The harshest truth of all, when it comes to motorsport, is that this entire genre of sport is dying. Looking at the landscape of racing, one has to conclude that there are only one, maybe two, top-tier, profitable motorsports series worldwide. Everything else is in trouble.

Why is this happening? Largely, it comes down to the presentation. Other racing series are not compelling television, as it stands. NASCAR and F1 present much more interesting stories and personalities. At the track, unless you are well informed, the experience can be dull and repetitive.

There had always been an tacit connection between even the highest-horsepower racing series and consumer-purchased cars. However, the gap between what you could buy or build and what is racing on the track was never as great as it is now. 200-mph methanol-powered winged cars are at the height of racing technology, but consumers are now buying small 55-mph hybrid bricks-on-wheels in greater and greater numbers. Cars aren’t something you tinker with anymore, they’re on a service contract. Who knows what to fix on an electric engine, anyway? A generation of gearheads and car tinkerers are disappearing, and these potential fans really can’t relate to racing as well as we used to.

With the door closing on the tradition of motor racing, it is getting closer and closer to the day where motorsport will become irrelevant. But, the thing about closing doors is that if you can get through them just before they shut for good, you have an incredible opportunity. Being “the last great racing series” can be lucrative.

With the declining ratings, with the gap between racing and real-world cars, and with the evaporating sponsorship, motorsport has been dealt several blows – but it is still there. There is still a base of support, and there are still more fans to be found.

Basic Elements for Success

Throughout this site, a lot of ideas have been put forth. When you strip away the individual proposals, you are left with three basic concepts. These themes provide the structure upon which the series must be built:

1. •Delight
   

2. •Innovation
   

3. •Process
   

The whole point of having a racing series is be the environment where people can do what they love to do. Whether it be promoter, series, teams, sponsors or fans, an open wheel racing series is the place to fulfill your dreams, and follow your bliss. This magical experience is a great race. Promoters desire to be part of history and build a true event. The series wants to do what they love. The teams want to compete against the best. Sponsors want to be part of something great. Fans want a great time at the race. Creating this sense of delight is what drives this enterprise of racing.

Innovation is the process of creating and thinking your way forward. By working with smart people and competing against smart people, innovation is no longer a buzzword, but a method of survival. Promoters must innovate to find new fans and keep old ones. The Series must innovate to create better competition. Teams must innovate new ways to win. Fostering an atmosphere of constant innovation means you must let strong minds move things forward rather fall prey to ego, greed or the past. Innovate or die.

No business can survive without understanding and maintaining the bottom line. Profit is the reward for doing business well, and profit is welcome in any business. Yet the prosperity of a business comes through not what you make, but how well you make it.  Understanding your process means understanding what you do well and focusing on that. You achieve this by keeping outside influences from affecting your business and keeping those things under your control from getting out of control. By implementing simple cost containment through shared resources, the bottom line of racing can be stabilized and innovation can prosper.

Or, you can say that delight is passion, innovating forward is speed and process is strategy. Speed, Strategy and Passion.

Today

What is it that makes open wheel racing special? What is the essence of the sport? Our style of car, our style of competition and our traditions of challenging the participants like no other. These things are what makes open wheel what it is.

However, today we find ourselves having fallen into the trap of managed competition, and relying too heavily on a “formula” that is designed to create artificial means of racing, and create cost containment through dumbing things down, defeating innovation.

With sponsorship as hard as it has ever been to find, a new economic model must be built to keep teams afloat and competitive. Sponsorship can no longer support open-wheel racing in the US, and needs to be eliminated from the basic equation.

As motorsport finds itself in a new technological world of entertainment, its’ challenge is to find a ways to bring racing to this generation, and more importantly to bring fans to the events. With the general trend in sports moving towards strong live events and away from TV, racing finds itself in the right place at the right time. Now, we must capitalize on this trend quickly, partnering with great promoters to build a series of strong events that capture the attention of fans.

While TV sports are declining in ratings, the race broadcast is still the best promotional tool for racing, and must be made a compelling viewing experience. It is still the way most fans find their way into the fold.

But as a marketing tool, the TV broadcast is mostly visible to those already watching. To grow the series, a major effort must be made to market the series aggressively and intelligently, as any other consumer product would be. Using all partners involved in the series to shoulder the burden of marketing is the most effective way to bring this brand of racing to the mainstream fan.

Rather that trying to make “adjustments” to the way racing does business to better fit the world it operates in, we must decide on radical change. This commitment must be total, without worrying about the past. Whole concepts of sponsorship, television, marketing and promotion must be approached anew, building these aspects of the business as if nothing had proceeded it.

What it is time for is our last move. If nothing happens, time will pass us by. Cars will cease to exist as we know them and car racing will become an antique. We know that what we have today will eventually fail unless it is “saved,” although no one can identify what “saved” means, or who would do it.

The only choice we really have is to re-make racing anew. To do that, we’re going to be willing to give up what we’ve got and take a risk. It’s not that big a risk anymore, as we have very little to lose. But if we all want to live on, doing what we love to do and thrilled at being a part of something that can be so fulfilling, then there really is no choice to make.