Lenovo heads sponsor rush at Indy.

Leading technology brand Lenovo was the highest profile addition to the sponsorship roster for Sunday's Indianapolis 500, having agreed a deal to back the #98 car of veteran Alex Barron.

Sarah Fisher, Richie Hearn and Jon Herb all also picked up extra backing for their different campaigns, from Inta Juice, the GO FAST Sports & Beverage Company and the University of Toledo respectively.

Already a sponsor of Williams in F1, Lenovo announced an agreement with the CURB/Agajanian/Beck team to sponsor the black Dallara-Honda driven by Barron for this weekend's Indianapolis 500, as well as providing PC technology to the team. The sponsorship will act as an innovative cross-promotion, showcasing Lenovo's support for the NBA and The Finals. The front wings of Barron's car will carrying 'The Finals on ABC' branding.

"Lenovo is an innovative NBA partner, and their placement of The Finals logo on the CURB/Agajanian/Beck car showcases their commitment to our relationship and their PC technology support for The Finals," Mark Tatum, senior VP of marketing at the NBA commented.

Inta Juice, one of the nation's fastest-growing smoothie and juice bar franchises, announced that it will sponsor Fisher for the remainder of the 2007 IndyCar season.

"This relationship with Dreyer & Reinbold Racing and Sarah Fisher will play a major role in Inta Juice's future growth, because several of the locations on the IndyCar Series circuit are strategic development areas for us," company co-founder Heath Pickett explained, "With the popularity of IndyCar Series and with this sponsorship, we will increase franchise activity in target markets and brand awareness nationwide."

GO FAST Sports & Beverage revealed that it would be sponsoring the Hemelgarn/Racing Professionals entry driven by series veteran Hearn this weekend, although the deal is likely to be just a one-off.

"When we saw the news of Richie's qualifying on ESPN.com, we envisioned a GO FAST car on the track and said to ourselves 'we should reach out to Richie and see if we can make this happen'," the company's Jeff Revious commented, "Within hours, we were in touch with Jay Rathman, CEO of J Rathman Sports, and he was able to work out all of the details and pull everything together at the last possible minute. The opportunity, coming with just two days to put it all together, is typical for GO FAST - that tends to be how we operate, hence the name of the company. In fact, the poor artists were still decaling the car at 6am on Friday morning."

Team co-owner Ron Hemelgarn admitted that he had been amazed at how the programme had come together.

"In the 29 years that I have been entering cars in the Indy 500, I thought that I had seen it all until Wednesday night," the veteran said, "It started when Richie was able to somehow find the courage to qualify the car with only 21 laps of practice on Sunday, and then putting together a huge programme with GO FAST within 48 hours, has been a learning experience, to say the least. Let's hope GO FAST can help us stay true to our colours and help the #91 win the 91st running of the Indianapolis 500."

Hearn, meanwhile, admitted that it was 'cool' to have landed such an apt backer.

"Not only am I grateful that GO FAST bailed us out at the last second but, as a driver, how cool is it to have GO FAST all over your race car at the Indy 500?" he smiled, "I hope that this is just the start of a long-term relationship with Troy, Jeff and all of the cool people at GO FAST. Maybe if I win for them on Sunday, they will let me pilot the GO FAST Jetpack."

Finally, the University of Toledo has confirmed that it will support Jon Herb's #19 Racing Professionals Dallara, repaying the support of Herb's parents, both alumni and long-time supporters of the university.

"I was seated next to Judy assuming, of course, that we would talk about education and her support of the UT College of Education," university dean Thomas Switzer said, "We did some of that, but I soon discovered that Judy and Marvin have a son who drives race cars in the IRL. This Memorial Day, I will attend my 29th consecutive Indianapolis 500, so Judy and I had something to talk about other than education. I told my wife that Judy Herb is a really nice person. That was the start of our relationship."