"A Day in the Life" is a new feature in SBD examining the daily habits of interesting personalities in sports business. This week, Roush Fenway Racing President STEVE NEWMARK talks race weekend debriefings and explains his love for coaching youth baseball.
5:00am: Tuesday is the earliest day of the week for me because we have a company-wide meeting at 6:30am with the entire shop. That generally necessitates a wake-up for me about 5:00 because I live in South Charlotte and I’ve got about a 45-minute commute up to Concord. On the way to work it’s either SiriusXM NASCAR Radio or ESPN Radio.
6:30: I get to the shop a few minutes before 6:30 and I generally will meet with (Competition Dirs) TOMMY WHEELER and KEVIN KIDD, and the three of us will go ahead and speak to the entire shop. If there are any business or sponsor type discussions or announcements, we’ll usually talk about that. That will generally take about 20 minutes and then everybody is dispersed to go back to their regularly scheduled jobs and get cranking. Then I will usually sit down with some of the guys on the competition side to discuss any driver issues we have.
7:15: I’m back at my office -- that first meeting happens at our main shop and our corporate building is separate from that. So I’ll come back down here, I’ll probably eat a Quest bar or something like that at my desk and go through emails.
9:00: We have a regularly scheduled weekly catch-up call with Fenway Sports Group. Those guys work with us pretty closely, so our sales team and the Fenway sales team get together to go through prospect lists, where we are in certain stages, what events we have coming up, what reach-outs we’ve done, invitations we’ve given to races.
10:00: I head back up to the shop. We have our post-race driver debrief meeting. Usually JACK ROUSH has landed -- he gets to the shop around 9:00 on Tuesdays. The meeting is with drivers, crew chiefs, engineers and other folks from the leadership team. One of the head engineers goes through a debrief about everything that happened in the race. We go through every aspect of engine performance, brake performance, get feedback from the drivers, issues that they had, if we had made changes was it positive, what we noted from other teams.
12:00: Sometimes the afternoons depend on what schedule I’m on. Jack is a creature of habit and generally wants to go to the Olive Garden -- Kevin and Tommy will do that. I will somewhat infrequently. If I can break away it is my time for exercise, so I go work out in the gym with some of the crew guys and just some of the folks who work in the shop here. I usually get my butt kicked. Most of these guys are younger, bigger and in better shape than I am.
1:00: I will generally eat something quick at my desk -- Viva Chicken, Chick-fil-A or Jason’s Deli -- when I get back from my workout and then Tuesday afternoons are generally meeting free. I’ll spend a little bit of time on Tuesdays dealing with Race Team Alliance items. I am the co-Chair for the Team Owner Council with (NASCAR President) BRENT DEWAR. I’ll generally have some dialogue with Brent or (Chief Racing Development Officer) STEVE O'DONNELL or (COO) STEVE PHELPS about initiatives we’re jointly pursuing.
5:00: Both of my kids (SCOTT -- 11th grade and ANDREW -- 8th grade) play baseball for school. Since we’re right in the middle of that season, I will generally go to one of their games. This is the first year that I have not been a coach because they’ve both aged out of Little League. It is much more relaxing to just to be able to sit in the stands and not have to worry about coaching, even though I love coaching -- I did it for 10 years.
7:30: We’re home and we scramble to get dinner. Then we (he and his girlfriend MEGAN, who lives with them) punt the boys off to do homework and will try to download a show before bed. We watch "NARCOS," "GAME OF THRONES," "BIG BANG THEORY." If there’s sports on, that will basically trump everything. Any UNC basketball. I didn’t go to school there but grew up in Chapel Hill, so that’s where my loyalties are. I’m strangely a big Vikings fan -- I inherited that through my dad. We’re big Dodgers fans, too.
10:00: Probably going to bed between 10-10:30.
Newmark's days are full of meetings and calls, but he still finds time to escape to the race shop's gymSTEVE NEWMARK
