Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

AVIEW FROM THE FENCE BY ERIC JOHNSON ...: '. s the popular:ity of the sport of supercross continues to boom drawing record crowds from one American big-~eague stick-and-ball venue to the next - and generate impressive national cable-viewer rating numbers, there has been a lot of conjecture and speculation as to where the sport is headed. Sure, American supercross is currently basking in the glow of prolific media attention and mainstream acceptance; however, and to be a realist, there's still a long way to go if it wants to communicate and convey the slick and polished professionalism - and subsequently enjoy the widespread public-awareness levels of big-time automobile racing. To that end, after watching the ESPN'produced "so Years of NASCAR" recently, I decided to do a little legwork and investigate the events that helped make the Daytona Beach-based sanctioning body's four-wheel endeavor the most popular form of motorsport on the planet. Furthermore, I wanted to see if there was anything our beloved sport of stadium motocross could learn from that sport. From digging through a few magazines (both old and new) and scanning through a couple of VHS video tapes including the ESPN special - I began to find answers to what helped take NASCAR from basically a southeasternbased, red-clay, fist-swinging good-ol'boys' club to the well-oiled marketing and promotional motorsports machine that it is today. Eventually, after a little exploration (and overturning a few stones), it became clear tha t the roughand-tumble sport reached this lofty pinnacle by equal parts hard work, clairvoyance and - like anything - a little bit of luck. The National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing came to life through a meeting held at the Ebony Bar in Daytona Beach's Streamline hotel on December 14,1947. Attended by 35 men who were there to bash out a master plan for the . various sanctioning bodies that were scattered haphazzardly across the southeastern United States. In the meeting, Big Bill France, a race promoter himself, was selected to head up the all-inclusive sanctioning body. During its first decade, NASCAR was primarily a regional, rural sport made up of hard-drinking wild men driving shoddy -ears festooned with local gas-station or auto-dealership sponsors' logos. That all changed in the February of 1955, when a man named Carl Kiekhaefer grooved into Daytona Beach, via Wisconsin, with a plan up his clean and pressed white shirt-sleeve. A multimillionaire, A Kiekhaefer founded Mercury Outboard Motors, and was in Daytona to launch his new team. Upon arriving in a huge white truck with "Kiekhaefer's Mercury Outboard Motors, The Most Powerful Name If\ Outboards~' painted on the side in huge red letters, the team rolled out a 4005-pound, dazzling-white 1955 Chrysler 300C race car. And as if that wasn't enough, wrenching on it was a crew of trained mechanics bedecked in bright-white overalls. As .one could likely imagine, Kiekhaefer's gleaming operation was laughed at by the greasy-handed, skinned-knuckled NASCAR establishment. However, they wouldn't have long to laugh. A total perfectionist, Kiekhaefer claimed that his motivation in becoming a part of the NASCAR circuit was to sell more boat motors by showcasing his race team. The outfit began winning immediately, and by the time the 1955 and 1956 race seasons were complete, owner Kiekhaefer had won two consecutive NASCAR Grand National Championships - and 54 races for a winning percentage of 60 percent. (By comparison, the modern-day Rick Hendrick team, winners of the last three Winston Cup titles, has a 17.1 percentage!) Beyond all that, Kiekhaefer was the first person in NASCAR to see the value of stock-car racing as a rolling form of advertising for a particular product. During his two years on the circuit, he spent more than $1 million on racing (mindboggling money at that time), ultimately introducing the concept of team sponsorship through providing his drivers with significant financial and technical support. In American racing, Carl Kiekhaefer was one of the true pioneers of team-race sponsorship. Another significant development in NASCAR's growth was the introduction of R.J. Reynolds' Winston brand to the sport in 1971. That same year, the government had banned tobacco advertising on national television, and R.J. Reynolds was looking for.a way to promote its brands. One thing led to another, and in 1971 it was announced that the NASCAR's Grand National division would become known as the Winston Cup series. The rest is history, and $400 million later the Winston Cup is part of any race fan's vernaa,ilar. However, it wasn't just the sponsorship money that changed the sport of NASCAR racing. "The true change came when R.J. Reynolds came into our sport," said Bruton Smith, founder of Charlotte Motor Speedway and Texas Motor Speedway, d~g the ESPN "50 years of NASCAR" program. "They knew marketing, and nobody in our sport under- 30 YEARS AGO... MAY 2,1968 na Cycle News exclusive, we reported that legendary promoter J.e. Agajanian and Motorcycle Racers Inc. had reached a tentative agreement for the 1968 motorcycle-racing season at Ascot Park. During the meeting, some revolutionary changes were decided upon to "increase spectator enjoyment and promote the sport" ... Sonny Burres (Tri) swatted 'em in the Open class during the Castle Rock IT season opener... The Campbell Motorcycle Club staged a hillclimb in Bakersfield. Manuel Ponti Jr. scored the 250cc Expert win, with a time of 7.48 seconds... J.N. Roberts (Hus) "'beat the cars" to take the overall win at the Mint 400 in Las Vegas ... Cycle News advertising was highimpact then as now - J.e. Agajanian adv~rtised a 'sCRA Midget CaI race at Ascot Park... Skip Van Leeuwen (Tri) bagged the win at the Boise TT in Idaho. I stood marketing. They threw a lot of money at the sport and helped all the speedways with that. We all learned from them." In an effort to grow the sport, Winston also took it upon themselves to bring other business presidents and chairmen out to the races and expose them to the sport. Through their hard work, the Winston-induced "introductions" would pay off in droves. And in the eyes of many, one of the most important relationships formed and forged was with the Procter & Gamble people. Long recognized as the world's leading manufactUrer and marketer of packaged-goods products that you see in supermarkets (e.g., Crest toothpaste and Tide detergent), P&G's entrance into the sport in the mid-1980s with its Tide brand ushered in a new era of corporate acceptance. "To me, the Tide car was breakthrough," commented John Cooper, former president of Daytona International Speedway, during the "50 Years of NASCAR" show. "That gave ihe other interested advertisers the confidence that it was okay to be on the side of a race car, and today, NASCAR looks like a grocery store, with one grocery product after another." As a testament to this thinking, shortly thereafter other major brands SUcll as Miller beer, Coors beer, Wrangler jeans - and a host of others - entered the sport. Added Dale Earnhardt during the excellent and informative program, '1t all starts with bringing a president of another company out to race, entertaining them, and opening their eyes and their doors to racing." Perhaps the most important element in the growth of NASCAR racing was television. On February 18, 1979, CBS television broadcast the first live, flag-toflag coverage of a Winston Cup race. The intensely fought race ended in the infield, where, with a steaming heap of crumpled metal serving as a backdrop, Cale Yarborough, Bobby Allison and Donnie Allison threw punches at each other in anger after a last-lap dogfight sent them spinning into each other. It wasn't pretty, but it was showmanship to the highest degree, and CBS drew a hugely impressive 10.5 A.e. Nielsen rating - which to the network executives (who had always thought of NASCAR as a regional sport) was mind-boggling. Less than two years later, the fledgling ESPN network, new to the American viewing marketplace, began buying up NASCAR races at bargain-basement prices for telecast purposes. It was at that very point that the supply-and-demand fundamental of economics began to sur- 20 YEARS AGO... APRIL 19, 1978 amaha teammates Bob Hannah and Broc Glover were the big victors in the opening round of tlie AMA/Mr. Pibb 125/250cc National Championship MX Series at Hangtown. Hannah crushed the 250cc class, and Glover tied with Mark Barnett on points but took the 125cc win by virtue of a better second-moto finish ... Lane Leavitt (Bul) and Marland Whaley (Hon) were the respective winners of the first two rounds of the AMA/NATC National Trials Championship Series... French designer Andre de Cortanza's EIf-X road racer was featured. A refined version of the hubsteering front-end concept would later hit the GP circuit with rider Ron Haslam aboard... The American team of Pat Hennen, Kenny Roberts, Dave Aldana, Skip Aksland, Mike Baldwin, Gene Romero, Dale Singleton and Dave Emde put up a good fight but lost to a British squad of road racing stars during the John Player Transatlantic Trophy Series in England. Y l~ fac!! in the NASCAR broadcast-rights wars. Today, a network can expect to pay upward of $4 million for the rights to· broadcast a single race! . So why am I telling you all this? Because we can learn a lot from NASCAR and the ground they have cov, ered in the last 50 years. Intriguingly, there's a prefty strong correlation and parallel between the growth of NASCAR and the young sport of supercross. Supercross has large and shiny factory teams with I8-wheel trucks hauling around exotic race equipment and an army of support personnel. There are big support·tearns - such '!S team SplitFire/ Pro Circuit/Kawasaki, Honda of Troy, rMF Honda, Factory Connection Honda, and Primal Impulse/Suzuki - whose owners want to tout their products and services through racing. (Remember our friend Mr. Kiekhaefer?) Corporate sponsors such as MCI 1-8OO-C0LLECT; Jackin-the-Box, Mazda and Toyota have entered the sport, and word has it that many others are now lurking in the wings. And the TV package is comprehensive, well-produced and on the verge of going live. Tpe average ESPN2 Nielsen rating in 1997 was .82, which, when placed against ESPN2's viewing universe of 50 million homes, translates to roughly 355,000 households watching each event (far and away one of £l's most popular broadcast properties). Moreover, on Saturday evening, April 25, the Dallas Supercross will be taped for a one-hour, next-day airing on ABC's 'Wide World of Sports." The condensed airing, which will highlight the evening's 125cc and 250cc Main Events, will run in a highprofile, one-hour time slot immediately after the national broadcast network's telecast of the Winston Select 500 NASCAR Winston Cup race from the high-speed, 33-degree banks of Talladega, Alabama. So, to bring all this to a conclusion, is the PACE Motor Sports promotion group, much like the 35 gentleman in the Daytona cocktail lounge SO years ago, on the verge of something huge? With a little bit of luck, and with the stars lining up and the wind blowing in the right direction, the answer could very well be "yes." While supercross will likely never be a money-fueled monolith as big and formidable as NASCAR, its potential as a unique and exciting alternative form of motorsport is boundless. And perhaps a decade from now, some guy will be watching an ESPN-created special on the great history of supercross, get excited, and write an article communicating the watershed moments in the sport's history. Wouldn't fhat be cool? 10 YEARS AGO... APRIL 13, 1988 evin Schwantz (Suz) took center stage on our cover as he scored a shocker of a victory over defending World Champion Wayne Gardner (Hon) in the Japanese Grand Prix at the Suzuka Circuit... We offered you a preview of what was almost certain to be a thriller at the Laguna Seca round of the World GP series... Tony Hendon (ATK) barely beat Kurt. Hough (Kaw) in a close one at the combined AMA National Hare Srambles/GNCC, held at the Loretta Lynn's Dude Ranch in Tennessee... We profiled Randy Mamola and his Italian-built Cagiva V588 GP road racer... We tested the 1988 Suzuki RM125 and noted that it lacked the hit required to make it a top contender in the tiddler class... GP crew chiefs Jerry Burgess, Kel Carruthers, Erv Kanemoto and Mike Sinclair were profiled in a piece titled "The power brokers." ('X K

• Cover