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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | June 2008 
Mexico NASCAR: Slow and Steady Setting Pace for Progress
 Dave Rodman - NASCAR.com
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| | Antonio Perez captured his first pole after breaking the qualifying record at Watkins Glen on June 7. (Brian Cleary/Getty Images) | 
| | "I don't know how many fans we have in Mexico today, but certainly this event is representative of the fact that we are creating a fan base in the Mexican market," says NASCAR's Robbie Weiss. (Turner Sports) | 
| | "The Corona Series is a developmental series that is intended ... to time help drivers develop so that they can move, eventually, into one of NASCAR's national series," says Weiss. (Turner Sports) | 
| | Kyle Busch smokes the tires during a burnout after winning the Corona Mexico 200 on April 20 in Mexico City. (Jason Smith/Getty Images) | | |
Mexico City - If NASCAR in Mexico is considered a building process still in progress, the best message of April's fourth annual visit to the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez was probably delivered by the undercard.
While the weekend was blessed with amazingly nice weather, Sunday's Nationwide Series Corona Mexico 200 was troubled by an attendance, cited by NASCAR as more than 57,000 - a number that has continually shrunk from the inaugural event's estimated crowd of about 100,000.
On the other hand, NASCAR Mexico has a touring division, the Corona Series, that uses purpose-built racecars that resemble the Late Model Stock Cars used primarily at weekly short tracks in the Southeastern United States with a target cost of well under $30,000 apiece.
That series has experienced continued growth, with this season's five events marked by five different winners, increased attendance across the board and a higher per-event average number of racecars.
The Corona Series, which tours a variety of road courses and ovals throughout Mexico, has been in existence only as long as NASCAR has visited Mexico City.
But in a scenario that resembles the Daytona 500 versus the rest of the schedule in the domestic Sprint Cup Series, for the feature that shared Sunday billing with the Nationwide Series, 47 cars attempted to qualify for 36 starting spots - and only one of the starting cars wasn't plastered with sponsor signage.
The event had a spectacular finish, with 2005 Corona Series champion Jorge Goeters involved in a heavy crash coming out of the last corner while racing in the top three, while his younger brother Patrick Goeters won the race.
The fact that more than 3,000 people reportedly were turned away from the 2008 Corona Series opener at the Queretaro road course and that the series will use at least three newly built racetracks this season - in a country that previously had no "stock car racing" - seems positive.
"This is what it's about, in the end and what it all comes down to - and what we're most proud of," said Robbie Weiss NASCAR vice president, broadcasting and NASCAR Media Group managing director, international. "To see where this [Corona] series is, four years into this is a neat deal."
"It was amazing," OCESA director of sports events Federico Alaman said of this season's opening event. "That was our first event on that track - we do two events a year at Queretaro, but this was really a [landmark] for us - it was our first day to turn [away] people - there were more than 3,000 people that couldn't get to the racetrack [due to lack of parking] so that will tell you a little bit how the market is growing."
By the end of last April's Nationwide Series feature no one, above the rank of general team member, had been heard to say much negative about "the Mexico project."
And to hear the participants tell the tale, there's a lot positive to be said about NASCAR being in Mexico.
"Based on our expectations, we're far above them," Weiss said. "Many would have said that we wouldn't have come back after the first year - that the teams wouldn't want to do it."
"But at the end of the day, for the success of this event, the teams vote by their participation [because] they're not mandated to be here. The teams validate it by their support and we [had] an all-star NASCAR road race, so that says a lot about what this event's about and how important it is to the teams and for our industry."
"You could measure the impact of this event in a lot of ways," said Chip Ganassi, who owned the pole- and race-winning cars from last year. "I see people wearing memorabilia now that you didn't see at first - lots of memorabilia."
"I see billboards around town and the fans are a little more educated now when they talk to you and they tell me ticket sales are increasing, so if that's a measurement of it - those measurements, to me, seem to all be pretty good."
"I don't have any skin in the game as a promoter, but I think that it can be a viable thing for NASCAR and the NASCAR community for a while to come."
Ganassi's team co-owner, Cuban businessman Felix Sabates, has some special insight into the Mexican experience.
"I've been involved in NASCAR in Mexico way before we came here," Sabates said. "And when you have a person the caliber of the Slim family behind it, it has to be successful. All of NASCAR Mexico, the Corona Series has happened here because of one man, [Telmex chairman] Carlos Slim, who is dedicated to the success not only of NASCAR, but racing in general, in Mexico."
"He has big plans, and it will be interesting to see what he can do. You know, in Mexico everything happens slowly, but that [Corona] series has NASCAR officials running it and more cars than positions to make the race."
"The first year, you didn't have any cars - maybe 12 or 13. So the fact that people are spending the money to build these tracks leads you to believe that this series will probably bloom here."
"It's all about ticket sales"
Unfortunately, the most noticeable aspect for outsiders, which actually includes most race fans, is that for the third consecutive year the attendance at the Nationwide race dropped from the previous year - the past two years, dramatically so.
Attendance estimates for the inaugural Busch Series race in 2005 were about 100,000 fans. That fell to the mid-70,000s in '06, to a NASCAR-reported 72,971 last year and down to 57,324 in '08.
Apparently, attendance woes were not limited to NASCAR in Mexico City, as the 2003 Champ Car World Series open-wheel event reportedly had a series-record 221,000 people attend, but fell to a reported 104,000 on race day in '06.
That directly contravenes the goal of any promoter, and the mark that NASCAR Mexico promoter OCESA uses as the best estimation of the event's success.
"Ticket sales," Alaman said on race morning. "It's all about ticket sales, coverage and what do the fans talk about for days after. I think the fans for the last four years have been having a great experience and we look for new fans coming in years [ahead]."
Alaman's message on growth was a little nebulous.
"[The crowd] has been consistent since [2005]," Alaman said. "We would like this to be growing in the further years and that's what we're working for."
Weiss said that, unlike in Canada, which had long cultivated a stock-car fan base, four years ago in Mexico stock-car fans "did not exist in this market. We've come a long way, but we still have a tremendous amount of work to be done."
NASCAR's contention is that growth and consistency are equally important aspects of cultivating a Mexican fan base.
"If you look at our sport and how we're going to grow it, it's initiatives like this, if they're respectful of the industry and it's not necessarily about going to the far reaches of the world - crossing the border from Texas, this is no different than going the extra distance to Los Angeles," Weiss said. "This is important and this is really where our growth is going to come from."
"I don't know how many fans we have in Mexico today, but certainly this event is representative of the fact that we are creating a fan base in the Mexican market. And that's going to have a lot of tangible benefit to teams, licensees, sponsors or a media partner; and that's what we're trying to accomplish down here."
Alaman agrees.
"After four years, we're very happy," he said. "We're a really new audience of stock-car racing, in our country - the background of all the fans was in open-wheel racing [because] that's what we have the last 25 years. We've had pretty successful drivers in this kind of [open-wheel] series, but never in stock-car racing."
"So when we start this amazing project four years ago, we had a great turnout by the fans. We started in parallel, our local stock-car series in Mexico [the Corona Series], and it's branded by NASCAR already."
"Just looking around at the overall environment for the event, the licensing and the merchandise," said Steve O'Donnell, NASCAR's vice president, racing operations. "You see a lot of NASCAR [memorabilia] now, where before it was primarily open-wheel."
"We feel like we're really starting to make a foothold here, and I think the teams, in general, really like the event. We feel like, when we come here, it has that big-time feel, for an event."
Alaman said the agreement between NASCAR and OCESA was currently for 10 years, and that it's in conjunction with NASCAR branching out internationally to the north with NASCAR Canada, which sanctions the Canadian Tire Series, a similar Canadian touring division.
"The best way to explain it to people is, we're not dating our partner down here - we're married and we have kids and grandkids," Weiss said. "This is not a case of 'let's see how it goes.' We entered into a long-term partnership with some of the best-in-class companies in Mexico to develop stock-car racing in Mexico."
"This is a market that historically had gravitated toward open-wheel racing and that's what people had access to, so that's where the drivers went, that's where sponsors went, that's where TV went, where the fans went and where events went."
"So when we went into stock-car racing down here four years ago with our partner, it was with a long-term vision. It wasn't just a Nationwide Series event; it was also about the Corona Series and validating our position in the Mexican market."
The Nationwide Series appearance, however, is negotiated on an annual basis as are all NASCAR national touring division races, according to O'Donnell.
"This is an annual deal, just like all our others," O'Donnell said. "So we'll be sitting down with our friends from OCESA to talk about how the event went and see what we want to do for 2009."
"We're very happy with it," Alaman said. "I think it's something that's going to take us a little bit more years to get the crowd and the fans into this way of life - because it's already a way of life in the U.S. - and has been in the market for [60] years."
"We're like, 50-something years behind, but we're very happy having, in the past the Busch Series and now the Nationwide Series; and we're looking forward to growing the market with our national series and trying to support it with this big event every year."
Weiss said in his 17 years in the sports industry he's seen attendance ebb and flow, and so what's being seen across the board in all three NASCAR national series isn't a cause for alarm.
"I go to an event and I see 80,000 people and I think that's pretty impressive in the world of sports," Weiss said. "If there are a few thousand empty seats - sure, you'd like to see every seat filled - but I don't think by any means that's a reason to be concerned or to necessarily say the industry's in a fragile position, in my personal opinion."
"We'd like to see 200,000 people here," O'Donnell said, "but when you look at it in comparison to a [stand-alone] event in the [United] States, this is a huge success. And when you look at the [Corona Series] I think everybody at NASCAR is just blown away by the expectations [because] the talent is there, the haulers, the cars look good and [the teams] have really bought into it."
"I think the future is pretty bright from a developmental standpoint, and a Mexican driver standpoint."
"We're tracking on the right course"
Alaman said the biggest challenge has been creating more awareness of stock car racing, both among racing fans as well as the media.
"Absolutely, that has been the biggest challenge, not only in Mexico City but throughout Mexico," Alaman said. "I think now, after four years, all the media, the radio and newspapers, have started doing coverage of stock car racing in our country because it's starting to get [noticed] as a sport."
"It was really new for us, as I mentioned, four years ago, but I think that the turnout that we have been having impresses all of the media in Mexico."
The walls of the Autodromo media center were draped with newspaper clippings, but those covering the accompanying Grand-Am Rolex Series sports car event dominated.
Luis Diaz, a Mexican driver, won the 2007 Grand-Am race held on the same weekend as the NASCAR event; and this year Mexican pilot Memo Rojas, co-leader in the Grand-Am Daytona Prototype standings with Scott Pruett, won the pole position.
Adrian Fernandez, a Mexican national hero who competed in his fourth consecutive Corona Mexico 200 but had another splash of ill fortune when he and Sam Hornish Jr. got together midway through the race, said there was a critical element to NASCAR gaining a better foothold in Mexico.
"There is some interest now, because the event is here," Fernandez said. "But to really have interest in Mexico, you have to have a Mexican driver competing full-time in one of the [American] national series. That will drive more interest in our country."
Still, getting a Mexican driver to the Cup Series is a long-term project. Fernandez himself dabbled in NASCAR in 2005, but decided he didn't want to make the commitment.
"The big picture, for us, has always been building stock-car racing in Mexico," O'Donnell said. "If you look at the stands [in April] and compare it to the first event, we may have backed up a little bit, but when you look at the Corona Series and how far that's come in four years, that's what we're gauging it on - the talent level coming up and the amount of passion and interest among the fans that we see."
"The first year, people came, but they had no idea who was in the cars, but now we're seeing kids with NASCAR Mexico shirts and Mexican team shirts and they're starting to follow these guys and their teams."
Two drivers who figured prominently in this year's Corona Series feature, Jorge Goeters and Carlos Contreras, have experience in NASCAR but neither turned out particularly well.
Goeters won the pole position for the inaugural Nationwide Series race in Mexico, went on to win his national championship and tried to use that as a springboard to jump to America.
He could never hook on with a quality team, he said, and in 10 career starts during the previous three seasons had two top-10 finishes. He also made one Cup Series start, at Watkins Glen, in 2005.
Contreras made his first start in the Craftsman Truck Series in 1999, then ran three full seasons there for Petty Enterprises, from 2000-02. His performance was consistent, with five top-10 finishes in 70 starts and career average starts and finishes both under 19th, but since 2003 he's scrambled to make 16 Nationwide Series starts, with no top 10s.
Michel Jourdain Jr., a notable Mexican open-wheel star, attempted a foray into NASCAR, primarily with Roush Racing, but in 26 starts during the past four years has only one top-10 finish.
American drivers have dominated in Mexico City, with the best finish by a Mexican driver being Jorge Goeters' seventh-place in 2007. Fernandez has two top 10s - 10th in the 2005 inaugural and ninth last year - but that's it for Mexicans in the top 10 in four years.
Goeters, who continues to race in the Corona Series and had a top-five on the San Luis Potosi short oval in May, did not even have a ride for this year's Nationwide race, which featured the lowest number - seven - of Latin American drivers in the event's history.
But the dream is still alive for other Mexican youngsters, however, thanks to the Corona Series.
"The Corona Series is a developmental series that is intended, number one, to support racing in Mexico," Weiss said. "But at the same time help drivers develop so that they can move, eventually, into one of NASCAR's national series."
"There was a big announcement last week that Chivas [Mexican soccer club], which is like the New York Yankees or the Boston Red Sox in the [United] States, had decided to partner with [TW Racing's owner] Troy Williams, who has an established team in the United States, to not just jump into the Nationwide Series, but race in the Camping World [Series] and when the team and the driver have the skills, to jump into the Nationwide Series."
Weiss said perhaps the previous efforts were hampered in that they "didn't give enough credit to how challenging it is to be competitive in the Nationwide Series today."
"I really credit that [TW Racing] team with deciding that they're going to race in the Camping World Series for maybe up to two years ... before they make the appropriate step up the ladder after they can deliver results."
"This is like a dream come true"
Antonio Perez, one of Williams' drivers, once had aspirations in open-wheel racing, and his early career choices reflected that. He began as an 8-year-old in karts, and then to Europe for more open-wheel training before he came back to Mexico to race the two-liter Formula Renault series.
Perez was the 2006 Corona Series rookie of the year, won his first series race last September, and scored his second victory on the half-mile oval at San Luis Potosi in May.
More recently, Perez won the pole position for the Camping World East race at Watkins Glen on June 8, his first series attempt this season for TW Racing with Sean Watts, and finished 10th after a late-race scramble.
It's the latest example of what O'Donnell confirmed was NASCAR's vision.
"Four years ago, we didn't only come here to run a Nationwide race," O'Donnell said. "We came here to start the Corona Series and the ultimate goal was to have drivers from Mexico compete at the Cup level and owners come up through and reach the Cup level, and I think people are starting to see that."
"We came here to build a racing series and it's been successful. We want to build on that. We all know that the more we can see a Mexican driver successfully compete in the Nationwide Series, the more [the fans] will come out to watch one of their heroes win the race."
Perez, who made four starts a year ago in the Camping World East Series, has aligned himself with TW Racing, which early this season used Greg Sacks, who scored wins in both the Winston Cup and Busch series, as driver coach and who entered cars for Perez and countryman Jose Luis Ramirez at Mexico City.
Perez plans at least a seven-race schedule in the Camping World East Series, but NASCAR Mexico is his main thrust this season.
"The Corona Series is getting bigger every day," Perez said. "Every day the series is more competitive and all of the drivers are pretty fast."
"I can tell you for sure, that one day one guy from [our series] will be in Cup."
Sacks, who left TW to try to revive his own Sacks Motorsports organization, said Perez had impressed to a degree that Sacks might welcome him to his own team if the right opportunity presented itself.
"He's a fabulous young driver and he's got a great career in this sport," Sacks said. "I had worked with Antonio on the road course at Kershaw, S.C., and then we took him down to Mexico City, where he was so fast; we had a shot to win that race."
"In the final practice, on old tires, he was running as fast as Kyle [Busch, who won the race]. Antonio has great potential because he's fast and he's smooth - and when you can be smooth and fast at the same time, that's deadly."
Perez was not so presumptuous to assume the first driver to make it to the Cup Series would be him, but it's his goal.
"My dream is to be in Cup and to fight for my country and my sponsors," Perez said. "We'll see what happens, but I've been working step by step and trying hard, and now my next step is the Camping World East Series."
Perez said to race with the Nationwide Series in Mexico City, where carburetor trouble relegated him to a 34th-place finish after he ran in the top 15 for the first half of the race, was the biggest race he'd ever competed in. His team plans to attempt the series' other road-course events, at Montreal and Watkins Glen in August.
"This is like a dream come true for me, because when I was a kid I used to follow Adrian Fernandez, Sam Hornish, Dario Franchitti - all the big guys," Perez said. "And to race with them [in April] was like a dream come true for me."
There have been success stories already in Mexican stock-car racing. Rogelio Lopez, the 2006 Corona Series champion, raced in the '07 Busch East Series, where he won at the Music City Motorplex and finished seventh in the championship.
Chad Little, who was the Winston West rookie of the year in 1986 and the series' champion in '87, went on to have a significant career in Cup and the Busch series, where he won six races in 134 starts.
Little, 45, is NASCAR's Director of Racing Development for Mexico and also director of the Whelen Modified Series, and has been largely responsible for the Corona Series' growth.
"To have five winners in five races, which is a first in series history, says a lot for the growth of the series and the reach of its rules," Little said. "It means we're reaching more than the same teams and the same drivers. We're trying to build a competitive series and it seems we're going in the right direction."
"There's still a lot of work to do - there always is. When you want to balance competition with controlling cost, that's always tough to do, but we've established a very competitive series with the Corona Series and we're proud of that and what these teams have done."
Little said attendance for the Corona Series has been up 20 percent this season, with a couple complete sell-outs, including the Queretaro road course.
"Crowds are up and our car counts are up about 10 percent from last year, from an average of 31-32 cars to 33-34," Little said. "We're getting into a stretch of races at bigger facilities that will really give us a fix on where we are."
"Ideally, this is the venue we want to be at"
To compete in Mexico, NASCAR has stepped up and outside the box in many ways - from organizing the truckers' convoy from Laredo, Texas, to Mexico City to arranging accommodations and transportation for officials, media and team personnel to providing food service at the racetrack for three days.
O'Donnell said logistics have always been the teams' biggest concerns.
"When we first came down, it was new and it was, 'How do we get there?' and 'What do we do?' with passports and everything," O'Donnell said. "I think we took that and tried to make that as easy as possible on the teams."
"The track stepped up with a great purse and making sure the hotels and transportation to and from the track was set up and that meals were paid for. We tried to take all the things that could be a negative and package them - put them on NASCAR."
"That was our goal - not to make this difficult but to make it an event that teams looked forward to - to put the teams in a position where they could just come and perform like it was just another event."
"The trip is a lot harder than a normal race trip on the truckers," said Todd Lohse, director of competition for Braun Racing. "They have to come home and swap stuff out on Sunday before driving to Laredo by Tuesday [of race week]."
It's a lot less time at home for everyone. We usually fly our own plane to races, but we found out it's easier to fly commercial because it's quicker.
"NASCAR handles the trip well by giving us all the transportation we need. If they didn't do that, we'd have to hire our own security. Every year since they started racing in Mexico, NASCAR's done a real good job."
Sabates and Ganassi agreed that, with the financial perks NASCAR and OCESA provide in Mexico, the Mexico City trip is actually cheaper than, say, going to California.
Fellow team owner Ted Geschickter, who trucked two cars to Mexico City, said there was one difference.
"I think it's pretty neat for our guys to get exposed to a new culture, and for our sponsors, a lot of them have business down here and that's a lot of people to sell to - and that's the up side," Geschickter said. "I think moving the race back in the year [from its original date in February] has been a definite improvement, because that gave us a couple extra weeks to get our road course stuff together."
Along with the demands of the first 10 races in the schedule, which Geschickter said demands teams keep more cars together versus being able to swap parts among cars, there's another issue unique to Mexico for all teams; which he said made the south of the border trip more expensive.
"You buy extra insurance for coming down [to Mexico] for all your equipment, which is pretty expensive and all the normal [travel] stuff," Geschickter said. "But I think once you get used to traveling a bunch of people every weekend, whether you're traveling across the border or not, it's the same logistics for that."
But there's another 2008 expense that hits every team, everywhere.
"It's hard to compare apples to apples, because at this time last year it cost a buck-thirty to run a transporter and now it's up near $2.20 a mile to run our transporters; so mileage-wise it's definitely more expensive than some; but the biggest incremental expense is the insurance."
"We think it's been a huge success," O'Donnell said. "Coming down in year one it was our first real international event, and we learned a lot, logistically, with the teams. I think, since that time we've seen a lot of momentum come out and a lot of talent develop on the driver side, coming out of the Corona Series - and not just back-markers, but competing for the win."
One thing that's not being considered, despite outsider's contentions that moving the venue of the annual Nationwide Series event, for example to another road course in Monterrey, which is closer to the United States at about 200 miles southwest of Laredo.
No one involved expects that to happen.
"I think the same [speculation] happened last year," Alaman said. "I think Mexico City should be the home for this race and we'll work very hard to have it in further years."
"We looked at it, because from a logistics standpoint, a lot of people have said, 'Why aren't you racing in Monterrey,' " O'Donnell said. "From our perspective and the folks at OCESA, if you're going to be in Mexico, Mexico City has the most eyeballs."
"Ideally, this is the venue we want to be at, though we'd never rule out a Monterrey, because it's a beautiful facility with a lot of big companies there, so it's something we'd look at but for now the goal would be to be in Mexico City."
"Any time you can take the product - NASCAR racing - to a city with 25 million people, I think you've got to do it. It exposes the brands that we bring, our sponsors, to a number [of people] that you just can't duplicate in any city in the United States."
"Monterrey is an industrial city. Monterrey is like Pittsburgh. I live in Pittsburgh - there's nothing wrong with Pittsburgh. But Mexico City is like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago all put together; it's the financial center, the political center and the commercial center of the country, all in one spot."
How the Nationwide Series does in Mexico, as well as when it goes back to Montreal, where last year's inaugural event was a rousing success, may determine how seriously NASCAR looks at taking the Cup Series outside the U.S.
The last time the Cup Series raced outside the U.S. was in 1998, in an exhibition event on the oval at the Twin Ring Motegi in Japan. Whatever the perception of success in Mexico and Canada has been, a couple NASCAR veterans took differing views on the subject.
"I'm sure it's something that NASCAR has and continues to take a look at," Petty Enterprises driver and 2000 Cup champion Bobby Labonte said. "I'm sure it can be great for the sport, but all the parts and pieces have to fit just right."
"It's not an easy task for these teams to travel like that and get back to race the following week. We're a weekly series, and we don't have much room in our schedule right now - logistically, it's tough."
"But eventually, you have to think for our sport to continue to grow that we'll have to take the Sprint Cup Series outside the United States. I'm not sure overseas is the first place to start, but Canada and Mexico have proved worthy for the Nationwide Series. They have had good attendance and it has brought more attention to our sport."
John Andretti, who has international racing experience via sports car and Indy cars, attempted the first 10 Cup races this season for Front Row Motorsports, thinks diversifying would be a positive.
"I think that is the next natural progression," Andretti said. "There are plenty of fans outside the United States who are starved for the Sprint Cup Series. You just need to look at our neighbors to the north and south to see that. The races at New Hampshire, Michigan, Phoenix and California are hosting a more and more diverse fan base [and] that has been good for the sport."
"We have the drivers from outside the United States that can help draw the crowd, too. Juan Pablo Montoya, Dario Franchitti and Patrick Carpentier are names that can draw more fans."
"The problem will be the scheduling. It's already a very demanding schedule right now. I guess it's just something that needs to happen for the sport to continue to grow. We couldn't stay in the southeast all the time. We eventually had to expand." |
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