Team Owner Frank Howard shares his philosophy on racing and discusses Team HLM's plans for the 2007 racing season.
"There are many articles about the team out on the web describing our philosophy on motorsports. Google "Team HLM" to find out some more information. But, in a nutshell we feel that to produce a product that can survive the test of time a company must first have the money to run a top notch organization. By securing the money we can then reinvest in our team for the future. After all, transporters, cars, crew, etc. wear out, retire, and need repairs."
"Motorsports and particularly sports car racing have not had a great deal of success in the US for a number of reasons but mostly because of the lack of funding for teams because of the impact of auto manufacturers and short sighted sanctioning bodies. The trouble with auto companies doing the funding is that when they get the information they need for their production cars then the money dries up and the teams go away. Another problem has been sanctioning bodies have let costs and technology get so out of hand that only a choice few have been able to compete thus small car counts thus poor racing thus series collapse."
"Let me also add at this point that very few forms of racing can be funded through having a 'sponsor' put their name on the car. A front running car in our series will generate about $300,000 of air time value from the Speed Network. Our budget is in the $5,000,000 range, so as you can see the advertising value is not enough to get a company to give you their hard earned money. BTW, the only series that has that kind of attraction is NASCAR and even they can't squeeze enough money in advertising to make it viable."
"We decided on the Rolex Grand American Road Racing Series because we feel they have a real strong business model dedicated to:
1) having strong competitive racing, equality and car counts
2) making sure we give the fans a good value
3) keeping costs to a reasonable level so we can keep car counts up and prices down for the fans."
"We really have a lot of confidence in the people at Grand AM. Jim France and Roger Edmundson run a great ship. We are very happy to be teamed up with the NICOclub.com folks and look forward to having a very special 'fan crew club'. You're going to hear a lot of information about this shortly but suffice it to say it will be unique with lots and lots of inside scoop."
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