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Collaboration in NASCAR reaches high point

Traveling with Toyota executives in 2014, Brent Dewar was struck by a suggestion made to him.

“‘We’d like to have a manufacturers’ council, where we can come together to talk about short-, medium- and long-term initiatives,’” Dewar recalled a Toyota executive saying.

Dewar, on a listening tour at the time after taking over as NASCAR chief operating officer, brought the idea to NASCAR’s two other manufacturers, Chevrolet and Ford. With both of them receptive, NASCAR formed the council, which now meets about four times a year heading into its third season of existence.

In some ways, the cutthroat rivalries and seemingly insurmountable disagreements between NASCAR stakeholders

Teams have worked more closely to help the sport identify ways to cut costs.
Photo by: Getty Images
remain to this day. But pushed by downticks in key business metrics, the introduction of new-mold executives and the formation of the Race Team Alliance, the sport has shifted in recent years toward a more formalized, process-driven governance model akin to what’s seen in stick-and-ball leagues.

“We realized after the first OEM meeting that we were onto something special,” Dewar said. “What we learned is you’ve got to solve some of the short-term things, and we immediately did that and then started to work on medium- to long-term (objectives).”

The formation of the manufacturers’ council led to the creation of councils for team owners, drivers and tracks.

That’s significant considering that NASCAR has a unique business model, with independent contractors composed of wide-ranging stakeholders, which has proven to create friction over the decades.

“There’s a lot of stakeholders in this sport, and it has proven to make certain things a little more difficult because without everybody understanding everybody’s position, you kind of tend to just look out for your own interests,” said Steve Lauletta, president of Chip Ganassi Racing. “The collaboration and open dialogue we have now allows everybody to understand that you have to give a little to get to what’s going to work for the entire industry.”

NASCAR is continuing to try to reverse what has now become a nearly decade-long decline from the sport’s peak television and attendance numbers. But while the jury is still out on some of the efforts to arrest the declines, the effects of the increased collaboration are starting to be seen.

Among the results are the recently unveiled competition format changes, which break races into segments, plus the charter agreement, which laid the ground rules for NASCAR’s new form of governance. The charter system gave team owners a form of enterprise value and granted them a greater say in major decisions in the sport.

NASCAR’s team owner council meets at least four times a year, and the council gets consulted by NASCAR on prospective changes. The council can choose to endorse or not endorse those prospective changes, and the charter agreement gives the sanctioning body incentive to find alignment with the teams.

In order to keep stakeholders apprised of developments across the industry, all committee meetings start by going over what other committees recently met to talk about. Some of the committees have even formed subcommittees, including a marketing/sponsorship subcommittee and public relations subcommittee.

Steve Newmark, president of Roush Fenway Racing, pointed out that while the charter agreement has specific language regarding when NASCAR does and does not have to consult teams on prospective changes, the added collaboration has led to where the sides are now consulting each other on matters even when the charter may not specifically require it.

Marshall Carlson, president of Hendrick Motorsports, recalled sketching out the first ideas for what eventually came

NASCAR executives pose with charter owners at Daytona last year.
Photo by: Getty Images
to be the new racing format changes while talking four or five years ago with a few team executives, including J.D. Gibbs of Joe Gibbs Racing.

Executives widely cited as being influential to the new era of collaboration on the sanctioning body side include Dewar; Steve Phelps, NASCAR’s executive vice president and chief global sales and marketing officer, who had a long stint with the NFL; Eric Nyquist, senior vice president of communications and technology development, who also had a stint with the NFL; and Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR’s executive vice president and chief racing development officer. On the team side, Rob Kauffman, co-owner of Chip Ganassi Racing who used to be an investment banker, is widely credited for his collaborative thinking, as is Newmark.

“We all have had good relationships, but the conversations before were really more one-to-one,” Carlson said. “It transitioned into a place of many-to-many. And then as time went on, it started to get cross-constituency. … It’s been a progression; it wasn’t a light-switch (situation).”

Some team sponsors say they’re seeing increased collaboration in the sport helping them out as well. Matthew Haas, managing director of marketing for AAA Mid-Atlantic, said that since the RTA formed, he’s noticed an increased comfort level from the teams it has sponsored when seeking to talk to other teams throughout the garage about driving policy sales.


“Just to have the lines of communications opened up in ways they weren’t before to other race teams — it doesn’t feel anymore like, ‘Well, I’m a [Richard Childress Racing] partner, so the only team I can talk to is RCR,’” Haas said. “It feels like those doors are opening; I wouldn’t say they’re wide open. … But I know my executives are really excited just that those conversations have started.”

Multiple executives cited an increased comfort among stakeholders because, under the new system, industry stakeholders are more likely to feel like their voices are being heard. On the flip side, others pointed out the added work — and, at times, candid conversations — that industry executives now must deal with as committee members.

“There’s two parts to it. There’s the practical part, and then also kind of almost an emotional part to it,” said George Pyne, founder and CEO of Bruin Sports Capital and former COO of NASCAR. “Emotionally, they have to formalize that everybody is part of a group and is working together. … And I think having a platform to formalize that input is helpful.”

Despite the progress made, many executives pointed out that in many ways the sport is just hitting the tip of the collaboration iceberg. Proposed ways to further that collaboration include cross-committee meetings to tackle big issues. Sources said that among the topics being worked on in the marketing subcommittee is making it easier for team sponsors to navigate the sport. And numerous executives around the sport noted that the extremely competitive nature of sponsorship hunting continues to stymie team collaboration from reaching its peak, lest a team reveal a key advantage in helping it land its primary source of annual income.

An example of cross-committee collaboration was seen with the competition change meetings, which included all stakeholders and has been touted by executives like Marcus Smith, president and CEO of Speedway Motorsports Inc., as one of the most collaborative processes they’ve been a part of in NASCAR.

“We all had assumptions of what the other thought; maybe promoters think one thing about what drivers are willing to do or teams are willing to do, but we learned a lot about each other’s goals, objectives, challenges and opportunities,” Smith said. “It was very healthy to go through that.”

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