The tired NASCAR axiom of "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday" has been outdated for the past decade, if not longer, but the executives who run Rick Hendrick's NASCAR team and auto dealerships brought it back to life last month at Daytona.

Hendrickcars.com, the Web site that aggregates all of the used cars at Hendrick's 80 dealerships, was the sponsor on Tony Stewart's winning car at the season-opening Nationwide Series race. Not only did Stewart's car lead much of the race and capture the checkered flag, Stewart also mentioned the site in his post-race interview on FOX.

The visibility from Stewart's win, combined with the quick turnaround for Web site traffic, returned blockbuster results for Hendrick Automotive Group's flagship Web site.

On the day of the race, Saturday, Feb. 14, the site's total unique visitors numbered 53,000, an increase of 6,424 percent over the previous Saturday. Total visits were up more than 5,000 percent, and the 1.2 million page views were up more than 2,000 percent.

From the period of Feb. 11 through Feb. 28, the site received 151,655 unique visits, compared with an average of 40,000 visits for a typical month. Sales directly related to the sponsorship won't be available for another month.

"It wowed us, it really did," said Chris Little, a director in Hendrick Automotive Group. "We were expecting about a 1,000 percent increase in our traffic and the numbers that came back just blew our mind. The combination of winning the race and all of the marketing we had behind this, it was the perfect storm."

Hendrickcars.com was created last year as a way to bring the full inventory of used cars on his 80 lots to one site. About $90 million in used-car inventory can be found on the site, which has quickly become one of the Hendrick Automotive Group's most critical sales tools.

Car shoppers are making fewer and fewer physical visits to dealerships these days, about 1.5 per buying decision. That's down from 4.8 visits five years ago.

"Usually, we get one good shot at them and it's paramount that you have a strong online presence," Little said. (Continued)