New owners such as Brad Keselowski lead influx of youth in NASCAR leadership
By Bob Pockrass
FOX Sports NASCAR Writer
Brad Keselowski took a risk when he started a business that uses 3D printing technology as the foundation for manufacturing items used primarily in the space and defense industries.
Most drivers prefer car dealerships or restaurants. Keselowski’s financial investment in an emerging but not totally proven profitable method of fabrication showed that he’s willing to invest, even with a little bit of peril.
His most recent investment — into Roush Fenway Racing, new name still to be announced — might not seem like as much of a risk. He has previously owned a race team (a truck team), and he comes from a family that owned a race team, so he has pretty much had knowledge of how they work from the time he was born.
Is this investment less of a risk?
"Potentially," Keselowski said. "Everything is risky, right? It’s business. But I think it has as much upside."
The 37-year-old Keselowski isn’t the only "young" new car owner in the sport. Over the past year, current driver Denny Hamlin and former driver Justin Marks (both age 40) started race teams (Hamlin with Michael Jordan, Marks with entertainer Pitbull). Also, former Cup driver Matt Tifft, 25, and current driver B.J. McLeod, 37, started a race team last year.
Matt Kaulig, 47, will bring his Kaulig Racing into the full-time Cup ranks next season, and Spire Motorsports is in its third year of ownership with co-owners Jeff Dickerson, 46, and T.J. Puchyr, 45.
Jeff Gordon, 49, is taking more of a leadership role at Hendrick Motorsports, where he has an equity ownership. And Coy Gibbs, 48, son of Joe Gibbs, has had a growing leadership role at Joe Gibbs Racing the past few years.
"This racing thing is addictive. You get addicted to it, and it’s fun," said Kaulig, a former college quarterback at the University of Akron and Ohio businessman who has owned an Xfinity team and a part-time Cup team.
"You’re at the track, and your car is out front," he added. "And the business of NASCAR is very intriguing, and now we’ve got two charters, and we’re playing the game, and we’ll see where it goes."
A sport that a few years ago was wondering where new owners and new leadership were going to come from has its answer. While Chip Ganassi, 63, is getting out by selling his NASCAR operation to Marks, many of the team owners, such as Roger Penske, 84, Joe Gibbs, 80, Jack Roush, 79, Richard Childress, 75, and Rick Hendrick, 72, are still around but can see an influx of youth that might help navigate the sport.
"With all the new blood that seems to be coming into the sport now, with Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin and Keselowski, and [50-year-old] Tony Stewart has got a team, and Jeff Gordon getting back involved and all these sort of things, the sport is ready for some new, young blood," Ganassi said.
"We always talk about a new generation of drivers, and I think you're going to see a new generation of owners now, and I think it's a great thing for the sport."
The Next Gen car that NASCAR is set to introduce next season likely is part of this change. Instead of manufacturing cars, teams will more or less assemble cars from parts and pieces bought from an approved vendor. The idea is to cut down on the engineering and development costs — which likely means a reduced work force — leaving things more in the hands of the drivers.
While there is the downside that the ingenuity that seems to be a cornerstone of NASCAR racing could be thrown into the trash bin along with all the cars after this year, the hope is that crew chiefs will be able to work with those parts and pieces to tailor the setup for each driver.
"There’s a changing of the guard, I think, on the athlete's side," Penske said. "Technology is going to change completely. As we go into the new car, we’ll run them differently. They’re almost going to be the same [pieces].
"How we look at it structurally from an engineering perspective, there’s going to be changing, and I think these drivers don’t want to drive forever. They want to have equity. They have knowledge, and I think the team owners and other people do."
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Marks wants to eventually base his Trackhouse Racing Team in Nashville, where fans could tour the shop and potentially eat in a restaurant attached to it.
In the current NASCAR model, anyone who wants to start a team pretty much needs to align with an existing team to take advantage of the engineering depth and technological tools the existing teams have. It would be incredibly expensive, if even possible, to start from the ground up.
"Where my mind goes is this is proof of concept for NASCAR's vision for the future," Marks said. "It's proof of concept for the new car. This is exactly what they were trying to do with this new car.
"The business model of the sport made the barrier of entry for new ownership just higher and higher and higher every single year, and it was going to take something like this to ignite a movement like this. I think we're proving that there's a lot of desire to get into this sport. Just the mechanism to do that has just been too high of a mountain for a lot of people to climb."
Hamlin said that while he was sad to see Ganassi sell, he was happy for Marks. While Marks, who also owns a go-kart facility in North Carolina, did not talk about the financials of purchasing Ganassi, his father, a private equity executive, has had minority ownership in two NBA teams over the past 20 years.
The investment into a race team currently includes purchasing a charter (or multiple charters) from a race team. A charter is NASCAR’s version of a franchise and guarantees a certain amount of purse money throughout the season, allowing the chartered team (which must compete in every race) a guaranteed base revenue stream.
Charter sales have reportedly hit eight figures recently.
"You still have to have big money if you want to compete," Hamlin said. "Every team owner, whether it be in the front of the pack, middle of the pack or the back, thinks about whether or not this business model is really going to work for them.
"There’s all kinds of avenues you can take to get charters, but ultimately, writing the check is the easiest, but there are several different options."
One of elements of the Keselowski purchase of a minority stake in Roush Fenway is that in the coming years, he has the ability to purchase a bigger percentage (assuming Roush gets less involved). He indicated that he was able to set the price for those additional shares.
"I feel like this sport is only going to get better over the next few years as the valuations of the teams and the companies that represent them will go up," Keselowski said. "I was fortunate enough to be able to lock in a price at this market value that I think will only value higher over the years."
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Thinking out loud
NASCAR didn’t fine Kyle Busch for bumping the pace car after his wreck in the rain at New Hampshire. That was a mistake.
It wasn’t a big mistake or a travesty of justice. But a minimal $10,000 fine would have been in order because no matter how justifiably angry a driver is, tapping the back of the pace car with a damaged vehicle on a wet track is not safe.
Certainly, drivers have tapped the pace car in the past, but after being in a wreck, there is potential for a race car to not work properly. Also, considering that the race car spun on the wet surface, a tap of the pace-car bumper at just the wrong moment or in the wrong spot could have sent it spinning.
This is one of those situations where it was easy to say "no harm, no foul," and it shows that NASCAR acknowledged that the Busch situation was unfortunate.
A small fine, though, says the same thing while communicating that drivers can’t treat a NASCAR official in that manner.
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They said it
"There are some parts of it that are scary, without a doubt. It’s a challenge, and it’s not going to be easy, but I’ve been studying my whole life to be ready for this moment, and I’m ready for the test." – Brad Keselowski on leaving Team Penske for Roush Fenway
Bob Pockrass has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s. He joined FOX Sports in 2019 following stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @bobpockrass. Looking for more NASCAR content? Sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass!
BJ McLeod
Roush Fenway Racing 23XI Racing
