Marshall Pruett and IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard conclude their final batch of Q&A items for February's edition of '20 Questions.'
Marshall Pruett | Posted February 18, 2011 Fremont, CA
In part two of SPEED.com’s '20 Questions' interview for the month of February with IndyCar’s CEO, topics ranging from side-by-side restarts to digital media to financing the 2012 Indy car were covered. Randy Bernard was also kind enough to let us push our list of questions out to 22 by the end of our conversation.
Providing an answer to the 23rd question--one regarding his thoughts on changes to the Hulman & Company board of directors—was politely declined.
MARSHALL PRUETT: The side-by-side restarts you’ve implemented continue to cause a lot of anxiety amongst many of your drivers. Almost every single driver I’ve spoken with winces at the thought of starting side-by-side restarts at Indy, a place where you don’t want disasters happening during the centennial event. I even had one prominent driver insist I ask you if you’re aware how much greater the odds are that we’ll see a major restart-related crash.
RANDY BERNARD: It's a very valid question, and here's where I stand on it. I didn't just make this idea up. I didn't just wake up one morning and say, hey, let's try this. I woke up one morning and I had a call from Roger Penske and Chip Ganassi and they asked me to come to dinner with them. They sat down and said, hey, we need to do something about making our racing more competitive. And I point-blank asked them about the danger. And they said, listen, if we're really going to preach that our drivers are the best, they should be able to handle it.
And I've had some drivers pull me aside and ask me the same thing. Asked if I wanted to see more crashes, and that’s not the case. I know they've argued about that. But I'm not sure how much there really is to that argument. I mean, I think it’s a very high likelihood everything will go just fine. We want to improve the show safely, first of all. We aren’t coming up with ideas to add more danger. Never. That would never happen.
What I wanted to do is wait on making my decision on when and where we introduce this after I talked to NBC. As a partner of ours, it's very important that they give me their input. Does it help TV ratings or does it make a difference? If it doesn't make a difference, then what are we doing it for? That's kind of how I position it. And NBC loves it.
Now, people saying it’s going to be done first at Indianapolis--that’s all speculation. We haven’t said exactly when we’re going to do it. I wouldn't be surprised if we start the side-by-side restarts in St. Pete.
I think that what we’re looking at right now, again, is how it works and how long are the delays and what is NBC going to do with it and if NBC thinks it’s important. And we have a great new director, executive producer of NBC with Sam Flood, that’s going to oversee Versus as well. I was with him in Connecticut this week and it's very important to me that my partners are very involved in these decisions.
They are in this just as much as we are, and once we huddle up and agree on the best place to start doing it and if it will have the impact we want, we’ll let the final details come out. But we aren’t holding onto this as something that can only start at Indy. That’s important for people to know.
PRUETT: The IZOD IndyCar Series shares the calendar with a few different road racing series, offering fans some pretty cool twin-bill events to attend. Do you look at those series as allies—series with fans that IndyCar needs to appeal to, or do you see those series as rivals?
BERNARD: I don't look at them as competition. I think that that's why it's so important for us to differentiate our brands. I think that it's very important that IndyCar stands for the fastest, most versatile race cars and drivers in the world.
And if we do our job right and attract the very best drivers, then we will achieve our goals in open-wheel without being tied into their plans. We need to grow on our own, though. That’s the main thing.
I don't think it's a secret that we have a two-platform marketing plan. One is trying to attract endemics, which is the motorsports fan, and especially those 15 to 20 million that we lost in the mid 90’s. And the second is trying to reach the non-endemic.
Last time I checked, we had more than 300 million potential fans in the U.S. That means there's a heck of a lot of people that aren't watching IndyCar racing. We need them, and we’d like for fans of other types of racing to follow IndyCar racing, but we don’t plan our growth on any other series helping us to get back to where we once were. That’s on us.
PRUETT: When will we hear more about your plans for spicing up qualifying for the Indy 500? Some details seem have been making the rounds around, and if they are true, I think qualifying could be as exciting as the race.
BERNARD: Fairly soon. We've been analyzing everything right now and we've been waiting. I really want to wait until we have some momentum. We had some good momentum in January, but I don't want to do anything till after the Daytona 500. After that’s over, we’ll get a little more vocal. Timing is important, and I’ve stressed that to our PR department.
Right now, we’re looking six to eight weeks out and saying, okay, what would be the opportune time? And that can change quite dramatically if something happens. But I think we have a fantastic PR team assembled now. That has been an area of big attention for us. We now have Amy Konrath, who’s our VP. We have Denise Abbott as a VP and we have Steve Shunck as a VP, where before, we had one person trying to oversee it all.
Those three all have specific areas that they're focusing on. Denise is more structured around mainstream media and entertainment. Steve Shunck is a purist, a traditionalist, and brings that aspect to our team. And Amy is our strategist, who is leaning towards the when and where and how.
I guess that’s a long and roundabout answer, but with the football season ending and Daytona right after it, my staff is working on hitting the right timing for a bunch of things to make sure we’re in the news cycle in a way that benefits IndyCar.
PRUETT: A few current and former IndyCar drivers—let’s classify them as employed and unemployed—have been saying some rather stupid things of late on Twitter. Things that not only embarrass themselves, but could be perceived as making the series look bad by association. It’s the best and worst thing to happen to professional athletes in a long time. It’s great for those who know how to use it, while others continue to find new and inventive ways to stick both feet in their mouths. If this was the NFL, Roger Goodell would have called them into his office, fined them, publicly denounced their comments and probably had someone key their cars in the parking lot just for good measure. But that doesn’t seem to be your style. Do you monitor the brainfarts that come out of your driver’s mouths, have someone monitor them for you, place private call to tell drivers to pipe down or do you just leave that stuff alone?
BERNARD: I've left it alone. I don't like to micromanage. I don't really have time to sit back and read all the Twittering and any of the nonsense that might come out of it. But I know there's a lot more positive stuff to come from it. I had Tony Kanaan in my office a couple weeks ago and it was very interesting to hear how Tony uses it to help increase his brand and his personal exposure. And I think that he's done a tremendous job on it.
I think for the other drivers, they’re big boys and girls. If they say things that are going to hurt them, it's going to come back and bite them in their sponsorships. I'm not going to get involved in what they have to say unless they start really, in my opinion, hurting IndyCar as a brand.
But in my opinion, they should be careful what they say because of who's listening and who’s reading. And that's the most important thing. Is saying something mean or over-the-top something you want your sponsor to read, and is it something you want your fans to read? Probably not.
Different drivers have different priorities, and it shows in how they deal with you guys in the media, or on Twitter or wherever else they speak. But they’re big boys and girls. They can deal with whatever they bring on themselves, good and bad.
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