Despite a noticeable downturn in entries (28 qualifiers), Saturday’s American Le Mans Series 12 Hours of Sebring broadcast on Speed was one of the best live motorsports productions I’ve seen.

Lack of traffic probably had something to do with the record-setting pace, which isn’t to discount the all out tech battle between the diesel-powered P1s of Peugeot (V-12 coupe) and Audi (V-10 roadster) and Honda’s amazing CAD-to-track Acura.

Top notch announcing, functional overhead shots, intelligent pit lane reporting and great photography – like the lingering shot of the Patron sponsored Acura P1, above – kept me interested and involved from the comfort of my Barcolounger grandstand seat 118 miles northwest of the action.

All the attention surrounding the design and then the performance of the Acuras was a marketers dream come true. If you’re Arai it really paid off, as the David Brabham piloted #9, despite gremlins that eventually put it behind the wall after 302 laps, managed a full portfolio of photo ops.

Here’s what I saw from the perspective of your average fan: Arai’s easily identified, easily seen, easily read logo (black art on white oval field). On a design scale of 1 to 10 it’s a lackluster 2 minus. On the marketer’s same scale, it’s a slam dunk 10 plus.

It’s obvious there was little thought put into how the label would look after custom designed paintwork. Just grab a sticker and slap it on, or so it looks to me. In the end, though, overthinking would only have driven the impact down.

The same couldn’t be said of the sister XM sponsored car. The 66 car’s drivers’ helmets led with a reversed logo that was a much better fit with the overall sponsor’s design theme yet didn’t read anywhere near as powerfully as the simple, highly visible, black and white model.