Here’s a roundup of the conversation that took place Friday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway…
— Kyle Larson wants NASCAR to stay out of the dirt game
Despite the success of the Eldora Truck race leading some in the NASCAR world — including Tony Stewart — to stump for an Xfinity or Cup show on a dirt track, Kyle Larson doesn’t think it’s a good idea.
“Tony is probably going to get mad, but I would like to see it just stay as it is,” Larson said. “I wouldn’t like to see Cup on dirt. To me, Cup belongs on pavement and real road course tracks.
“If we went to Eldora, yeah, I would be excited because I would be really fast and I feel like I would definitely have the best shot to win. But at the same time, I think we are fine not going there.”
Why not? Well, Larson seemed to indicate it wouldn’t be a very good show.
“Maybe if Goodyear could make a way better tire and us be actually able to use the horsepower — or even more horsepower in our Cup cars — on a dirt track, I think it would be a lot more fun,” he said. “I don’t really know how to answer the question without making people mad.”
— Denny Hamlin says schedule changes are a fantasy.
People have been chiming in with their opinions on possible schedule changes this week (more short tracks, dirt and road courses among the proposals), but Denny Hamlin says the whole conversation is pointless.
Asked about racing on Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Hamlin said he’d “love to,” but…
“Honestly, none of this is ever going to happen,” he said. “Not until these tracks and NASCAR get together and are willing to make changes. No track is going to give up tens of millions of dollars every time the race cars show up at the racetrack, so it’s going to have take a bold change.
“It’s going to have to take someone way high up saying, ‘We’re making changes and this is what we’re going to do,’ for it to happen. But it definitely won’t happen in the next few years until that contract (through 2020) is over with.”
— Martin Truex Jr. wishes 5-hour decision had come sooner
Defending Cup Series champ Martin Truex Jr. said he wasn’t totally surprised by the decision for sponsor 5-hour Energy to leave the sport — company executives had been “on the fence for awhile,” he said — but the timing leaves Furniture Row Racing in somewhat of a bind.
“I wish it didn’t take quite as long as it did and (it) kind of puts us in a tough spot now,” Truex said. “… I don’t see (team owner) Barney (Visser) putting Furniture Row back on the car and doing that. I don’t know that he can make that work anymore. So we’ll see where it goes from here.”
Truex said he was optimistic the team would be able to find a new sponsor and also still plans to sign a contract extension with the team (his current deal expires at the end of the season). But despite the typical Silly Season months starting to arrive, Truex said he wasn’t too concerned with a contract yet.
“It’s not really a pressing issue for me,” he said. “I know what the team wants. I know where we’re all at. It’s not like I’m nervous they’re going to sign somebody else or I’m going to be searching for a ride. It’s nothing like that. It’s more just trying to focus on racing and feeling like it will get done when it gets done.”
— Joey Logano says New Hampshire could be a case study for tracks having one race.
NASCAR has oversaturated markets like Pocono, Michigan and Kansas by running two races per season at those tracks. Joey Logano is wondering how New Hampshire will respond to having its calendar reduced.
“I think if you go to a racetrack once, it makes it more of an event,” he said. “This weekend will be a great test to see how that works as Loudon goes from two to one. When you think there are two races and you’re a fan that can only afford to go to one, you’re most likely going to choose the playoff race here.
“So it will be interesting to see what the stands look like on Sunday, because now it’s an event. You can’t miss this one and have a chance to go to the next one.”
Nigel Kinrade, seen here speaking to Jeff Gordon, is a familiar face in the NASCAR garage. (Courtesy of Nigel Kinrade)
Each week, I ask a member of the racing community to explain the career path to their current position. Up next: Nigel Kinrade of Nigel Kinrade Photography. These interviews are recorded as a podcast but also transcribed for those who prefer to read.
You’re quite an established guy in the racing industry. What do you do now with your company?
My company is Nigel Kinrade Photography — or NKP as it’s known within the industry — and we’re a photo agency. We attend every Monster Energy Cup Series event, and all the companion races that run with them apart from ARCA, we’ll shoot that stuff. That will be the Trucks, we shoot some K&N stuff and the Xfinity Series.
We always attend every Xfinity Series (race), including the standalones, and every Camping World Truck Series event. So top three series, we’re at every one of them.
We have a staff that we can pull on of about nine or 10 shooters, including myself, and we always have four of us here at the big events. Maybe the Daytona 500, we’ll bring in an extra couple of people for just the needs we have for satisfying our clients.
Our clients, we do Monster Energy — we’re the entitlement sponsor photographers. On the team side, we do Penske, Hendrick, Gibbs. Xfinity stuff, we do Kaz Grala’s stuff. We’ve done all the KBM stuff on the Trucks side. We do Cody Coughlin over there as well.
So we keep very very busy. We do all the stuff with Ford Performance, all their photography, and a bunch of sponsors — Interstate Batteries, Arris, we do the FedEx stuff for FedEx.
We also do a lot of stuff with NASCAR. We shoot the K&N Series for NASCAR if it’s a companion event. We shoot some of the Modified stuff we’ve done for them as well. And we do a lot of the meet and greets with celebrities and stuff and their (NASCAR) Foundation stuff. So we do a lot of stuff with NASCAR as well, which is very pleasing and rewarding. So it’s good.
That’s pretty amazing. I didn’t realize you guys had that much on your plate. Obviously you didn’t always have this much on your plate, so how did this all get started for you? Obviously people can probably tell from your (English) accent you didn’t grow up in Georgia or something.
Well I have grown up in Georgia. I have! The last 27 years! Yeah, I’m a Southerner now.
No, I actually grew up on a place called the Isle of Man. It’s famous for the crazy motorcycle race they have there every June. So that got me interested in motorsports, photography and stuff like that.
That’s the super dangerous one, right?
Yeah, absolutely. It’s 37 miles, guys on 200 mph superbikes, dodging telegraph poles and walls and edges of houses and cows and livestock and all that sort of stuff. It’s absolutely crazy.
It was the norm for me growing up until I moved to the states. And now a couple of times I’ve been back in the last 10, 12 years, I go back and watch it. I go, “God, these guys are just nuts. What is going through their minds? It’s crazy.” It makes what we do here look like kind of child’s play. I shouldn’t say that, but…
Well, you’ve got people dying there every single year.
Yeah, absolutely. Your protection over there is a helmet, a set of leathers and boots and gloves. That’s it. You come off (the bike), you’re just hoping that you don’t die. It’s crazy.
Thankfully, it makes our sport look a lot tamer and that’s in part to all the safety implementations we’ve had made over the last 17, 18 years since we had some bad accidents. But yeah, kudos to NASCAR. We’re pretty safe over here. Even some of those wrecks we saw last night (at Daytona), everyone kind of just walks away.
Yeah, so I grew up over there and moved to the states in 1991. My wife was a foreign student. She went to Georgia State University and we applied for our residency, so we got our green cards in ’91. And we moved here.
The first-ever NASCAR event I went to was October ’91 in Charlotte. I had never been to a NASCAR race before, so I’m in the middle of this infield in Charlotte and I’m thinking, “Oh my God, what have I got into here?” And I’m looking around and it’s just the infield culture was totally different. Mind you, that was Charlotte — and Charlotte’s pretty cosmopolitan!
So I thought that was pretty wild and the culture in the infield there was like, “Wow.” It was something I had never ever seen before. And then I get to go to places like Martinsville and Pocono and places like that. I realized Charlotte’s not that bad. So the first time I was immersed into NASCAR, it was like, “Whoa.” It was an eye-opener.
How did you get that assignment? I assume you were there to work.
Yeah, so growing up in the Isle of Man with the motorcycles and stuff, I shot a lot of that kind of stuff and I ventured out and I did some Grand Prix racing in Europe and stuff at MotoGP, that kind of stuff. It was called the 500cc World Championship Grand Prix motorcycle racing back then. Now it’s MotoGP. So I did a bunch of that. I did a couple of F1 races and stuff like that.
So I had a lot of contacts over there, and when I came over here, I contacted my contacts over there and said, “Hey, do you want some pictures? I’m going to start going to a couple of these NASCAR races and see what happens and how it progresses and stuff.” And they said, “Yeah, send us some stuff. We’ve always got people looking for NASCAR. We can’t ever find any.”
So a couple of British agencies, I started sending some images to them. You had to take slide film and process it and put them in slide pages and mail it off to them. So that’s how it all started, and here we are like 27 years later. I’ve got a staff of nine or 10 guys I can pull on and call them any time.
It’s all digital now. It’s all online. Everything we shoot is online. The servers and stuff like that — we have a guy in Virginia who actually builds servers and our server is also online in Virginia. But we’ve also branched out and built servers for online databases for Penske, Hendrick, Gibbs, Ford Motor Company. So a lot of their stuff is housed on our servers. It’s not just taking pictures anymore.
And we have to caption. I had to learn how to type! I’m a photographer. I didn’t know how to type. I had to learn how to type captions on pictures and upload them and stuff. So yeah, it’s pretty technical. But we’ve come a long way.
Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus pose with Nigel Kinrade (center) and his staff of photographers after winning the 2016 NASCAR Cup Series title. (Courtesy of Nigel Kinrade)
How did you know that you were any good at photography? I mean, anyone can just stand by the road in the Isle of Man and shoot, but you have to be good at it in order to make a living out of it. Were you self-taught?
Yeah. I’ve never been to college for photography or anything. I went to college for engineering. And I didn’t like that. Photography was a hobby, and fast vehicles was a hobby, so it was just natural that both combined.
It’s just a lot of practice. It’s practice, practice, practice. Nowadays you can pick up a camera, a lens, a laptop, whatever and you can go out there and practice and practice and practice and it’s all on a compact flashcard. You can put it on a computer and look at it and go, “Oh, that didn’t come out nice. I know what I need to do, I need to go and do something different with that.” So I’ll go back out and do it.
In my day, you put a roll of film into the camera and you shot something and you had to remember how you shot it, and then you’d take it to the lab and get it processed and maybe three or four hours later you’d get it back and you’d look at it and go, “Oh.” But three or four hours later, it was like, “I don’t feel like going back and trying that again.”
But now everything’s on the fly. You can look at it on the back of your screen on your camera and see where you are. Back in the day, there was nothing like that.
So I’m self-taught, but I went through a lot of film. And it was expensive. Film was expensive to process. So nowadays, it is easier. There are less steps involved. But yeah, it’s just practice. The more you practice, the better you get.
We’re also lucky in the fact a lot of our races are 400 or 500 miles long. So they take a lot of time. It’s not like a sprint race, or a MotoGP event where it’s 40 minutes. We’re out here for three, four hours. We get a chance to get out there and experiment and try different things and so we get a lot of practice.
Do you think that the way you came up, having to use the film and understand the techniques of what made a good picture a good picture back then helps you now? Like it was easier for you to adapt things quickly?
Yeah, it probably was. I always pay attention to backgrounds and stuff like that. Shooting qualifying here in Daytona, you get down low and you just try and frame the driver where you can see the tower in the background. Across the back of the tower you’ll see “World Center of Racing.” So that’s a unique look that you get here. You don’t see it anywhere else because you try and show where you are, try and implement some sort of structure that’s at a certain track or something else.
Like at Indy, you would try and frame a driver possibly with the pagoda in the background or something like that. So each track has its own little identity, physical buildings or whatever, you try to sort of incorporate it into the frame.
You’re always looking for a clean background, you’re always looking for something different. Or if you’re shooting for a sponsor, you’re always trying to get that logo alongside the driver or something like that. They’re covered in sponsor logos, but if you can get the car element and him together, it’s ideal.
Every time I pick up a camera, I learn. Even after 27 years of doing this, I’m still learning. You put a different lens on your camera, you get a totally different perspective.
So why NASCAR? You came up in some of these other sports and obviously NASCAR is a big form of racing in the United States. Was it just as simple as you’re living in the United States so this is what you’re going to be doing? Why did you stick with that over the years?
Part of that was we moved to Atlanta, so that’s in the Southeast, so it’s just like, “What’s around here? Well there’s some IMSA racing, there’s some drag racing, some IndyCar” — back in the early 90s. There was AMA Motorcycle racing. I’d go and shoot some of that stuff and it was cool, I enjoyed it.
But the NASCAR thing, the agencies kept on coming back looking for that. They’d say, ”This NASCAR thing, it’s cool. We’ve got open-wheel racing over here. We’ve got motorcycle racing over here. We’ve got endurance and IMSA-type racing over here. But we don’t have that stock car thing. So just keep sending that to us.”
And back then, I think there was 29 races in a year, which was an easy schedule. So 29 races in a year, and a lot of them were in the Southeast. We still had two races at Darlington, we still had two races at (North) Wilkesboro. We still had two at Rockingham. And they were all drivable, so expenses were minimal then. So I just kept doing that.
And that was when a lot of those huge corporate sponsors were coming into the sport, the tracks were expanding, the schedule expanded, we were racing at Kansas, Chicago, Indianapolis, Fontana, all these places were coming online. Homestead. So it just made sense to stick with that.
So far, so good. I’ve been lucky.
Nigel Kinrade speaks with Kyle Busch. (Courtesy of Nigel Kinrade)
And those teams are looking for images to give to their sponsors. NAPA comes on with Hendrick and they’re like, “We want pictures of the NAPA car on the track, we want pictures of Chase Elliott,” things like that, I assume?
Yeah. The most important thing — and I tell this to my guys and girls that work with us — is what the client wants every week. We get emailed a list each week. And the most important stuff on that are the meet-and-greets. Appearances. The meet-and-greet at the car on the grid with the driver.
Because like NAPA, they have honorary pit crew members. So they bring in a couple of people — local distributors or store owners — and they’ll put their name on the quarterpanel of Chase’s car, a store number and a name. And they’ll deck them out with a shirt.
So they’ll do a meet-and-greet with Chase at his bus, probably two or three hours before the start of the race. Probably before he goes to the driver meeting, which is two hours before the start of the race. So we’ll do a meet-and-greet there. Then they’ll come to the car on the grid and Chase is all decked out in the uniform and we’ll do another photo there.
That is NAPA’s way of giving something back to their clients, all their store owners and stuff. So there is the most important thing we do each week. That’s what I tell my guys.
The car’s on track 36 times a (year), or however many times NAPA sponsors it, and it’s on track for practice, qualifying and the race. So we have that covered for the actual event.
But it’s the other stuff, the behind-the-scenes stuff the average fan doesn’t see unless they’re lucky enough to get inside the driver/owner lot or on the grid. So yeah. That’s the number one priority for us.
I often get people sending me DMs or emails or tweets saying, “I think I can shoot race photography. I do it as a hobby. I’ve been to this track. I really like to do it. How do I get involved?” What advice would you give people who would like to be the next Nigel and break into the industry? Is that still possible today?
Yes, it is. The industry’s changing a lot now, though. It’s expensive to travel the circuit and a lot of corporations now are watching how they spend their dollars and stuff. So it’s a lot tougher now.
But the best thing to do is just practice, practice, practice. And go to your local short track. They’ll gladly let you in if you’re willing to let them have some images. And on social media, you get into a local short track and they have a social media platform, you just bomb the heck out of their social media — just mention them, hashtag them or whatever. That way, hopefully they take notice of you and they say, “Yeah, come on back. We’ll pay you to do a shoot or do our victory lanes” or whatever.
It’s just practice and finding the right connections. I’ve been in this industry now 27 years, so I have a lot of connections here. And it’s funny how people in this industry will be from one corporation and then they’ll disappear, and then five or six years later, they’ll be back working for a team or something. You’ll get a call: “Hey, we need some photography. You’re the first person I thought of.” And it’s like, boom. ”OK, let’s sit down and talk.”
But you’ve just got to go out there and practice and earn respect of other people and just work hard at your craft. It’s easy to do. Well, it’s not easy to do, but it’s not as complex as you think it is. You’ve just got to put you mind into it. And that’s probably my best (advice).
Once you’ve done some short track stuff, you can venture out, get credentials to come to a NASCAR race and try that. But for the majority, going to a NASCAR race, you need some sort of like legitimate media outlet like that to vet you or to write for your credentials, you know.
We’re lucky in the fact that we have hard cards and we’re connected with a lot of the teams and stuff like that. So it is easier for us to get into the NASCAR events. But we pay for our credentials as well. We pay for our hard cards. We also pay for commercial licensing with NASCAR so we can do commercial work here. So that’s kind of different from somebody coming in just to take pictures for a media outlet.
And that way it can be used in an ad?
Yeah. So we are licensed to sell commercially, but we pay up front each year to NASCAR for the privilege to do that.
(Courtesy of Nigel Kinrade, who is on the far left in this photo)
What happened: 5-hour Energy, one of the main sponsors for Martin Truex Jr. at Furniture Row Racing, announced it would be leaving the team — and the sport — at the end of this season in what it termed a “business decision.” 5-hour joined Truex’s No. 78 this year after being the full-season sponsor on Erik Jones’ No. 77 last year. Prior to that, 5-hour was linked with Clint Bowyer during his time at Michael Waltrip Racing and HScott Motorsports (2012-16).
What it means: Even winning at a frequent rate doesn’t ensure continued sponsorship anymore. Truex is coming off a championship season and has been one of the “Big Three” drivers with four wins already this year. And yet, for whatever reason, 5-hour decided it was time to spend its marketing dollars somewhere other than NASCAR. That’s a discouraging sign, especially since Monster won’t be the Cup Series title sponsor for much longer and thus would have freed up 5-hour to go wherever it wanted.
News value (scale of 1-10): Seven, for a combination of reasons. Truex is a big-name driver losing a big-name sponsor, for one. But it’s also newsworthy that yet another major sponsor is departing from NASCAR after spending a couple hundred million dollars in the sport over seven seasons at the Cup level. It’s yet another punch in the gut for those hoping NASCAR’s slide will end soon.
Three questions: Can Furniture Row find a replacement, or will team owner Barney Visser have to put his company on the hood again? Does this end the speculation Furniture Row could re-expand to a second car next season? What does it mean for NASCAR when a company stops spending its money altogether instead of just staying involved at a reduced commitment level?
Denny Hamlin has done a 12 Questions interview in all nine years they’ve existed. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images for NASCAR)
The 12 Questions series of interviews continues this week with Denny Hamlin of Joe Gibbs Racing. These interviews are recommended as a podcast, but also transcribed for those who prefer to read.
1. How often do you have dreams about racing?
Four times a week.
That’s a very exact answer.
I just feel like most nights in my dreams, I’m thinking about racing of some sort — whether it be why my car is doing this or that or why we didn’t do this or that or why we did good. Four nights a week I feel is like a really solid number.
2. If you get into someone during a race — intentional or not — does it matter if you apologize?
Yes. I’m on the record for saying this many times. Even if you’re not sorry, you’ve got to fake it. If you don’t fake it, you get Matt Kenseth’d into the Turn 1 wall at Martinsville.
3. What is the biggest compliment someone could give you?
If they tell you you’re underrated. I think that’s the biggest compliment.
4. NASCAR comes to you and says they’re bringing a celebrity to the track and they want you to host them. Who is a celebrity you’d be excited to host?
Drake. Lil Weezy (Lil Wayne). Any rapper. I like them.
5. In an effort to show this is a health conscious sport, NASCAR decides to offer the No. 1 pit stall for an upcoming race to the first driver willing to go vegan for one month. Would you do it?
I only get the pit stall for one week?
Yeah, just for one race. You look conflicted.
Couldn’t do it.
6. It’s time for the Random Race Challenge. I’ve picked a random race from your career and you have to tell me where you finished.
I’m not going to be good at this.
You’re not good at remembering races?
No.
Do you happen to remember the 2012 New Hampshire spring race, the July race that year?
July. OK. We were fastest in first practice, fastest in second practice. Hold on — I may be thinking of the fall race. (Thinks for a moment) I’m just going to go ahead with this.
I think I was fastest in all practices, we qualified with race pressure air in the tires — we qualified 28th I believe — and got to the lead about lap 100 and won the race.
No, sorry.
That was the race after?
I wouldn’t pick a win because that would be too easy.
Hold on then. Yes, I remember the race I think. I think I finished second to Kasey Kahne. That was when we had the debacle on the radio with me and Darian Grubb and he says, “You need two or four tires?” I said, “I don’t know, I just need tires.” And he took it as I needed four tires. We restarted 15th and only got back to second.
I don’t remember the radio part, but that’s correct. You finished second to Kasey Kahne. You led 150 laps.
OK. I had the right year.
So you remembered both races that year. But you said you don’t remember races!
I know. But specific ones where you’re really fast, it’s easy. Ask me about the one I ran eighth at Kansas in blank year, I would never know.
7. Who is the best rapper alive?
Alive? Lil Wayne is the best rapper alive. I would just say Jay-Z — you can talk about, great history, fabulous rapper. He’s amazing.
But I just feel like as far as natural talent, Lil Wayne is the best alive.
Nobody’s said Kendrick Lamar all year. Why do you think that is? Am I just overrating him or something?
Probably. Nas said rap was dead many years ago (the 2006 album Hip Hop is Dead) and I just believe that it’s different now than what it used to be. But Lil Weezy can still kick it. It’s a shame he’s in contract disputes with his label or whatever, and got all these probably awesome songs that we’ll never ever get to hear because they’re arguing. (Editor’s note: Lil Wayne’s three-year legal battle with the labelwas ended last month, potentially clearing the way for a new album).
8. Who has the most punchable face in NASCAR?
Oh geez. I don’t know. If I want to punch somebody, I need to make sure I can beat them up. I don’t wanna get beat up.
Maybe Brad (Keselowski). That’s probably a popular answer. (Laughs) But I like Brad, just for the record.
Chase Elliott said a couple weeks ago you were his answer last year, but he seemed to indicate that is not still the case.
Yeah, we’re good.
9. NASCAR enlists three famous Americans to be involved with your team for one race as part of a publicity push: Taylor Swift, LeBron James and Tom Hanks. Choose one to be your crew chief, one to be your spotter and one to be your motorhome driver.
Taylor’s for sure gonna be the motorhome driver. We’ll say for obvious reasons there.
LeBron, for his vision, is going to be the spotter. Great court vision, and I see it as great track vision.
And I’ll go with Tom Hanks — smart guy — he’s gonna be the crew chief.
10. What is the key to finding the best pre-race bathroom?
Go before you leave the garage or bus.
You’re not one of these people who go last minute?
No. I’ve never understood that. Like I’ve never had to go and then five minutes later had to go again. Now everyone’s different, but I never understood the people who got off the truck after intros and hauled ass to the bathroom. I never understood that. Don’t know why they do that.
That’s true. I guess why not just go in your motorhome before you walk out to intros in the first place? It’s only a 20-minute difference.
Yeah, I guess. Unless you’re Matt Kenseth’s age and then you have to go every 10 minutes.
11. NASCAR decides they miss the highlight reel value brought by Carl Edwards’ backflips and want a replacement. How much money would they have to offer for you to backflip off your car following your next win?
They wouldn’t have to offer me anything as long as it wasn’t against asphalt or concrete. I’d give it a try.
Do you feel like you’d have a shot to land it?
No. But I’d give it a try.
12. Each week, I ask a driver to give me a question for the next interview. Last week was Kasey Kahne. He wants to know how much time you spend a week on the Golf Guys Tour and the Hoop Group, because it seems like you spend a lot.
It is a lot of work running two leagues between basketball and golf. I’ll estimate between the chats, making rules…(it takes) 12 to 14 hours a week.
So a couple hours a day?
Yeah, somewhere in that range. That might be on the low side. It depends. If there’s an event that week, it’s 40 hours. Have you ever tried to line up 16 divas’ schedules? It’s not easy.
I didn’t think about that. You have arrange the tournament, but you have to make sure everybody is available.
What we try to do is we all meet for dinner in January or February and we say, “Alright, these are the dates we’re gonna hit.” We’ll look to see if anyone has any conflicts at that moment. And if not, we all lock it in on our schedules and then we build our real jobs around it.
So each driver or whatever has to go to their manager or PR rep…
…and mark it on their schedule and say, “Look, we’re locked in, can’t do it.”
What if a conflict pops up? Do you have the change the whole tournament date?
No. If there’s only one or two who is going to miss it, we move on and add a sub.
So they get no points?
Yeah. We have eight events and we drop two (worst performances). So there’s two drops.
That’s painful though, because you don’t get to drop a bad day if you’re absent.
That is correct. People think, “Oh, it’s just a throwaway.” But now you put pressure on yourself to perform in the other events.
Better have a good manager.
Yup.
The next interview is with Kaz Grala. Do you have a question I can ask him?
What’s the most disappointing loss you’ve ever had in your career?
Previous 12 Questions interviews with Denny Hamlin:
Kligerman had attended the race as a fan, only to find the experience wasn’t what he expected. His conclusion: Formula E was more of a platform for promoting electric cars than an actual racing event.
Still, I wanted to draw my own conclusions and went into the weekend with an open mind. But after getting to know more about Formula E, it turns out Kligerman wasn’t far off.
Formula E is indeed based more on spreading the electric vehicle message than existing as a pure racing series. The thing is, those involved in Formula E embrace that concept; it’s part of the series’ DNA.
Basically, to understand Formula E, you have to take everything you know about racing and flip it around. It’s the virtual opposite of NASCAR, which is what I’m used to.
For example: In racing, the teams try to maximize engine power, right? Not here. All engines are capped at 200 kW of electrical output.
OK, but they’re still trying to go as fast as possible, right? Nope! This isn’t about maximum speed, because going all out for the whole race would drain the battery too quickly.
Instead, Formula E is about efficiency — from both teams and drivers. The teams have to figure out how to maximize the amount of energy they have available and the drivers have to balance hard racing with conserving their battery (which in NASCAR terms sort of makes every race like a fuel mileage race).
Lucas Di Grassi, who won Saturday’s race, emphasized how it was pointless to try and build a gap on another car after taking the lead. Why? Because then a driver is using more power, and if a caution comes out, the energy was wasted for no reason.
“It’s all about energy management,” he said.
Race fans of other series would also be taken aback by the sound — or lack thereof. The cars sound like some combination of an RC car, a high-powered golf cart and one of those kid-driven battery-powered cars (except on steroids). At times, the screeching of the tires is just as loud — or louder — than the engines.
But there’s a huge positive that goes along with that: It allows Formula E to race in city centers around the world. And that’s massive for the series, because when the electric car revolution really takes over, it’s going to first happen in cities — where less distance is required for a commute — before anywhere else.
That’s why Formula E doesn’t do road courses, according to Renault technical manager Vincent Gaillardot. The series wants to be right in the heart of places like Paris, Rome, Hong Kong and Berlin to showcase what electric cars can do.
In turn, the cities jump on board because it’s environmentally friendly and goes hand-in-hand with their green initiatives. But it’s not the cities themselves that matter most to Formula E’s success — it’s the manufacturers (OEMs).
OEMs have been signing up to join Formula E at an unprecedented pace. Audi, BMW, Jaguar and Nissan are among those who will be involved for Season 5; Porsche and Mercedes will join in Season 6, bringing the total number of manufacturers to a whopping 10.
“Formula E has only four percent of the lifetime of Formula One or IndyCar — four years against 100 or more,” Di Grassi said. “But we already have more manufacturers in Formula E than in IndyCar and F1 combined.
“That shows a clear direction that manufacturers are looking for electric. Formula E is delivering in reality, and it will establish itself stronger and stronger in the next years.”
The race event itself puts a heavy emphasis on the VIP experience. It’s a place where companies can host clients and show off their involvement in a cool, trendy form of motorsport. There’s an exclusive “Emotion Club” where celebrities mingling with executives and beautiful people — clearly a place to be seen.
There are a few thousand grandstand seats for the public, but it’s clear attendance isn’t how Formula E makes its money. As a result, there’s free access to what’s called the “eVillage” — basically the display area — but you can actually do way more than that. The free ticket gives you the ability to stand along the fence for roughly half the entire track without a seat.
Fans gathering in the first turn (where all the action was yesterday). This is also a free area (had to have a ticket for fan zone, but those were free). pic.twitter.com/fh37fR0b4u
And the races are so short, you don’t really need a seat anyway. Every Formula E event is a one-day show — practices started at 7:30 a.m. Saturday, followed by qualifying and the race at 3 p.m.
The races lasted about one hour this season but next year will be capped at 45 minutes, which will enable the futuristic, sleek-looking “Gen 2” car to last the entire race (New York was the final race for the first-generation car, which required drivers to stop halfway and jump into a completely different vehicle since batteries are too complex to be changed quickly).
A look at the second-generation Formula E car, which will debut next season (Photo: Jeff Gluck)
During the New York races, noted open-wheel driver Katherine Legge served alongside the public address announcer in calling the action for the crowd as dramatic-sounding music played as a base for the action. Fans lined up along the fences and seemed to pay attention when the cars zipped past, but I didn’t get the “race fan” vibe from most of them (it was more like the “Hey, let’s go spend a nice summer day hanging out at this event” vibe).
There are also gimmicky elements, such as a fan-voted energy boost (that lasts for five seconds during the race). And next season, Formula E will have a power stripe — located off the racing line — that will temporarily boost a car’s power level like in Mario Kart (though drivers will have to risk a slower lap time to get it).
The drivers are media friendly (Formula E makes every driver available each day of the race weekend) as well as fan friendly (there’s a full-field autograph session in the free fan zone), so those are positives.
As for the negatives? Well, at least for American race fans — specifically NASCAR fans — it’s hard to imagine them really falling in love with it. It’s just such a departure from the norm in the United States.
“This is too different,” said Formula E driver Nelson Piquet Jr., who spent three full seasons racing in NASCAR (one in Xfinity, two in Trucks). “It’s not as accessible as NASCAR, it’s not as cheap to get tickets as NASCAR. It’s in big cities. NASCAR, nine times out of 10, races in small places where people can go with their own caravans and can have family time, barbecues and watch the race. That’s a whole different concept and lifestyle.”
Piquet raises a good point, because there was certainly no tailgating or camping at the Brooklyn race — you couldn’t even drive to the track (there’s no parking)! The only options for reaching the event were a subway/shuttle bus combo, a ferry ride from Manhattan or an Uber.
Transportation options for the Formula E race in Brooklyn, as seen from a sign on the fence. (Photo: Jeff Gluck)
“Unfortunately, we are going to attract much more city people than the NASCAR audience,” Piquet said. “I think the racing would be fun for NASCAR fans, but even IndyCar for them is a step away. This is an even bigger step away. So unfortunately, even when this succeeds, I don’t think it will attract that audience.”
That could prove somewhat problematic if Formula E can’t hook the American audience like it has in other countries (when it raced in Switzerland, there were 150 reporters and 40% of the country was watching on TV). Series CEO Alejandro Agag said the future of electrification — whether that’s battery-powered cars, hydrogen-powered cars or some other power source we don’t know yet — will depend in part on how quickly this country adapts (along with China).
“China and America have to lead the way,” he said.
To that end, Formula E has added a second race in China next season. And it will once again finish up in New York for two races in Season 5.
So it’s clearly a series on the rise with a ton of money behind it, and it has a lot to offer for certain demographics and types of race fans.
But is it for everyone? Not now. Maybe someday.
“The world is changing and evolving,” British driver Sam Bird said. “This is a form of motorsport that is exciting, fresh, new and caters to the younger generation.
“Everything is pointing in the right direction. It has a very, very bright future.”
Long Island native John Haverlin, who does some work for ESPN Albuquerque, joins me from the Formula E finale in Brooklyn to talk about both NASCAR at Kentucky and the electric racing experience in New York.
Steve Letarte probably could have written an entire book about leadership, motivation and team-building. But armed with a compelling story — his years as Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s crew chief — Letarte and co-author Nate Ryan smoothy weave in leadership lessons instead of hitting readers over the head with them.
Letarte’s new book, Leading the Way, allows readers to go through his experiences and learn what to do — or what not to do — right along with him.
The crew-chief-turned-TV-analyst doesn’t try to make it out like everything he did was perfect. Quite the opposite, actually. He’s blunt about his missteps, but uses each one as even more of a lesson than the successes.
Business leaders — or those who attend Letarte’s speaking engagements — would find the book valuable. But it will also appeal to NASCAR fans (not just Junior Nation) because it provides insight into the inner workings of a race team.
The book is a quick read — just over 130 pages — and you could probably go through it in a couple sittings. However, I found myself stopping at the end of several chapters to think about the examples Letarte had just put forward and wondering how I could apply it to my own life.
Leading the Way never seems to get bogged down. Ryan, the “as told to” author who essentially took Letarte’s own words and put them in order, makes sure passages and transitions flow while expertly retaining Letarte’s voice.
You can practically hear Letarte reading the words aloud, which likely is the whole point.
Notification of bias: Nate Ryan is one of my good friends and I like Steve Letarte a lot, so I already wanted to like the book before I read it. But I genuinely enjoyed it.
