Looking ahead to this weekend’s race, I found that the race is going to be called ‘Centurion Boats at the Glen’. That intrigued me enough to do an internet search of ‘Centurion Boats’, which led me to their website.

I am not knowledgeable about boats, but I can tell by the pictures of theirs and the accompanying descriptions that Centurion boats are made for speed and fun, as well as making other boaters jealous. The sleek black one listed under ‘Storm Series’ made me feel about the same way as I did when I saw my first real racecar close up, and I believe I uttered the same thing, “ooh… That’s nice”.

Not being content to just ogle the cool pictures, I read about the history of the company. The ‘about us’ page says that the company was a dream of drag boat racer Rick Lee, so I Googled him. There seemed to be precious little about Rick Lee as a drag boat racer, but it led me to an article about someone whose name I did recognize: Rick Hendrick. Did you know that Hendrick, currently the multi-team owner of NASCAR superstars like Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, was a drag boat racer prior to being involved in stock cars? And that he was a three-time champion?

Now that I know that, I can assume with a lot of confidence that Mr. Hendrick did not have to Google anything to know more about this weekend’s race sponsor.

See what a little cyber-surfing will do? Not only do I now know about the sponsor for this weekend’s race in New York, but I learned a little something about one of our sport’s most famous car owners.