Johnson doesn’t think 7 titles in reach
September 30, 2009
CONCORD, N.C. (AP)—Jimmie Johnson doesn’t think he’ll challenge the NASCAR record of seven championships.
Seated next to Richard Petty at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, Johnson said The King’s mark is probably safe. He said breaking the record of seven titles shared by Petty and the late Dale Earnhardt probably isn’t possible.
Jeff Gordon leads all active drivers with four titles. Johnson is seeking a record fourth-consecutive title this season. He’s currently ranked second in the Sprint Cup standings, and trails teammate Mark Martin by just 10 points.
Johnson and Petty were honored Wednesday by LMS as “Kings of the Sport.”
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Symphony of moving parts each weekend on MRN (NASCAR.com)
September 30, 2009
Anyone who's ever listened to even a few minutes of a NASCAR race broadcast on an affiliate of the Motor Racing Network—better known as MRN Radio—no doubt has marveled at the smoothness, fellowship and sheer fluidity of what they're hearing.
So it should come as no surprise that the end product—whether it's a few minutes or a full racing event lasting several hours—is the result of a lot of behind the scenes work by a lot of people.
And just as the seamless production of a racing event is the result of intense, yet equally fluid organizational skills by the race teams, sanctioning bodies and race tracks—usually under-appreciated by everyone who witnesses it—the same phenomenon is in effect at MRN.
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The fact that 2009 is the 40th anniversary season for the network makes its efficiency somewhat understood, or taken for granted. But it's no less impressive when considering its achievements.
MRN started in humble quarters at the NASCAR and International Speedway Corporation headquarters in Daytona Beach, Fla., and gradually grew to a sizeable production facility there before relocating to its most diverse home to date, in Concord, N.C.
Organization starts at the top
If you tune into the MRN broadcast of this weekend's race at Kansas, be aware that its planning process began almost at the time the 2009 NASCAR national touring division schedules were released, in the summer of 2008.
A color-coded spreadsheet is created indicating what events must be staffed, by how much staff and in what disciplines.
David Hyatt, the president of MRN Radio, likens his entire operation to a finely-tuned set of gears, where everything meshes in perfect sync and results in a high-quality product, whether it's a race broadcast or regularly scheduled daily or weekly show.
MRN is part of a media alliance, or conglomerate that includes the Sprint Vision video displays that are seen each Cup weekend. MRN veteran Fred Armstrong heads that division.
Hyatt explained that MRN, on the radio side, is almost like a two-headed entity. It has its home base in Concord, but also fields a fleet of vehicles that enables it to operate with the same capacity in any "remote" location.
MRN's full-time staff numbers a little more than 40 people, who are involved in administrative and technical roles. When it comes to the "talent"—a misleading term since this entire bunch is pretty talented, but in this case referring to the persons heard on-the-air—they are contract labor.
"Full-time is a relative term," Hyatt said. "We now have a number of guys that make their full-time living through us, but as a physical, full-time employee, as announcers-only we only have one, and that's Kyle Rickey. You could probably say that Woody Cain, who hosts our NASCAR Today show, is also a full-time employee.
"But as far as our normal, on-the-air race team, they're all contractors. But we have enough work and enough programming that a number of them make their primary living working with us."
The Vermonter who works as a turn announcer on MRN broadcasts and also hosts the Monday-Friday Sirius Speedway show on Sirius (satellite) NASCAR Radio is a prime example.
"Dave Moody is contracted to work with us, and we then have a contract with Sirius to produce the Sirius Speedway program," Hyatt said. "So we provide that program turn-key to them. The whole thing comes through our facilities and they basically just air it.
"So when a Dave Moody or a Mike Bagley or a Steve Post comes to the track on a weekend, they're coming to work for MRN first, but part of their responsibility for MRN may be to provide Sirius [content]."
Logistics rule
Hyatt's ringmaster in this grand circus—very little of which is actually seen or heard—is director of operations Frank Beers. The title hardly does him justice, as he oversees many of the company's technical, personnel and business elements.
"It's a big challenge to attempt to eliminate every possible organizational wrinkle that might come up," Beers said. "It's one of those things like the race teams, but unlike the tracks, in that for us it happens every single week."
Beers' right-hand operator is operations assistant Nicole Clark. From a listener's standpoint, probably the most critical thing Clark does, once the event spreadsheet is available, is juggle airplane and hotel reservations, as well as ground transportation. She attempts, as much as she can, to match up itineraries for people coming from widely divergent locations.
And as Beers said, MRN does every Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Camping World Truck Series event, so that only magnifies the challenge.
For a Cup event, the engineer typically arrives a day early, while the rest of the production and the talent begin to arrive between Thursday evening and Friday morning.
"Delayed flights are another thing that chips a gear, if you will," Hyatt said. "When we fly folks commercially, we have to account for their arrival, so we try to avoid flying people in the evening. As a general rule, morning flights have a better record of being on-time, or not being cancelled, and if they are you have more options to make connections down the road."
For Clark, weather is probably the biggest aggravation, but Hyatt can cite some rarer, but equally fraught instances of "hiccups" in the process.
"We once had a truck en route to a broadcast that crashed, and it was unable to continue," Hyatt said, laughing despite the ill memory. "It was damaged enough that we had to go to a plan B, dispatch another trailer and get it on site.
"Certainly we've had issues, at the last minute, where announcers couldn't be available, and we had to arrange to get somebody else on the broadcast. A rain delay, while we plan for it, [is a problem].
"When you think about the fact that almost all of our [talent] are independent contractors and have to go back and do their real jobs—it's like this is their golf game and on Monday they have to go back and do their real jobs. It isn't like they can use a 'sick day,' because if they call in sick and their boss hear them calling a race, probably not a good thing."
For the staff coming out of Concord, Hyatt said MRN shares Express Jet charter flights with a number of race teams, which ensures—barring bad weather—that their people will get where they need to be on schedule.
And for someone like Moody, who has a Friday Sirius Speedway to knock out each week, every element of MRN's logistical arm is brought into play.
"We have to factor Dave's availability against his travel when we decide where to produce the show from," Hyatt said. "For example, he may travel early on a Friday morning, and Nicole has to keep this in mind. Dave has to travel out of Burlington, Vt., and make a double connection to arrive at the track, and the production trailer by 3.
"Then, he does Sirius Speedway until qualifying starts, and when qualifying ends he goes back to Sirius."
It makes just doing a race seem flat easy.
"Again, it's a number of different people working to make those gears mesh together," Hyatt said, "between travel, operations, logistics and production and figuring all those components out."
Driving that train
Although you could argue that every aspect of Beers' job is critical to the overall picture, his role as "fleet supervisor" is maybe most critical to what listeners hear each weekend.
The fleet has to be diverse enough to cover the two weekends this season in which the Cup, Nationwide and Truck series operate events at three different venues.
For Cup events, the key individuals are Frank Curci, who wheels the 53-foot "production trailer," a 53-foot piece custom-built by Featherlite Trailers, and Mike Weaver, who drives and operates the 40-foot mobile satellite truck.
The 53-foot unit serves in conjunction as an office, production studio, gathering place, kitchen and rest room facility.
Beers also has a 40-foot Featherlite-built trailer that, in addition to being slightly smaller, is slightly less-appointed as the larger unit, but no less capable of getting the job done. On the odd occasions of tripleheader weekends at different places, a Ford F-350 pickup and an 18-foot production trailer are used.
Balancing the need for triple-plays of equipment and personnel is the nirvana-like state that exists when three events are run at the same venue, as they are seven times this season.
Depending on the schedule and where their vehicles need to be, Curci and Weaver sometimes spend several weeks at a time on the road, without getting back to MRN's home base in Concord.
"In many cases the guys do go race track to race track," Hyatt said, citing the turnaround from Richmond, the Chase cutoff event to New Hampshire, the opening event in the Chase. "The production truck would go directly from Richmond to New Hampshire, because there's no point in it going back to Concord, because it's self-contained for everything it needs to do.
"At the events, the production trailer and satellite truck are there on a turnkey basis, so there's nothing that we can't or won't do, from right here [at a track] and make it work.
"In terms of the programs that we produce during the week, we don't use the [remote] facilities to do it, unless we're doing a special broadcast from on-site, like a special program we'll be doing in a few weeks from Tom Johnson's Camping Center [in conjunction with the races at Lowe's Motor Speedway]."
Hyatt said Curci and Weaver dedicate a day to setting up their "compound," which includes the locations of the production trailer and satellite truck, the trailer it pulls and their support vehicles.
Preparation aches
Brian Nelson, an MRN associate producer, along with live event producer Amanda Trautman are the key members of MRN's production team at the track, week-in and week-out with very little variation.
From walking the garage and pit road, observing and then returning to the 53-footer to do assembly work, it's virtually non-stop from arrival through race time.
"Amanda and Brian physically produce the production components," Hyatt said. "There are a lot of little pre-recorded components that go into our broadcast that you don't think about having to do as a program producer, or a content producer, if you will.
"You always think about the cost of production, but when you do something live, it's the cheapest kind of production you can do, because you spend one second to produce one second.
"But there are components in our live broadcasts, like commercials, or promos or advertiser billboards and features—all of which have elements that aren't done 'live,' but they're done to make this live show sound better. And all those things have to be done as prep during the week.
"So, for example, Amanda, leading into a race will have sat down and made sure she's seen who all the advertisers are going to be, assembled a script for what we call our billboards—promotional items—and she makes sure they're recorded and, along with all the other various and sundry components, making sure they're edited and they're going to fit into the broadcast to enhance what the listeners are hearing."
Trautman and Nelson are primarily responsible for Cup events, but when the various series are at different venues, a "mirror crew" is in place there to carry out the same functions.
"Most of the guys do their prep work on their own time," Hyatt said. "They'll start at home and get stats and prep stuff done at home during the week, and when they get to the track they'll hone that down and go walk through the garage and talk to the competitors and come back to the production trailer and start putting things together."
Proof is in the production
For a sports fan, to listen to an MRN Radio broadcast could be likened to a symphony—smoothly melding together numerous elements to comprise a cogent totality.
The talent lineup works smoothly with Trautman and control board operator Mike Doncheff to keep the broadcast flowing. Trautman's worst nightmare, which came early in her career, came when Bagley's microphone failed, and she had to momentarily scramble to figure out how to let the other team members know that one of "the gang" was temporarily down.
But she came through it and ultimately put it into her experience bank to more easily work through anything like it that might occur.
MRN's overall success hinges on several other elements that fall under Beers' guidance, such as sales, traffic and affiliate relations.
"The traffic department's job is to make sure that we have all the right advertisers who are scheduled to be in the broadcast," Hyatt said. "And then they physically assign which break the advertiser needs to go in. At the end of the day they reconcile that it ran, that a log was kept to show it, then they issue an affidavit to the advertiser and do the billing for it."
Five people are in the affiliate relations group.
"What they do all year long is work with our radio stations to make sure the stations are carrying the broadcasts," Hyatt said. "And then they're recruiting into markets where we might have light coverage or need better coverage. Again, they're integral for the back room.
"I always describe our business as a three-legged stool," Hyatt said. "And if all three legs aren't there, the business doesn't sit. Those three elements are our affiliates, our advertisers and our audience, and without all three it doesn't work.
"All this other stuff is—yeah, we've got to produce races and we've got to be credible and make it sound good and we've got to deliver good content. But if we don't have an audience to listen to it, and the audience will listen to it by virtue of having the affiliates on the air.
"And the affiliates on the air, couple with the audience it's going to generate, creates the interest for the advertisers to come buy our commercials, which is where we ultimately make the money. And without that revenue stream coming in, we're not going to be in business."
Judging by the number of people on message boards and in e-mails who say they opt for MRN over television audio that might not be an issue.
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Ferrari reaches Alonso deal to replace Raikkonen (PA SportsTicker)
September 30, 2009
MARANELLO, ITALY(AP) —Ferrari reached an agreement to sign driver Fernando Alonso on Wednesday, replacing Kimi Raikkonen starting next season.
The Formula One team said in a statement it’s a three-year agreement with the two-time world champion.
“I am delighted and very proud to become a Ferrari driver,” Alonso said. “Driving for Ferrari is a dream for anyone who takes part in this sport, and today I am lucky enough to realize that dream.”
Alonso and Felipe Massa will be Ferrari’s drivers next year. Giancarlo Fisichella will act as backup.
“We are very proud to welcome to our team another winning driver, who has demonstrated his amazing talent by winning two World Championships in his career to date,” the statement read. “Of course, we wish to thank Kimi for everything he has done during his time with Ferrari. In his first year with us, he managed to win the drivers’ title, thus making his contribution to Ferrari’s history, and he played a vital role in our taking of the constructors’ title in 2007 and 2008.”
Alonso will join Ferrari from Renault, with whom he won the F1 title in 2005 and ’06. His best finish so far this year is third place at last week’s Singapore Grand Prix.
Raikkonen joined Ferrari in 2007 from McLaren, winning the title in his first year and finishing third in 2008. He is fifth in the driver’s championship, 44 points behind leader Jenson Button. The Finn is expected to return to McLaren.
“With common consent, we have agreed to terminate the contract binding me to Ferrari to the end of 2010, one year ahead of schedule,” Raikkonen said. “I am very sad to be leaving a team with which I have spent three fantastic years, during which time I won plenty of races.
“I have always felt at home with everyone here and I will have many happy memories of my time with the team.”
It has been a poor year by Ferrari’s high standards. Raikkonen recorded the team’s first podium finish at the Monaco GP, the sixth race of the year, and earned its only win at the Belgium GP.
In July, Massa was sidelined for the rest of the season following a life-threatening accident at the Hungarian GP.
Seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher was brought back to replace Massa, but ended the comeback because of a neck injury. Test driver Luca Badoer competed in the European and Belgian races before Giancarlo Fisichella was brought in for the rest of the season from Force India.
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Can anyone catch the Hendrick drivers?
September 30, 2009
DOVER, Del. (AP)—Chad Knaus slung the champagne bottle over his shoulder theway a businessman would carry his jacket after a long day of work. The casualapproach seemed fitting for Jimmie Johnson’s crew chief. Winning a Chase raceand celebrating in Victory Lane really has become just another day in the officefor every member of the No. 48 team.
Johnson’s win at Dover International Speedway made Hendrick Motorsports 2for 2 in Chase for the championship races. Mark Martin kicked off the 10-racerun with a win and helped make Hendrick 1-2 in the championship pointsstandings.
Lurking behind them in eighth place is teammate Jeff Gordon, a two-timewinner of this week’s race at Kansas Speedway.
FILE — This is a March 29, 20… AP – Sep 30, 10:30 am EDT FILE — This is a March 29, 20… AP – Sep 30, 10:30 am EDT
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That the Hendrick drivers—except for non-Chase driver Dale Earnhardt Jr.—would be in the hunt for the Sprint Cup title is about as surprising as anotherbaseball postseason with the Red Sox, Yankees, Angels and Phillies. Johnson andGordon have seven championships, and the 50-year-old Martin is in prime positionto shed the “best driver to never win it all” label that has been attached tohim for years. Holding the points lead, this might be his year.
Nine other drivers want to make the Hendrick boys work for a championship.But it could be too late to end team owner Rick Hendrick’s three-year run ofchampionships.
Brian Vickers, Carl Edwards and Kasey Kahne, 10th-12th in the Chasestandings, need top-five runs and an immediate string of bad luck for thedrivers up front to have any realistic shot at contention.
“Everybody is going to have a 15th-or-worse-place finish somewhere alongthe way,” Gordon said. “It could possibly be worse than that when you get toTalladega and Martinsville, those places where the unknown is there.”
Johnson finished 15th in two Chase races last season en route to thisrecord-tying third straight Cup championship. He won three times, includingKansas, and finished in the top 10 the other five times. Do that again, and itmight be impossible for any driver to catch Johnson. He’s off to a fast start inthis year’s Chase, finishing fourth and first.
“If you get off to a quick start, it makes your life a little easier,”Johnson said. “It doesn’t change the fact that you could have a problem lateron in the Chase. It’s 10 races and they all the play the same.”
Johnson also has a record 15 Chase victories since the format’s inception in2004. There’s a reason Johnson seemingly gets better as the season moves along.Yes, a Hendrick team will almost assuredly have the top engines, car andpersonnel in the sport, but it’s a commitment to winning on and off the track,every week, that has them driven to win.
“I think as the season progresses, we get smarter,” Knaus said. “Not thateverybody else doesn’t. But really as a group, we work together and try to getour drivers on the same page, try to get our crew chiefs and teams on the samepage.”
FILE — This is a Sept. 18, 20… AP – Sep 30, 10:24 am EDT
That all-for-one approach in which all four Hendrick teams share informationhas surprised a veteran like Martin. On the brink of walking away from NASCAR ahandful of times this decade, Martin has enjoyed a career renaissance atHendrick. He leads the series with six wins, winning the Chase race at NewHampshire, and enjoys a 10-point lead over Johnson in the standings.
“We race each other hard on the racetrack, but off the racetrack, we allwork for the same goal,” Martin said.
If any of the three Hendrick drivers are vulnerable over the final eightraces, it might be Martin. He’s had three finishes this season of 40 or worseand four others in the 30s. Neither Johnson nor Gordon have had a 40th-placefinish this season. Most of the poor finishes haven’t been Martin’s fault—hegot caught up in the Big One at Talladega for example—but the fact is he’s hadbad results. Get wrecked at unforgiving Talladega again in November and thissentimental title run could hit a massive stumbling block.
Gordon has the most work ahead to get in the thick of Chase contention. He’s122 points behind Martin and has to pass seven other drivers before he can parkin first place. He does have four titles, but has yet to win one in the Chaseformat. Gordon talked at Dover about how the 10-race format doesn’t necessarilyfit his style and wouldn’t complain if the old system came back. Of course itwon’t, and Gordon realizes that. He also knows he can find a way to make itwork.
“You can have a great year, you can win as many races as you want, butyou’ve got to have everything going your way in those final 10,” Gordon said.“I still think it comes down to the best team, overall team, that’s going towin the championship.”
Wins help in the Chase, and those trips to Victory Lane have dried up forGordon. He has just one this year and was winless last season. He was seventh inthe final standings last year and runner-up in 2007—the closest he’s come tothat fifth championship since 2001.
Gordon wants to keep that championship at Hendrick, and he wants to be thedriver to bring it home.
“There’s going to be times where your teammates are going to out run you,they are going to do a better job of all of the details and you have to givethem credit when they do it,” he said. “But it makes you work that much harderto get those details put together for the next race so that you can go out andaccomplish the same thing.”
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Button moves closer to F1 drivers’ title (PA SportsTicker)
September 30, 2009
By CHRIS LINES AP Auto Racing Writer
TOKYO(AP)—Formula One championship leader Jenson Button was the major winner at last weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix, even if English compatriot Lewis Hamilton took the checkered flag.
While Hamilton indulged in the customary champagne celebrations from the top of the podium, Button moved a step closer to succeeding Hamilton as Formula One’s world champion.
The two British drivers’ seasons have been a study in contrasts.
Hamilton’s title defense crumbled quickly when his McLaren wasn’t competitive during the first half of the season. He has since rebounded, winning or taking the pole position in four of the past five races.
Button won six of the first seven races of the season for the new Brawn GP team, taking a firm grip on the title early. But his once formidable lead has been steadily eroded by teammate Rubens Barrichello.
When Button qualified 12th in Singapore, it seemed as if his championship lead would be sliced even further. But a canny drive on a bumpy and twisty Singapore street circuit that didn’t suit his smooth driving style helped Button finish fifth – a place ahead of Barrichello.
Prior to Singapore, Barrichello trailed by 14 points with four races left. Now he is 15 down with three races to go, lifting the Brazilian’s required catch-up rate from 3.5 points per race to 5 points per race.
While Button knows his lead will be difficult to overhaul, he is acutely aware that Hamilton lost the 2007 championship after leading by 17 points with two races left.
Brawn GP boss Ross Brawn has promised both drivers a clean fight for the title, declaring there will be no team orders or differential strategy to help one or the other.
That stands to reason, given there is very little chance of Brawn being caught by Red Bull for the constructors’ championship.
Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel was in position to make a difference in both the team and drivers’ title contests when he was running second for much of the Singapore GP, but his race was ruined by a pit drive-through penalty for carelessly speeding in pit lane. He finished fourth.
Red Bull teammate Mark Webber spun off when his right front brake failed, ending the Australian driver’s slim hopes of mounting his own title challenge.
With the contest for the drivers’ title nearing a climax, F1 fittingly moves on this weekend to Suzuka in Japan – site of several memorable showdowns.
A precedent for a teammate title fight came at Suzuka 20 years ago, when McLaren teammates Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna crashed into each other, handing Prost the championship. While relationships within the Brawn garage have understandably become a little more tense in recent races, the situation has not deteriorated to anything like the mutual antipathy of Prost and Senna.
The return of the Japan GP to Suzuka for the first time in three years has pleased all drivers, as the circuit is regarded as one of the most complete tests of car and driver on the F1 calendar.
As much as the action on the track is highly anticipated, events in the paddock are likely to be just as intriguing.
The standard late-season rumor mill regarding driver’s futures is building. One key signing was announced on Wednesday, when Ferrari said it had reached an agreement on a three-year deal to have Fernando Alonso replace Kimi Raikkonen starting next season.
Raikkonen has been linked with a move back to his old team, McLaren, to partner with Hamilton.
BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica was considered the driver most likely to replace Alonso at Renault, while Williams’ Nico Rosberg was also rumored to be moving on, with Brawn topping the list of potential destinations.
The possibility that one of the Brawn drivers will have to make way for the German only adds to the stakes in their season-ending contest.
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Finally, NASCAR's merger mania comes to an end (NASCAR.com)
September 30, 2009
Fireworks pierced the South Florida night sky as the new champion stood on the makeshift stage, hugging his silver trophy. It had been a long journey for Joey Logano, from all those teen-aged expectations to those trying first few years on NASCAR's premier circuit to this, the manifestation of greatness that so many had thought possible. Flashbulbs popped and confetti floated and giant champagne bottles were uncorked as the young driver held the Sprint Cup victoriously over his head.
At last, he stepped to the microphone. "I'd like to thank my teammates," the new champion said. "All 34 of them."
Indeed, it was a watershed day in more ways than one. The evening marked not only the first championship for Logano, but also the first for NASCAR's new megateam, the result of all the sponsorship shortages and declining manufacturer support that forced one merger after another. The 35-car behemoth—officially called Hendrick-Earnhardt-Roush-Stewart-Childress-Haas-Penske-Petty-Gibbs-Toyota Motorsports with Felix Sabates, but known as HERSCH for short—came to Homestead-Miami Speedway with the title virtually secured. Logano needed only an 18th-place finish to claim the championship, and despite his poor qualifying effort, he got it after each of his teammates dutifully moved out of the way.
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The new organization has been controversial, to say the least. Detractors say having so many cars under one roof naturally has an adverse effect on competition, while the co-team owners involved claim it was the only way for them to remain competitive. The result has been starting fields featuring a few single-car holdouts like Robby Gordon, a handful of start-and-parkers, and 35 vehicles competing under the HERSCH banner. Carl Kiekhaefer's record of 16 consecutive victories by a single organization—a mark set in 1956 and thought unbreakable—went down in race No. 17.
How did it get to this point? It all began with the economic recession of 2008-09, which plunged auto manufacturers into bankruptcy, forced many companies to reduce their marketing and sponsorship budgets, and led most NASCAR teams to slash payroll. There had been a certain degree of wheeling and dealing before that, with several organizations selling part of their teams to outside interests in order to raise capital. But the longer the recession lasted and the harder it became to find sponsorship money, the more desperate teams became. In late 2007, the organizations owned by Chip Ganassi and Teresa Earnhardt joined forces. The next year George Gillett and Richard Petty merged, and subsequently absorbed Yates Racing.
And then things got kind of crazy. The ties between Richard Petty Motorsports and Roush-Fenway Racing became tighter, as the RPM organization basically moved into the Roush shop. The technical alliance between Hendrick Motorsports and Stewart-Haas Racing grew so intimate that even Tony Stewart started showing up for work in a starched white oxford-knit shirt. NASCAR realized what was going on, and that its four-car organizational cap was useless, and did away with the rule in early 2011.
Suddenly, the floodgates were open. Roush announced what everyone had known all along, that it was pulling the strings at RPM, and rolled out the new "Roush and Richard" eight-car team. Not to be outdone, Rick Hendrick dispatched with all appearances and formally took control of Stewart-Haas. All the Toyota teams other than Joe Gibbs Racing merged into one team under the Toyota Racing Development umbrella. Continued sponsorship struggles led Richard Childress and Earnhardt-Ganassi to join forces. Seeing what was happening and not wanting to be the last teams left standing in this high-stakes game of musical chairs, Gibbs and Penske Racing struck a unique, cross-manufacturer merger that would field three Dodges and three Toyotas.
And for a while, that's how it remained, with five superteams dominating the NASCAR landscape. But with the well-intentioned but ultimately unenforceable car cap out of the way, there was no reason to maintain the status quo. Things became even further intermingled in 2013, when the continuing decline in auto sales led the sport's manufacturers—facing heated competition from Schwinn, which had emerged as the world leader in wheeled conveyance—to announce that they would combine all monetary and technical support. All the walls that had once stood between NASCAR teams had been torn down, and the mergers resumed at a frantic pace.
Roush and Petty bought out Gibbs and Penske. Childress, Earnhardt and Ganassi struck a partnership with Hendrick and Stewart. The two resulting organizations waged a heated battle for the Toyota team, the assets of which were eventually split by a federal mediator. All the while, secret backroom meetings were being held, and on the day before the 2015 Daytona 500, the inevitable became reality. HERSCH was born. Sprint Cup had become a one-team sport. The merger mania had finally ended only because there was no one left to merge with.
NASCAR tried to implement some measures to help the few remaining holdouts become more competitive. The series mandated a new spec engine available to all teams for $299. It expanded the Chase to 30 cars. It began inverting the field after the first 200 laps of every race. Nothing worked. HERSCH motored along, steamrolling any competitors and gobbling up all available sponsorship. It's estimated that the new organization will rake in an estimated $50 million this year from winnings and bonus money alone. Reports have surfaced at Homestead that the team may expand to add seats for Danica Patrick, Lewis Hamilton, John Force, Valentino Rossi and Lance Armstrong in 2016.
But those issues can wait. This night belonged to Logano, who reveled in the spoils of his first championship. And for NASCAR's new juggernaut, there are more pressing matters, like the upcoming postseason awards banquet. Just how are they going to seat 11 co-owners at the head table?
The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
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Hockenheim’s Formula 1 future secured (PA SportsTicker)
September 30, 2009
FRANKFURT(AP) —Hockenheim will host one of Germany’s two Formula One races through 2018.
The city authorities Wednesday the contract between the Formula One Association, the mayor of Hockenheim and the company that runs the circuit has been signed.
The FOA and the Hockenheimring GmbH have agreed to share “business risks and opportunities” from running Formula One races on the circuit, which has lost money in recent years, according to the statement.
The German Grand Prix alternates between the Nuerburgring and Hockenheim. Next year’s race is at Hockenheim.
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Hendrick screens documentary of 25 years in NASCAR
September 30, 2009
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP)—Rick Hendrick is owner of the most successful organization in NASCAR. He has 185 victories, 12 championships and three drivers in title contention this season.
Things have never been better.
And still, he’s been an emotional wreck the past few weeks.
In honor of his 25th anniversary in NASCAR, Hendrick opened up his life— warts and all—for a feature-length documentary about his climb to the top. He screened it Tuesday night for 1,300 family, friends and employees, and the anxiety leading into the evening was overwhelming.
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“I sweated going up there tonight more than anything I’ve done in a long, long time,” he admitted after sitting through “Together: The Hendrick Motorsports Story.”
It was an emotional evening for Hendrick and his family, who allowed the NASCAR Media Group to tell their story. Through interviews, archival footage, racing sequences and family photographs, it covers his humble beginnings as the son of a tobacco farmer in Virginia. The only thing he knew was that he didn’t want to follow his father into that business.
“Pop knew (Hendrick) wasn’t going to be a farmer,” longtime friend Frank Edwards says early in the film. “He left him something to do on the farm one day, and when he got home, (Hendrick) had paid somebody to do it.”
Hendrick’s early love was cars, and he figured out quickly that selling them was a lot more lucrative than fixing them. The film details his growth into one of the nation’s largest car dealers who then branched out into NASCAR with very limited beginnings.
His first team, All-Star Racing, barely made it to the 1984 season-opener and then struggled to stay afloat. Facing a win-or-fold situation in the sixth race of the season, Geoff Bodine gave Hendrick the victory that allowed him to continue racing.
Yes, the film covers his 1997 guilty plea to mail fraud for his role in the American Honda Motor Company bribery scandal.
Yes, his near-fatal fight with leukemia is included.
And the 2004 crash that killed 10, including Hendrick’s son, brother, twin nieces and several key employees is heavily documented through emotional interviews and footage of those lost that October day when their plane slammed into a mountain en route to a race in Martinsville, Va.
It was rough for Hendrick to watch, but spokesman Jesse Essex, who is credited as a producer on the film, convinced him that it all needed to be included.
“Do you pretend like the crash never happened? Do you pretend like I never got sick? Pretend like I didn’t go through the legal problems?” Hendrick asked. “Yeah, all that happened. If we didn’t tell it all like it happened, then we were phony. And I would be ashamed of it.”
In the end, Hendrick was thrilled with the final product. It’s narrated by actor Tom Cruise, a friend since 1984 who donated his time to the movie and has been a recent Hendrick guest at several Sprint Cup races.
ABC will show a shortened version of the film, which runs almost two hours, before the Oct. 11 race at California. The full-length version goes on sale Oct. 31, and a portion of the proceeds from DVD and Blu-ray Disc sales will go to the Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte.
Among those attending Tuesday night were current Hendrick drivers Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr., as well as former drivers Darrell Waltrip, Ken Schrader and Bodine.
They got to relive the early days, as the late Tim Richmond and crew chief Harry Hyde were brought back to life through old video clips. There was Richmond participating in an all-female aerobics class, stopping an interview to check out a pretty blonde passing by, and drinking the victory-spray beer after a win.
Hyde was his cantankerous self, shown arguing in the pits and forming his unusual alliance with Richmond.
Also brought back to life in the movie was Hendrick’s father, “Papa” Joe, son, Ricky, and brother John. There’s also a portion for engine builder Randy Dorton, an original Hendrick employee who was killed in the plane crash.
It was almost too much for Hendrick, who had seen only a few clips of the film before he screened it privately last Friday.
“I saw two partial clips about two, three weeks ago, and it put me in a funk for about three days,” he said. “I don’t know if I ever would have watched a video of Ricky anytime soon, or John, or my dad—that’s the first time I’ve seen any tape of my dad, or heard his voice, since he died. If I hadn’t seen it one time before, I wouldn’t have been able to sit through it (at the premiere), I don’t think.”
But Hendrick pressed forward with the film as a tribute to his 500-plus employees, who he believes are actually the ones honored in the film. Affection for the boss pours out in interviews from tough racers who genuinely care for Hendrick. During the outtakes—one of which shows Hendrick clumsily climbing the pit wall at Homestead after Johnson’s third title last November—a list of every employee rolls up the right side of the screen.
“I am real proud of the organization, real proud of the fact that we can go through these kinds of things and we get stronger,” he said after. “Those guys feel it and they don’t mind saying how they feel about the company, and I don’t mind saying how I feel about them, and I just think that’s special.”
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NASCAR, teams consider streamlining license works (NASCAR.com)
September 29, 2009
NASCAR and the sport's top teams are discussing ways to rescue their troubled licensing business by bringing all of the team and driver rights under one banner, marking the first major step toward creating NASCAR Properties.
Those rights currently are splintered from team to team, which means a licensee might visit five teams to acquire five licenses. A centralized agency such as NASCAR Properties would make all of those licenses available from one entity like the other professional leagues do.
The groundwork for NASCAR Properties was set Sept. 24 during a day-long meeting at the governing body's new office in Charlotte.
More than 20 teams representing the top 40 or so cars were expected to attend, including high-ranking executives such as Roush Fenway Racing president Geoff Smith, Joe Gibbs Racing president J.D. Gibbs, Hendrick Motorsports general manager Marshall Carlson and Richard Petty Motorsports president Rick Russell, among others. Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s licensing chief, Joe Mattes, said he's on board as well, which is critical because Earnhardt traditionally has accounted for about a third of the sport's licensed merchandise sales.
Paul Brooks, NASCAR's senior vice president and a driving force behind the idea, said officials from his office have been meeting with teams individually since the summer, but the summit at NASCAR's office brought all of those executives together for the first time.
"We are exploring the potential benefits of a unified industry approach to licensing," Brooks said. "The ongoing dialogue with all stakeholders has been very positive and collaborative, and that is truly encouraging."
How NASCAR Properties takes shape remains to be seen, but most team representatives want to see it run by a board of team, NASCAR and track executives. A revenue-sharing model will pay teams and drivers based on their sales, so every team's cut will not be equal.
"What we're trying to get to is a model that will make the whole pie bigger," said John Bickford, general manager of Hendrick Gordon Licensing, which represents Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin, three of the sport's top sellers. "Jeff Gordon has had a pretty big slice of the pie for a while, but I'd bet he'd take a smaller slice of a bigger pie. And a bigger pie helps everyone."
Several team officials agreed that there's significant momentum behind this movement to aggregate rights, especially with the industry's leading licensee, Motorsports Authentics, believed by many team officials to be on the brink of bankruptcy. MA, which is jointly owned by the sport's top two track owners, International Speedway Corp. and Speedway Motorsports Inc., produces and distributes the lion's share of hats, T-shirts and die-cast cars that are sold trackside each week.
MA's struggles reflect the declines in NASCAR's licensing industry, which peaked by all accounts in 2002 and has shrunk since. The revenue for the leading licensing giant at that time, Action Performance, was more than $400 million and it employed 500-plus workers.
MA, which was formed by consolidating Action and Team Caliber, had revenue of about $200 million in 2008, and industry sources say its 2009 revenue could be as low as $125 million with fewer than 200 employees.
Those sharp drops have created a sense of urgency among NASCAR and the teams to come up with a new licensing model.
"If MA were to go bankrupt, it would be pretty embarrassing for the NASCAR world," said one high-ranking team executive.
No one from MA was available for comment.
Other leagues, such as the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB, have entities that hold the exclusive trademark and licensing rights for each team, but that model has never been used in NASCAR, where each team is an independent contractor. The teams have always handled their licensing businesses in-house in the past.
The question becomes whether all those teams are willing to work together to have "One voice, one vision," said Mattes, the vice president of licensing and marketing at JR Motorsports. "It's important that we get everybody on the same page, and [before this meeting] we're not even in the same library."
While there are few examples of race teams and other entities aggregating their rights under one NASCAR banner, the most prolific was the landmark 2001 TV deal that brought the sport its six-year, $2.4 billion contract. It marked the first time that TV rights were sold as a consolidated package, whereas before each track had sold their TV rights separately.
While it's typically not easy to get all of the teams to agree on anything that pools their rights, the despair of the licensing industry has forced them to consider a new concept. Most team executives say that revenue from licensing ranks third or fourth behind sponsorship, winnings and for those that have them, engine leasing programs. A handful of team executives said that MA has been late on royalty payments this year, further eroding from that revenue line.
With sales down and rights fragmented from team to team, Brooks and his group at NASCAR, including Blake Davidson, managing director of licensed products, brought the concept of NASCAR Properties to the teams over the summer months. NASCAR has been studying its licensing business since 2007, industry sources say, because sales have been off.
"NASCAR is presenting a concept that will position everyone together and carry licensing and merchandising for several years to come," Bickford said. "This is not only something that can help the sport short-term, but also make it better 10 years from now.
"This sport has never been about grouping everyone together, but this is a chance for us to all push the ball uphill collectively."
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Massa gets back to kart racing in Brazil
September 29, 2009
SAO PAULO (AP)—Formula One driver Felipe Massa got behind the wheels of akart, practicing for the first time in public since sustaining multiple skullfractures in a crash.
TV showed Massa racing with his Ferrari uniform on a red kart in Sao Pauloon Tuesday. Local media said he also had raced for a few laps on Monday.
The Brazilian was hospitalized for nine days and underwent surgery followinghis life-threatening, high-speed crash in qualifying for the Hungarian GrandPrix on July 25.
The 28-year-old Massa had said he wants to race at the Brazilian GP nextmonth, but Ferrari hinted he won’t be back until next year. Massa expects toparticipate in a charity karting race Nov. 27-29 in Florianopolis.
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