V8 Racing's motor mouth
19/4/2005 13:09 (Press Release) -
Senior motor sport writer Mark Fogarty asks outspoken WPS Racing team boss Craig Gore about his tempestuous approach to racing. Craig Gore is not your average V8 team owner. Colourful and combative, he is a human headline who is not afraid to say what he thinks.
Gore is the head of the Wright Patton Shakespeare financial services group, the sponsor/owner of the WPS Racing BA Falcons of David Besnard and Craig Baird. WPS is an aggressive promoter of its extensive involvement in racing, which also includes branding of V8 event activities and support categories. As well, Gore is a co-owner of the new Team Australia squad in the US-based Champ Car World Series.
The fact that he is a newcomer to racing, with just one season under his belt, hasn’t stopped Gore from being the most opinionated person in the pit lane. On the eve of this weekend’s Placemakers V8 International at Pukekohe, near Auckland in New Zealand, he outlined his strategy and explained his unconventional candour.
MF: V8 Supercar team, V8 Safety Car, V8 Supercard, Porsche Carerra Cup, Aussie Racing Cars and now a Champ Car team. Are you trying to own Australian motor racing?
CG: I think motor racing is very undervalued and I think that as a market, it hasn’t realised its potential. From that perspective, you invest in things when they’re very low and you hope you get the upside. We haven’t spent as much money as people think. We have made strategic investments that will build our brand and we intend to dominate motor racing. And I said when I came into it, if I can’t dominate it, I don’t want to be part of it. From our perspective, there have to be two ways to dominate: the business side of the sport and then on track. I think we’re succeeding on the business side and now we have to get those results on the track.
MF: So being involved V8 Supercars has generated a lot of business for WPS? You have empirical evidence of this?
CG: Mate, our on-track brand recognition went from zero to 82 per cent in 12 months. It’s a phenomenal number. Off-track, in any capital city in Australia, our recognition went from 0.5 to two per cent, depending on where you were, to 33 per cent. They’re phenomenal numbers. Our sales increased by 66 per cent. I think the thing that people don’t really recognise is that I could’ve spent two million to four million dollars on marketing, but it would’ve been artificial. It wouldn’t have had the emotional or psychological attachment required to make it grow. That’s what motor sport does – it gives it life. And from a V8 Supercar perspective, I rate it as perhaps the greatest investment I’ve ever made.
MF: You’re variously described as colourful, outspoken, a maverick, a rogue. As far as team owners go, you’re certainly different.
CG: I don’t compare myself with the other team owners. I think the thing that differentiates me is that I’m not influenced an outside party – never have been and nor will I ever be. I can sit on the board and provide the shareholders an unbiased and undirected and completely uncensored view. I don’t get supported by Ford or Holden and even if I did, I wouldn’t be biased towards my own self-serving interest. That’s the difference. I can afford to, as part of our business, sponsor a race team and own it. We operate it as a business. It’s integrated into our business. We have integrated motor racing as part of our business. We – the board and every member of our 300 staff Australiawide – have completely and absolutely supported and taken ownership of motor racing. We recognize from the successes that we’ve got from it that it is a very undervalued business, and we can all learn a lot from it and gain a lot from it. So our only point of difference is that we speak our mind because we can and everybody else can’t.
MF: There are plenty of sceptics, those who think you’re just a rich bloke indulging in a newfound passion.
CG: I think there’s a sceptical view placed on our investment in motor sport because people have a self-interest. We don’t have a self-interest. I don’t think you could do what we’ve done in motor sport unless it was based on sound business principles. We do it well. We promote it better than anybody else; we open up markets better than anybody else; we generally look better than anybody else – and yet we get criticism. Well, I can only put it down to the tall-poppy syndrome. But I don’t to claim that because that’s disgraceful. At the end of the day, I just want to say that we’re unbiased and have no self-interest. I can’t force my views on other people. Ford tell everybody not to agree with me and anybody getting money from Ford is going to do that because they’re scared of losing the money. I challenge every other team owner out there that’s getting money from a manufacturer to tell the manufacturer to stick their money so they can speak their views. I bet you they don’t. I bet you not one other team owner has the guts to do it because every one of them has sold their soul. But I haven’t. So it’s easy to kick me because I’m the only one out in the open. I’m the one person among the serious team owners that’s doing it completely on their own. So I can speak my mind and they can’t.
MF: WPS Racing needs to start getting consistent top 10 results, doesn’t it?
CG: Yes, we do. I think we’ll perform strongly at Pukekohe. I think we can get both cars into the top 10. That’s our goal, to be consistently in the top 10 this year. I don’t want to make promises, but I think we have the horsepower to do it and there are a couple of other things we’re working on to improve our performance. Our technical director Ian Walburn has been in the States for the past three weeks, but I don’t think we’re going to be able to apply the things he’s learned to the car by Pukekohe. Maybe for the following raced in Perth.
MF: But at some stage during this season, surely your target has to be to win a round or at least contend for victory?
CG: We do want to contend for victories, but what’s more likely this year is that we’ll contend for podiums. We’re not doing too badly when you look at our record. We’ve only done 17 races as a company and we’ve had a race win, a fourth, a seventh and an eighth, so we’re not too bloody shabby. But, yes, you’re right, we’ve got to be up there. By the end of the year, I’d like to think that we’d be up at the front of the field.
Mark Fogarty is Editor-At-Large of Auto Action magazine and an internationally renowned motor sport journalist
Mark Fogarty
Release Date: 13/04/2005
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