The incident, at Sunday’s race at Pocono Raceway, provides further evidence of the complexity surrounding the potential clashes of interest between event, team and athlete sponsors.
“It ended up being an expensive move on my part,” Johnson said. “The bottom line is I'm just trying to defend my options as a driver.”
When Johnson climbed from his car after winning Sunday's race he placed a sign in front of the PowerAde bottle that NASCAR officials had put on top of his car, reports ESPN.
PowerAde, an official sponsor of NASCAR, is made by Coca-Cola but Johnson has a sponsorship deal with Pepsi.
This is the latest skirmish between the companies that spend millions of dollars for product placement each week at a NASCAR event.
Another driver, Tony Stewart, who is sponsored by Coca-Cola, finds the entire situation a conflict of interest. He pointed out that NASCAR has a sponsorship deal with Coke and its products, but that International Speedway Corp. - NASCAR's sister company - has a deal with Pepsi products.
“I think it's a bad position corporate NASCAR has put us in to,” he said. “We have sponsors that we're responsible to and we have obligation to, and I don't think it's fair for anybody to put anything on top of our race cars after we've won the race.”
