ELKHART LAKE, Wis. — "It's like a fairy tale here," NASCAR driver Josh Bilicki says.
Sometimes life imitates art.
"I think this is better," Bilicki says.
The Richfield NASCAR driver rarely crashes. But in his home state and at Road America, he did spectacularly.
"And here comes the rest of the field. They can't see!" announcer Rick Allen said. "And a lot of contact, and we see Josh Bilicki taking the Sargento billboard with him."
"I'm on TikTok. I don't even have a TikTok and I'm on TikTok!" Bilicki says. "I'm on Facebook. So I see it going viral and then a couple hours later, we're at dinner, and Sargento tags along. They changed their background picture on Facebook to the picture of me with the race car and their sign strapped to the front of it. So I'm like alright, you know, this is pretty cool. This is getting traction a lot quicker than I expected it to."
The Sargento sign on Bilicki's ride, like Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights, win or crash spectacularly, and the sponsor is happy.
"If there's another sign out there that I can run over," Bilicki says. "You know, it's not going to be as unique as the first one though. If there's another sign out there in Watkins Glen, I can run it over. But it's not going to have the same result as this. You know, doing something for the first time is always the biggest."
For Bilicki, it's a dream come true since he's always had to hustle for sponsorship dollars.
"I started when I was young. Just knocking on doors," Bilicki says. "Sending emails. Trying to set up meetings. Having cold calls. It just took this incident for the conversation to move forward. So like I said, everything happens for a reason. You know, Wisconsin driver. Wisconsin track. Wisconsin billboard."
More than likely this is a one-race deal. But it certainly created a lasting memory full of state connections. This race season.
