NASCAR teams smoking less thanks to QUIT Crew

Four years ago, you couldn't go 10 feet in the NASCAR garage area without seeing someone smoking a cigarette, fiddling with the pack or searching for a lighter.

Now, you can go 10 miles. At least that's the way it seems. Since Winston left as the series sponsor at the end of the 2003 season, it's something you hardly see anymore. Of course, now everyone has a cell phone instead.

Part of the reason for this is that Winston no longer brought bales and boxes of cigarettes to the track. The other reason is programs like the QUIT Crew, from official NASCAR sponsor Nicorette.

Beginning in 2005, Nicorette came aboard as an official sponsor and developed associate sponsorships with Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates, Petty Enterprises, Hendrick Motorsports, Richard Childress Racing, Joe Gibbs Racing and more.

How ironic is it that a company that would have been shown the gates under Winston sponsorship is now enjoying not only a solid business platform with NASCAR, but is actively helping the community as a whole?

"Honestly, when we entered the sport, I don't think we knew at what level we'd be accepted," said Steve Kapur, senior promotion manager for Nicorette. "We have tried to be respectful and there to help when people are ready to quit. We haven't elbowed our way in or pushed our way in. What's happening, and we experience this in the exhibit area every weekend, is that people are approaching us and asking for help. Overall, people are more interested in healthy lifestyles, and these are products that are consistent with what they're looking for."

Kapur oversees a program that not only brings answers to hundreds of thousands of fans every year, but has generated quite a following inside the garage area as well.

"The QUIT Crew began with us helping the guys on the race team quit smoking, not just the over-the-wall guys, but even the people back in the office and at the shop," he said. "It started when one of the guys on the Ganassi Racing crew approached us about quitting smoking. We worked with him, and a guy named Frank Vitale, who trains smoking cessation counselors all over the world on how to do this. We put together a program with Ganassi that we tested, and we had a lot of people sign up and we had terrific results in terms of people being successful."

That success led to expansion, Kapur said.

"The next year we added the program; in addition to doing it with Ganassi for another year we added Petty, Hendrick, Childress, Gibbs, a dozen people in the media center and a dozen NASCAR officials. We have been experiencing success rates with the NASCAR community that are more than double what the general population experiences. We think it's because it's a family, and people support each other."

Rocky Ryan (above) of Richard Childress Racing and Roger Parkinson of Ganassi Racing are two of the charter members of the QUIT Crew, and both are active in the shop programs.

The NASCAR community has been getting healthier for years, with many of the teams involved in competitive sports like softball, flag football and the like. Several drivers are serious runners, and most have workout regimens designed to improve their performances in the car.

Kapur said the QUIT Crew was designed to take advantage of both the team nature of the sport itself and the natural competitiveness of the team members.

"Race teams are as much a team as any football team or baseball team," he said. "They care about each other, they understand the interaction between what each of the jobs do to contribute to success. And, by the way, they are a pretty competitive bunch, too. That helps."

That competition has spread its way around the garage area.

"We had more than 200 people on the program last year, and all the shops that ran the program are re-running it; we have five more shops that are taking the program, so it's expanding to the point where probably 75 percent of the cars on the track, those organizations have somebody in the program."

One of the biggest coups Kapur and his QUIT Crew have managed is NASCAR itself. According to Kapur, NASCAR is running the QUIT Crew program at its main office in Daytona Beach, Fla., and in the New York office.

We're really excited at the expansion," Kapur said. "We're going from six teams last year to probably 12 teams this year and NASCAR running the program for all its employees."

The traveling exhibit makes 30 stops a year with NASCAR, and it is full of counselors who can assist anyone who wishes on the program, using Nicorette gum, the NicoDerm CQ transdermal patch and Commit lozenges.

"We have a mixture of fun, a simulator car and professional counselors who coach people on how to quit smoking," Kapur said. "It's really been expanding every year."

Kapur also noted that the company's special paint schemes, this year on Jeff Gordon's DuPont Chevrolets, have boosted awareness exponentially.