NASCAR is expanding internationally
China is next on the list in the racing brand’s global expansion
About15 years ago, give or take a year, my wife and I were at the final Indy car race at Nazareth Speedway in Pennsylvania. I’d told our friends we were embarking on a very biblical journey. “The race is in Nazareth and we’re staying in Bethlehem,” I said. Ho, ho, ho. My wife is not a racing fan — she only comes to one now and again — and is definitely not a speedway-food fan. While my mouth was watering at the prospect of enjoying hot Italian sausage sandwiches with fried green peppers and onions, she’d gone to the supermarket for a bag of fruit.
So, we’re sitting in our seats in the grandstand, and I’m warming up for my feast by tucking into a hotdog with mustard, relish and sauerkraut, when she takes an apple out of the bag. “Hey, look at this,” she said. And she held up the apple that had a sticker on it. The sticker said: NASCAR. “Somebody’s having fun with you,” I said. “They just stuck that on there. It’s a joke.”
Said my wife: “It’s on all of them,” and showed me the rest of the bag.
“NASCAR’s taking over the world,” I said.
I’m not sure if NASCAR is still involved in the retailing of apples, oranges and bananas — if they ever were (it could still have been a joke) — but there’s no doubt that the sanctioning body has embarked on a period of international expansion. NASCAR is the biggest and most successful auto racing organization in the United States, and is now establishing its brand in Canada (the Pinty’s national stock car series), Mexico, Europe and, soon, Asia (a.k.a. China). Yes. NASCAR in China.
I had a fascinating conversation recently with the company’s chief international officer, Gene Stefanyshyn, the guy in charge of spreading the NASCAR word around the world.
And when I write the words “around the world,” I mean that literally, because after China will come South America. We didn’t talk about Africa, but I have a feeling that it’s on Stefanyshyn’s radar, too.
Our chat took place during the Honda Indy Toronto weekend in July — one of five Torontoarea racing promotions involving NASCAR each year.
Next weekend at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, north of Bowmanville, there will be another — the annual NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series Chevrolet Silverado 250 weekend, which will also include the ninth round of the 12-race Pinty’s Series. The Toyo Tires Formula 1600 Championship, the Canadian Touring Car Championship and the Nissan Micra Cup will also be racing at CTMP next weekend.
The truck race will be the first round of the series’ seven-race playoff. Canadian Stewart Friesen of Niagara-on-the-Lake is among the eight drivers who qualified to run for the championship (with Brett Moffitt, Grant Enfinger, Austin Hill, Ross Chastain, Tyler Ankrum and old pros Matt Crafton and Johnny Sauter being the others).
For complete details, ticket prices and so-on, go to the CTMP website.
Now, Stefanyshyn is one of several Canadians who’ve held senior positions at NASCAR — Brad Moran is currently managing director of the truck series and Brent Dewar is immediate past-president — and is a veteran of automaking in his home country.
“I was born in Red Lake in northern Ontario,” he said. “My dad worked in a gold mine up there. Then we moved to the Oshawa area. As a kid, I was always interested in technical things, working with my hands. Because General Motors was there, I got into the co-op program. Then I went to Kettering (University) in Flint, Mich., and that’s where I got my engineering degree. I worked for GM in Oshawa for 35 years.” And how did he wind up working for NASCAR?
“When I finished my career at GM,” he said, “NASCAR approached me and said they were looking for a technical person to run their R&D Center, and so I signed on. The opportunity then came to work for the international division, and here I am.”
China is not a country where you just walk in and go into business. You have to know the right people if you want to get things done.
“We have to put a footprint into Asia,” he said. “It’s a huge market. I think looking to enter Asia has been a priority for us; we’ve done a lot of study and we have some pretty good plans in place. But in the grand scheme of things, we’re still in our infancy in taking the brand global.
“So, I don’t think we can go it alone; I think we have to find the right partner. You need to know the system there, the political system. You have to know who to talk to at the national level, but particularly at the provincial level, where a lot of things happen in China.
If you want to go racing, you need those connections. A good partner would bring their government connections and their knowledge of the market. We would bring the brand and the intellectual property so we could work together to try to establish a national racing series in Asia.”
I pointed out to Stefanyshyn that, with a few exceptions, NASCAR racing in North America, and particularly the United States, takes place on oval speedways and, so far as I know, there aren’t that many ovals on the other side of the Atlantic. He didn’t disagree.
“As you know,” he said, “we race on ovals in the United States that are small half miles on up to the superspeedways and some road courses. Over time, we will evolve these tracks to reflect what our customers tell us is the kind of racing they like. Over in Europe, the history is road-course racing, but we do have an oval race there.”
And Stefanyshyn doesn’t see any problem with oval racing, despite what some race fans have to say about it. “I know some people have trouble with that type of racing, but frankly, from a fan perspective, on a small oval the fan can see the whole race with the cars going by many, many times and the action — the bumping and the grinding — it’s classic NASCAR. So we think this is a strength for us, particularly as we go into new markets.
“The question is, how quickly do you migrate from road courses to that? We’re openminded and we want to do what’s right for the region we’re in, and we’re always going to err on the side of giving the fan a better race.”
NASCAR has always supported — and been supported by — the major automobile manufacturers. As the industry goes, so goes — with some exceptions — NASCAR. It took the sanctioning body what seemed to be forever, for instance, to go to direct fuel injection and to deep-six carburetors.
The industry is being turned on its head by the rush to electrification, however. What will NASCAR, known for V-8s, do about that?
“We understand and appreciate the push toward electric vehicles,” Stefanyshyn said. “The Chinese government has decreed that by 2035, all new vehicles sold in China must be electric. We and the partner we pick will develop the strategy. I think the introduction (of racing in China) will be with internal combustion engines. It’s our classic style of racing.” And the future of NASCAR? “People talk as if this electric revolution is going to happen tomorrow,” he said. “It’s going to come, but it won’t happen tomorrow. It will take time, and what we have to do is be very measured. Will keeping internal combustion make our product more exciting because it will be different? Or do we go to electric because that will be more exciting? This will be a fundamental question for us.”