RACER’s Marshall Pruett asked TUDOR United SportsCar Championship team owners and managers to offer their thoughts, suggestions, and solutions on the best direction forward for their respective classes, and the series as a whole, in a 4-part feature starting with GT Daytona.
We’re now past the halfway point of the 2014 championship, and have moved into the period where IMSA traditionally starts to focus on the next season. A surprising level of openness has been reported by most TUDOR Championship teams as the series’ upper management looks to gather feedback on the current season, and any suggested changes for 2015 and beyond.
Following that spirit of looking to the paddock for a state of the union, we asked the businessmen and women who own and run teams, and some who manage manufacturer programs to share their views with our readers.
We initially selected three members from each of the four classes, and added a fourth voice for GT Daytona due to the sheer size and popularity of the category.
We also chose owners/managers who represent the different needs and perspectives found within GTD: Customer-funded programs, self-funded entries, those with manufacturer alliances and teams that fall somewhere between those three options. Some have louder and more familiar voices, while others are softer and heard with less frequency. Some hail from the ALMS, and some came from Grand-Am. Some offer similar suggestions, while others viewpoints differ.
The insights below, and in the remaining three parts of the series, reflect an interesting cross-section of ideas and certainly expands our understanding of how TUDOR Championship teams view their series.
1: What are the main items within your class that are working well?
Eric Ingraham, Team Manager, Flying Lizard Motorsports
GT Daytona is the deepest, most competitive class in the field and we are very lucky to have so many strong cars and teams. The cars are on a fairly good footing in terms of competitiveness across the manufacturers but I think there is a bit more work to do on this front, although I know that IMSA embraces this challenge and considers it very carefully between each and every event.
John Potter, Owner, Magnus Racing
The races that are 12 hours long. The absolute best element of the GTD class is how truly world-class the teams and competitors are. Heading in to Mosport, we’re still 19-cars strong, and when you look at the quality of the teams and drivers, there’s no question that we are arguably the most competitive class out there. Similarly, we’re back to what GT racing should be, which is manufacturer-built racing adaptations of a road car, built by some very cool marques. In previous years of the Rolex Series, when tube-framed cars would compete against us, that feeling was sort of lost and I always felt it diluted the appeal.
As a competitor, on any given weekend, half the field has the depth in both the drivers and crews that they have a chance to win, and that hasn’t changed since Daytona. What’s interesting is of five races so far, “GRAND-AM” teams have won four of them, but that could have easily changed with some changes of fortune in several of those events.
Joe Foster, Team Manager, Dempsey Racing
The car count is good, or at least started that way; there is always someone to race with. The sanctioning body seems very willing to work diligently on BoP and make adjustments as their information warrants.
Kevin Buckler, Owner, TRG-AMR
Attracting a wide variety of manufacturers here has been fantastic. We are seeing some sort of manufacturer support from nearly all of the manufacturers, and the racing is getting better and better particularly in our GTD class. I have long been an advocate of GT racing and believe we should have ONLY been GT racing to elevate our sports car profile, particularly in the face of adversity and competition from the other motorsports series out there… And it sure looks like that theory is going to prove out.
2: What are the main items within your class that would benefit from changes for 2015, and what solutions would improve or correct those items?
Joe Foster, Team Manager, Dempsey Racing
Although we as team owners all expected budgets to increase based on the percentage increase in run hours, the actual running budgets have instead increased even further to such an extent that the value proposition to sponsors and potential funded drivers has become difficult to sell. Development costs, updates, rules changes etc., have created significant unexpected budget increases as well as event schedules which have reduced on track time for gentleman drivers trying to improve their skills.
The idea of a Pro-Am class remains vitally important to keep gentleman drivers funding teams but it obviously is very difficult to keep the ratings consistent with driver skills as there are bronze or silver drivers faster than golds in some case and this has only been sporadically dealt with. I think there should be aggressive efforts to align the cars with GT3 rules and lock the spec to help curb development costs and there should be more track time, and a proper effort to properly categorize drivers
I also very much like the qualifying system used in Europe which averages the lap times of two drivers in the car.
Eric Ingraham, Team Manager, Flying Lizard Motorsports
I think that more transparency in the Balance of Performance process would only be a benefit to the series and the teams. Knowing what data-driven criteria the series uses to make the changes that it does will only help the manufacturers and teams to better understand what changes are made, and why.
The drivers in each car play a huge role in the success of that car during the race, and for a Pro-Am format, driver rankings are critical to ensure fairness throughout the field. There are many drivers in GTD who bring funding and for them to be racing against pro-pro lineups is simply unfair. An examination and overhaul of the driver ranking system will protect the gentleman drivers that have been the backbone of this sport for so long, and there will always be a place for Pro-Pro driver lineups –the Prototype and GT Le Mans classes.
Finally, I think that technically aligning (aero package, ABS, TC, etc.) our GTD class with the ubiquitous GT3 format which we see throughout the racing world would be a benefit as well, as there would be less resource investment (both money and engineering) by the manufacturers and teams in order to go racing, plus there would also be other baseline BoP tables which we could compare ours against to ensure good competition across the GTD field.
Kevin Buckler, Owner, TRG-AMR
I am sure a lot of people will answer or think that some sort of stability on the rules or application would be number one but all of us, including the series, had a lot to deal with this year in terms of putting all of this together and fixing the rules properly, applying them properly, and thinking it’s really just going to be a mechanical exercise.
The number one thing that we need to fix is COSTS. GT racing, especially in our class, is just too expensive. In GTLM you have manufacturers actually paying to race….in ours you don’t… or have very little financial support so it is up to the teams to raise the money through the funded drivers or sponsorship or some combination of all, but either way, the cuff does not match the color right now and there needs to be immediate change. There has been so much promise with the new IMSA and we do not want to see that falter but it will not continue for another season with anything close to these numbers if we do not have a radical change in the cost.
My second suggestion is for the series AND the teams to all work collaboratively–the series needs to spend some money–on continuing to raise the profile and the business environment around our sport. At this high level, at the top series, we should not be having to pay to race. We have a fantastic business model in today’s professional sports car racing with the manufacturers jumping in, with the merger and with our basic new little “magic moment in time” for sports car racing. Traditional sponsorships and partnerships through corporate hospitality options, branding, event marketing and just any number of things can be done to make the budgets balance, but we need a better connection with corporate America and our series has to help more to do that–to get the word out there—and to make this a place that corporate America wants to be and has to be.
So the answer is more revenue, less cost.
John Potter, Owner, Magnus Racing
From a competition standpoint today, the main gripes are based on BoP that every team has, and quite frankly won’t ever have a solution. We could sit here and complain about Porsches having this or that deficiency compared to the other marques, but there’s nothing unique in that and that’s probably coming from all sides. Having said that, similar to what’s happening in prototypes, one of the biggest challenges with a spec tire category on different cars is we’re faced with very different challenges over the course of a stint.
The tire performance and wear on a rear-engined Porsche is going to be inherently different than a front-engined BMW, and yet we’re all running the same spec of tire. Since we’re paying “retail” for these tires and they’re all spec, it would be good to look at what options exist between different options for different marques. We’re forced to engineer a car that simply doesn’t put the same type of load balance that you’ll see in a mid-engine Ferrari.
One other significant issue is how closely matched the speeds are between PC, GTLM, and GTD cars at different parts of the track, which creates some of the problems we’ve seen with incidents. PC cars are so underpowered that we’re quicker on the straights, meaning they only gain an advantage in braking and mid-corner, forcing them to take some wild dives to pass cars in our class that we weren’t expecting. I don’t want to see our cars restricted, but figuring something out in the way of a PC’s straight-line speed would make a huge difference.
In the words of Steve Jobs, “Do we really need PCs?”
Driver ratings have become somewhat of a joke. The Pro-Am system works well for sprint races, because about 90% of the current field has a proper Pro-Am driver lineup, but I’m not sure that’s adding up in endurance races, especially three-driver events. The intention behind the system was to have a second “silver” driver during the longer races, with the presumable goal to either have the team bring on a second funded driver, or an up-and-comer. Unfortunately, that’s not worked. The teams that have the funding, including Magnus Racing, simply look for the best silver-rated driver they can, which often means a driver who’s maybe off the radar in the U.S.
Meanwhile, some of the up-and-coming guys here in the U.S., people like Ryan Eversley or Billy Johnson, are rated as “gold” because the stateside officials know who they are. In turn, these drivers don’t have the opportunity that a European you’ve never heard of does…which seems counterintuitive to what the series should promote. The bottom line is, the bigger teams are paying for that third driver anyway, so why not just open it up to anyone. It would make it much cleaner and might even attract some big names looking for a one-off opportunity. I hear Jenson Button may be available.
On a business level, the budgeting for 2014 has been a very serious struggle. I like to believe that Magnus has some very intelligent people who can look at a rules package, make some educated guesses on what’s needed in terms of staffing and development, and work accordingly. When the series fails to disclose something as simple as how many crew are allowed over the wall until January, you literally have no idea what the season is going to cost. Combine that with a brand new car from Porsche and a series of grey areas in the rules that have made it difficult to know where we can pursue development, and it’s been a very expensive season. We have the advantage of being privately funded, but we can only spend so much money, and it’s impossible to quote out a second car program to prospects because it’s so hard to gauge costs, in an honorable way, on a moving target. I have no idea how customer teams like Turner Motorsport do it.
Now that the series has several big races under their belts, hopefully the really difficult decisions are behind them and we can have some clear stability on what to expect in 2015. The rumor is there are more manufacturers looking at the category, which is great, but the single greatest thing that the series could do to screw us up is stalling the rules during these discussions, preventing us from making some key decisions on next season.
On a marketing level, we’d of course like more coverage for our class, but there’s nothing new to that. It’s tough for a television broadcast to cover all of the racing on track, however one way to quantitatively help would simply be more television coverage overall. There’s a bigger picture to this, but that’s for a later question.
3: From a series-wide standpoint, what areas are performing well as we look to 2015?
John Potter, Owner, Magnus Racing
Well, Christian Fittipaldi’s hair is as glorious as ever.
The single biggest thing we’re seeing, and I’m not trying wave the IMSA flag like a fanboy, is that the overall management and marketing/PR sides of the business are showing an active role in listening. It sounds crazy, but it’s not always been this way. No one in this series, – I don’t care if it’s factory team, a privately funded team, or customer driven, NO ONE is here because it makes financial sense. We’re here because we’re passionate, and we have something to prove…regardless of the personalities or businesses behind the team.
Because of that, the entire paddock is made of driven, intelligent people who, while all working selfishly, want the series to succeed in order to help their own agenda. From a series administrative and marketing level, we’re seeing a very open community to making sure everyone is looked after and listened to, and that’s not easy. This kind of attitude doesn’t pay off immediately, but hopefully in time.
Joe Foster, Team Manager, Dempsey Racing
Unification and stability in American sports car racing are very important and good for everyone. Being able to present our sport with a unified future to potential partners is a very good situation.
Kevin Buckler, Owner, TRG-AMR
I think the best thing has been that the series and our sport in general has been able to attract the manufacturer support. It has served a dual purpose in that some other forms of motorsports have lost some of the manufacturer support as we look a little more “shiny” in our paddock. We are definitely the “value play” in motorsports as far as sponsorships and partnerships. If I was the other series, particularly in open-wheel, I would find a way to never let one of my sponsors come into our paddock and see what we are doing. It would be a one-way flow as we have such great opportunity here and so many more ways to promote and to co-brand and to do cool corporate events around our brand and our cars. Seriously– you will see more and more sponsors from NASCAR and IndyCar coming into our sport in the next 12 months if everyone plays their cards right.
I really love most of the tracks that we are going to this year. The track promoters and the series have done a good job in putting these events together. Everything seems to flow very well once we are at the track and that is a really big job putting these events together. We do like the Fox television coverage but with the switchover this year has been a little bit confusing so I hope that they can continue to work on that and also deeper coverage.
Eric Ingraham, Team Manager, Flying Lizard Motorsports
Great car count, great car diversity, great racetracks, great and talented people on the sanctioning body side. And we’ve weathered many changes in the course of merging the two series and through 2014. Things are settling down quickly and many positive changes continue to come from IMSA.
4: What are the main series-wide items that would benefit from changes for 2015, and what solutions would improve or correct those items?
Eric Ingraham, Team Manager, Flying Lizard Motorsports I think that the TV package can continue to improve and we can and will see more and more benefit from our association with NASCAR at the parent level.
I really appreciate the dialogue which has opened up between IMSA and the teams over the season so far and I hope that it continues into 2015, including taking into account team feedback as IMSA develops the look and feel of the series for 2015.
Kevin Buckler, Owner, TRG-AMR
Cost and revenue as mentioned above, and of course, all of the logistical issues that we have seen this year with firing up the new series and trying to balance all of the performance issues on the cars. I know that the guys in Daytona Beach are trying very hard so that at least gives me hope for the future…they want it as bad as we do and they need to make a few better choices for the long-term.
Joe Foster, Team Manager, Dempsey Racing
Calmness, consistency and professionalism in the way that the series interacts with the teams, understanding that the NASCAR paradigm of how the money flows, the teams are funded and stay alive is entirely different in sports car racing and that the NASCAR systems and structures may not always apply.
The teams are the customers of the sanctioning body given the current business model and this can be forgotten sometimes. Money buys the power to choose so when you see the choices that Tucker, Pickett, Dyson, Dalla Lana and others have made that should remind us all that the teams and funded drivers are not to be forgotten or treated poorly.
John Potter, Owner, Magnus Racing
The very thing we mention with regard to transparency and open mindedness on the admin and marketing sides could really use some work within the competition department, and hopefully will in time. This winter was really, really tough when with not only a lack of a rulebook, but even the most basic items like some of the branding requirements that actually cost us a sponsorship we were working on. No one, not even a privately funded team, walks in to a season with an open checkbook. Hopefully now that the biggest issues of the series are behind, we can have some clear transparency and dialogue on next year. Last I checked, all of us wrote a big check to be a part of the series, which means we are “clients.”
In most other businesses you’re nothing without clients, so the least you can do is be responsive and transparent. Having said that, it’s a tough job and you can’t please anyone that’s not winning. There’s been definite progress in recent months and the single best thing the series could do to keep teams in the series to is stand up at the end of the summer and say “this is what it’s going to be next year,” because we can budget and plan accordingly.
On the marketing and presentation side, there are several struggles that may not have an easy cure. The television package has been difficult in particular. The ALMS had several years to prove that a live webstream provided the data and marketing potential to market to sponsors, but I’ve yet to see anything from that. Let’s face it, what fuels sports car racing is a funded OEM effort, or private wealth (be it from a team owner or funded driver). There are real sponsors in the sport, including companies like Flex-Box with Magnus, but many of them are here for their own love of the sport or ability to network and entertain guests, not because of empirical marketing data.
In other words, this sport is driven by either an OEM exercise or personal fun / vanity. We need to feed into that as a series, and that doesn’t come from saying we’re on a website or a cable channel you’ve never heard of. The “call home” before a race is possibly the most important call for many of the people who actually fund the sport, and it’s tough to then tell your family “oh, you probably don’t have that channel.”
If this is to be perceived as a top level of motorsport, commanding top dollar, everything needs to reflect that. Having said that, it’s not an easy solution to just “appear” on a major network when the series has questionable ratings, especially for a long endurance race, but again, this is where transparency comes in. We have no idea where the decisions to be on this channel vs. this webstream come from. I’d definitely be a lot more sympathetic if I knew that “x contract” was already in place due to something out of our control, or “we would need ‘y’ amount of money” to appear on a major cable network. Again, everyone here wants to participate and perhaps there’s ways we can all help if we’re in on the problem.
5: Looking at the 2014 schedule, which venues would your class, team or business benefit by visiting again in 2015, are there any new venues that would improve your class/team/business, and are there any that would benefit your class/team/business by being replaced or dropped altogether?
Kevin Buckler, Owner, TRG-AMR
I think all of our current track operators are doing a great job. They have made so many improvements at places like Canadian Tire Motorsports Park, and at VIR, but we need to be places where we can attract corporate America easily…… It’s tough when it’s a 4-hour drive for your guests…
Eric Ingraham, Team Manager, Flying Lizard Motorsports
I’ll certainly leave the selection of venues to the series – they know best what their top level marketing objectives are. Of course we will see Daytona, Sebring, the Glen, and Petit again next year, and I would hope so! From a business standpoint, I do think that an 11-race calendar is an expensive one budget-wise, and I, for one, would be happy to see fewer races in quantity but with longer durations. So even if the TUDOR United SportsCar Series has 12 or 13 rounds, each class would probably do better with 8 races instead of 11, especially if we could be running 4-hour endurance races instead of shorter, sprint races.
John Potter, Owner, Magnus Racing
Well racing in Salt Lake City of course, but I have a feeling I’m in the minority on that one.
Geographically, the series as a whole is covering good terrain, and seems to have the luxury of choosing their venues right now so that’s all great. Unfortunately the thing we’d like to see is being a part of some of the events that we’re currently not at, namely GTD participation at the Long Beach Grand Prix or the “main event” at Laguna Seca. However the issue with both of those venues is paddock/pit space and a marketing reason to participate in Detroit, so I highly doubt we’ll see that change. The only solution would be to cap the fields to even smaller amounts so that GTD could run at a place like Long Beach, but that’s not really a solution in the best interest of the series, so it likely won’t change. Too bad, Long Beach has the best chicken and waffles anywhere.
Having said all of this, I would be absolutely miffed if I were a PC team. They signed up for a season that was changed on them, and then were forced to participate in a race with no real coverage of any sort, competing in the same event with a series not used to that kind of racing. Considering PC is almost entirely funded by wealthy drivers, it’s a pretty big blow to all of the egos there. In the words of Steve Jobs, “Seriously, do you we really need PCs?”
Joe Foster, Team Manager, Dempsey Racing
We should race at Mid-Ohio and Miller Motorsports Park. Kansas, Lime Rock should go.
6: Open Forum
Kevin Buckler, Owner, TRG-AMR
Just glad to have the opportunity to dialogue openly on these issues— we all want the same thing– we want our sport to be strong and better and continue to gain ground on the other forms of motorsports. To be competitive, to be fun to attend, to be oversubscribed. We want our drivers who come and help us fund this effort to go away from the weekend feeling satisfied with the result– not just on the track but the entire effort for the entire sport. We want corporate America to see this place as a new paradigm and an opportunity to play…at a better value than there used to or possibly we are their first entrée into motorsports so we need to do a good job and we need to keep them coming back. I believe in professional sports car racing and it has been my total life for nearly 25 years and I want to help in any way I can to have it get to its full potential…and we are not there yet.
Joe Foster, Team Manager, Dempsey Racing
We live in a wonderful capitalist country and there are choices…looking at the cost effective options in Europe (Blancpain, ELMS, etc.) and here (World Challenge), we as IMSA team owners should be aware there are dramatically lower cost alternatives where funded drivers can drive amazing cars at amazing venues…
John Potter, Owner, Magnus Racing
In general, there has been a fundamental regime change from 2013 to 2014, particularly on the marketing and PR side, and there is a refreshing amount of openness. Magnus has a reputation for fun and humor, and in previous years our way of measuring success was if we got an angry phone call from the series’ PR director. In 2014, IMSA seems to ‘get’ the need for a group like ours to be a little different, and they’ve been very supportive of it. This goes straight to the top, starting with a guy like Scott Atherton who went out of his way to contact me with how impressed he was with a video we did, and has since taken my wife and I to dinner. The PR leadership within IMSA seems to similarly embrace our style, as opposed to “coming down” on it. In general, the fans here are loyal to a specific marque or team, and the series needs to continue to embrace that uniqueness. It’s very refreshing.
Everyone seems to be critical of the series on what it’s doing to promote and market, and to an extent it’s understandable, but look at some of the biggest sports entities and ask yourself “how much of that comes from the sport directly?” That football ad you saw, was it produced by the NFL or Nike? Was that basketball ad from the NBA…or perhaps Gatorade? The point here is it’s unfair to expect the series to shoulder all the burden on themselves, and we need to be working collectively to make sure that sponsors and manufacturers are given the freedom to promote as well.
This doesn’t come in saying “hey you should make a commercial about us,” but in making assets available to entities promoting the series. At Magnus, we pay a license fee to run the videos that we do which, while not an unreasonable rate, has the potential to discourage me from wanting to do anything in the future. It would be nice to give sponsors some better licensing options, or to have an advertising package that Fox offers, which could include discounted ad time BEYOND race coverage. These are the areas we should look at.
IMSA has a small marketing staff working very hard, meanwhile we have companies like Tequila Patrón, Porsche, Simmons Beautyrest, WeatherTech, companies with their own marketing departments who could promote the series beyond racing fans if given the right access and incentives. There’s a longer rant I could give on the creativity of ads that we do see from brands within the series, but that’s a whole other tangent that you don’t have room for.
The criticisms by some media and fans of “NASCAR ruining it” is completely unfounded, and not helping the conversation. Complaining that NASCAR has ruined sports car is on par with complaining that your favorite indie band signed with a major label. A successful business enterprise is investing their resources into an entity that’s not as successful, and I fail to see how that’s a bad thing. There have undoubtedly been some bumps along the road, but if you look at the personalities involved, very few of them were “from NASCAR.” Meanwhile, all those accusations do is polarize the NASCAR audience and NASCAR sponsors from ever looking at our sport.
It kills me every time someone posts on a forum why they don’t see more sponsors, as it’s simply not that easy. Forget sports cars for a minute, in fact, forget racing for a minute. The nature of advertising as a whole has completely changed in the last five years. Advertisers have access to tools that didn’t exist 10 years ago, which has made the landscape far more targeted and cost efficient for those who are pinpointing a specific demographic. Translating this to sports car, it basically means the relative value of racing has reduced itself far below the operational cost of a race team.
In other words, the traditional advertising model is at a loss before you’ve even begun. The reality is, this will likely never change as the tools refine even further. For the series to continue viability, it needs to find a place for automotive manufacturers and technology partners to be excited about why they’re there (beyond marketing to fans). This means creating an open environment to showcase not only automotive technologies, but even showcasing non-automotive products in the motorsport environment.
Meanwhile, keeping a level of glamour, fun, and let’s face it, vanity, to keep the enthusiasts involved as well. It’s not easy to do, but it starts with understanding the metrics are not part of the conversation, so let’s stop pretending they are.
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