Drivers at the ballpark, and a Red Sox car on the racetrack. The February merger between Roush Racing and the Fenway Sports Group will be on view for all to see this weekend, when NASCAR visits New Hampshire International Speedway.

It begins Friday, when Boston plays host to the Texas Rangers in a game that will feature show cars at Fenway Park, racing highlights on the stadium's video boards, and the team's Nextel Cup drivers throwing out ceremonial first pitches. Over at the 1-mile racetrack in Loudon, N.H., Carl Edwards will drive a No. 99 car sporting a Red Sox logo. It's all part of a public coming-out party for a partnership that's operated primarily behind the scenes -- until now.

99 Red Sox car

Roush Fenway driver Carl Edwards will sport the Boston Red Sox logo on the No. 99 Ford during this weekend's track activity at New Hampshire International Speedway.

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"What we've wanted to be careful to do is be sensitive to our fans, the Red Sox fans and people of New England. We don't want to jam anything down their throats or force-feed anything to them," said Sam Kennedy, executive vice president of the Fenway Sports Group. "But it's no secret, one of the principal reasons for getting involved with this business and this team was to try and annex all of New England, and then try and give people in New England, Boston specifically, a rooting interest in these drivers."

After three years of negotiations that began with Red Sox owner John Henry inquiring about a minority stake in the NASCAR organization, the Roush Fenway merger was completed the week of the Daytona 500 when the Fenway Sports Group -- parent company of the Red Sox -- purchased a 50 percent share in Jack Roush's race team. To Roush, the partnership provided increased sponsor opportunities in a part of the country where NASCAR isn't necessarily as well-known. To the Fenway group, it provided a national platform for an outfit limited by Major League Baseball's territorial marketing rules.

But to this point, alterations of the race team's name and insignia have been the only true outward signs of the merger. That changes this weekend when NASCAR comes to New England, and the Fenway group makes its first big pitch toward exposing Red Sox Nation to its new four-wheeled partner.

"The sport is so much more enjoyable when you have a rooting interest," Kennedy said. "If we can provide exposure and create visibility for our five Cup drivers through the microphone and stage we have of Fenway Park and the New England Sports Network, our television network, that's what we're going to try and do this weekend. We want to really give some visibility to these guys, and let the world know that we'd love all of the Red Sox fans to support the Roush Fenway drivers."

Toward that end, the team is putting its logo on the No. 99 car Edwards will drive this weekend in the Lenox Industrial Tools 300. Major League Baseball rules allow the Red Sox to market only in New England, so New Hampshire is the only Nextel Cup venue where a Red Sox car can take to the track. Lumber Liquidators, a Red Sox marketing partner run by a native Bostonian, will back the vehicle and share space on the car. Show cars sporting similar livery will make appearances at Lumber Liquidator outlets around New England throughout the summer.

"I'm going to be driving a pretty neat racecar, and we're going to go spend a little time up in Fenway Park and hang out with those folks," Edwards said. "It's going to be good."

From a Roush perspective, the hope is that the race team can tap into the baseball franchise's sponsorship base and generate new streams of revenue. Roush saw it happen with Joe Gibbs, whose relationship with the Atlanta Falcons -- he was a minority owner of the NFL organization before returning to the sidelines -- helped him secure Atlanta-based Home Depot as a car sponsor. Gibbs' association with the Washington Redskins, where he is now head coach, helped him land FedEx, which also holds the naming rights to the Redskins' stadium.

"We looked at that and said, 'OK, what kind of advantage does that give him in selling?'" asked Geoff Smith, president of Roush Fenway Racing. "So when we got this opportunity to talk to the Fenway Sports Group people, we thought, this is great. They have an unbelievable demographic and brand relationship and loyalty in a marketplace that's ripe for some more NASCAR enthusiasm. I think those two companies, us and Gibbs, are the ones that are using other sports as a marketing lever."

That could change when Nextel Cup team owner Ray Evernham cements his expected partnership deal with George Gillette, owner of the NHL's Montreal Canadiens. Race teams don't make such moves because they have to financially. They do it because they feel they have to competitively.

"We could have run our business just fine indefinitely without selling off a nickel's worth," Smith said. "But we looked at the bigger picture. Right now, here's a bigger picture issue. You've got Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jimmie Johnson all in the same camp [for 2008], getting very high sponsorship levels. We need to compete against that. We need similar type funding to be able to put a competitive program on the racetrack. How do you get that? You have to have some type of marketing advantage to try to compete against that."

And the Roush team hopes that advantage is the Fenway Sports Group. The activities of this weekend are only a precursor to bigger moves surely to come, when both the racing team and the baseball franchise begin activating sponsorships that play off one another. That's when the partnership will become much more noticeable than it is now.

"Seeing the competitive landscape, I think it makes sense for them to take on a strategic partner. But I don't think there's an immediate rate of return or spike in the business," Kennedy said. "The Red Sox and our group getting involved, it does lend some credibility to the sport in a market like New England, where it's not as big a part of the culture and the landscape. We recognize that it's probably a long road. It's hard to convert fans overnight. But we think blending the high profile nature of NASCAR with the high profile nature of the Red Sox is a great way to expose the brand of our drivers to the 14 million people of New England."