24.8 25.8

It's a hard time. I really enjoyed working with Cheerios and Betty Crocker. Without them I wouldn't have been able to have the financial backing for his year.

Anytime you lose something like that it's rough. I appreciate a lot what they did for me. You just hope someone like them will come along and get behind you.

But I understand it hasn't been a great year from a performance standpoint, so I can understand why General Mills is leaving. They're stepping up their program with Petty Enterprises and they didn't get the results from me that they hoped.

Maybe I'm not going to be the next Kasey Kahne, but I still believe I can make a big mark on the NASCAR world. I still feel I have a lot to prove.

But with a last name like mine I'll never find a better name for a sponsor than Betty Crocker. Unless, maybe, I find something with Erin something or another on it.

We've already begun plans on the helmet design with shamrocks. I've always had a thing for shamrocks, probably to do with my Irish background and red hair.

I used to have little shamrocks on my lacrosse helmet and my lacrosse sticks in high school. It's just one of those things that always followed me in sports.

We put it on one helmet this year, and we're putting them on all of my future helmets even.

They will be hard to see, though. All the Evernham Motorsports drivers have a uniform helmet design. We can pick what we want on the top and the bottom. The shamrocks will be what they call ghosting. You'll have to look hard with the light in the right way to see it.

	Erin Crocker Credit: Autostock
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As for the uniform, I don't want to put just anything on it from a sponsor standpoint. There are a lot of women's apparel lines that aren't exactly the type of clothes I would wear, so I try to stay away from that.

It's nothing like Victoria's Secret [a brand that former driver Shawna Robinson once joked would be a great sponsor for a woman driver]. I don't really want to see some underwear with my name on it when I'm at the racetrack, but Victoria's Secret, that's a great brand.

I'm certain they wouldn't want me to do any modeling for them, but having them for a sponsor would be great.

I've worn about every color uniform you can imagine. When I drove sprint cars, I had this solid-colored suit with nothing on it. As a driver, you always hope to have sponsors all over the uniform like the big-time drivers.

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I've never had any that were too ridiculous. I once had a sponsor that gave me a uniform that was silver with black marks that looked like my uniform had been torn through with animal claws.

That got a lot of attention.

My favorite uniform was the Cheerios/Betty Crocker uniform because it was my first time of being decked out with big-time sponsors all over it.

Believe it or not, drivers pay attention to what other drivers wear. And it's not just girls. Ask a lot of guys what others are wearing as far as shoes and things. They know the answers.

Erin Crocker is stepping up a program that she hopes will land her in a fulltime Nextel Cup ride by driving in the Busch, Truck and ARCA Series for Evernham Motorsports. The youngest of five children, Crocker has been sharing weekly with NASCAR.com readers the ups and downs of her life on and off the track through staff writer David Newton.