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Written by:
Jade Gurss
11/11/2008 - 10:13 AM
Mooresville, North Carolina
Faster. Louder. The weekly column on SPEEDtv.com by Jade Gurss. (Harold Hinson Photo) ยป More Photos
Motorsports is a business that operates in “absolute time.” Unlike traditional businesses, where delaying the release of a new widget may not have dire consequences, motorsports has a schedule which dictates every person and every component of the business must be ready when the green flag falls. If the calendar says “green flag at 2:00 pm Sunday,” no team can request a delay if they’re not prepared. Ready or not, the flag falls with you… or without you.
Absolute time also applies to electronic timing that measures every lap in increments as small as thousandths-of-a-second. You can’t hide from the stopwatch, and winners and losers are decided in absolute terms each race day. No slight-of-hand accounting, cooked books or creative advertising can hide a deficit in your business. The stopwatch exposes all shortcomings – and hiding is not an option.
Is anyone surprised which NASCAR teams are without sponsorship and searching for a merger, a partner or buyer with little success? They’re most likely the teams also on the slow side of the stopwatch.
No matter what racing series you follow, the teams with the best people and the best management are going to win almost every time. This means more than the driver, crew and competition staff. It applies strongly to the business side of the sport. The teams with the best management/ownership at the top usually have the best sales, sponsor service and marketing people. These teams are going to win the race for sponsorships as often as they win on track.
Money doesn't automatically buy you speed, but well-spent investments in the best people eventually will pay dividends, because motorsports rewards smart effort and crushes mediocrity.
Seth Godin is a cutting-edge marketing and business writer, and he's dead-on with one of his latest business blogs, called "The Sad Lie of Mediocrity:"
- Doing 4% less does not get you 4% less.
- Doing 4% less may very well get you 95% less.
The sad lie of mediocrity is the mistaken belief that partial effort yields partial results. In fact, the results are usually totally out of proportion to the incremental effort.”
Using Godin's argument, if a team is four percent below par at a race at Bristol, they finish the 500-lap race 20 laps behind the winner. Sure, each race has
A team four percent behind is almost always among the "go or go home" pack - and almost always going home. Last weekend at Phoenix, Jimmie Johnson’s pole lap was 26.721 seconds. If a team were four percent off in qualifying, their two laps would be followed by a very long, early ride home. The slowest qualifier for the race turned a lap of 27.319 seconds – slightly less than two percent slower than the pole position.
Motorsports is a cyclical business because of human nature: losing motivates some people and forces them to work harder and smarter, while winning can occasionally make some complacent. However, over the long term, you'll find the same teams at the top (see: Hendrick, Ferrari, Kinser, Penske in open wheel, Force, Gibbs, McLaren, Roush) because of the people from top to bottom. And that's no accident.
Why? They do not accept 96 percent.
And, because the stopwatch has no memory. It has no agenda. It never blinks. It plays no favorites. The stopwatch never lies.
And it's running every lap.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or Speed Channel
Jade Gurss is the owner of fingerprint, inc., a sports publicity company. He has written two New York Times Best Sellers, including what is believed to be the biggest-selling motorsports book in American publishing history (Driver #8 with Dale Earnhardt Jr.). His two decades of publicity and marketing experience involves nearly every category of motorsports, including nine innovative seasons as NASCAR publicist for the Budweiser brand and Earnhardt Jr. His blog can be seen at: http://fingerprint.typepad.com
Attention NASCAR Fans! SPEED™ will kick off the Homestead weekend finale with nearly 30 hours of original programming starting with live coverage of Thursday’s Sprint Cup Championship Press Conference at 1:00 pm Eastern. Click here for What to Watch on SPEED at Homestead
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