Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour presented by NASCAR on FOX - NASCAR's Ben Kennedy goes in-depth on 2025 Schedule | Interview

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

In Episode 54 of 'Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour,' Kevin sits down with NASCAR’s Executive Vice President and Chief Venue & Racing Innovations Officer, Ben Kennedy. Kevin and Ben break down the 2025 Cup Series schedule, and Ben provides behind the scenes details about how the schedule came together and why this represents a 'milestone' for the sport. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you can race in the Coliseum and prove out that you can build a quarter mile racetrack inside of the stadium, then that opens a door to all the football stadiums around the world. And if you can run on the streets, then that gives you the ability to literally run anywhere that has the street on it. Welcome to Kevin Harvick's happy hour presented by NASCAR on Fox. And we have a great guest today with NASCAR executive Ben Kennedy coming into the studio to talk about the schedule, to talk about Mexico City and everything that they have put together for 2025. And I want to learn a little bit about who he is because he has a great background in this sport. So here's our conversation. I hope you enjoy it.

Well, we're excited to have Bing Kennedy in studio. We appreciate you taking the time today to come talk about everything that has just been released with the schedule last week. I know from my side of it when I look at the schedule and it's different, and you see those new and exciting places like Mexico City and you see the playoffs mixed up. Tell us about how you arrive at all these things. But I think the first thing is just talk about Mexico and everything that came out with this schedule. Yeah, Kevin. So, you know, a new and bold schedule for us, this is, I think, the fifth schedule in a row

where we've had new venues that we've added to it. And to your point, the big one is Adromo, Harmonos, Rodriguez, and taking our Cup Series down to Mexico City. And, you know, this is something we've talked about for a while, right, that we want to take our Cup Series, our most premier products, and take it internationally. And we had a number of different conversations. Ultimately, Mexico City came to the forefront. Have a great relationship with the promoters down there. We've had the Xfinity Series race there back in 05 to 08. And just being in a market like Mexico City.

with over 20 million people in it is a huge opportunity to get our sport in front of a ton of new fans and new people. So we're excited about it. We know that this is only the start of our journey. We have, I said, 10 months this morning on a call. It's now about nine and a half months until the event. So we have a lot of work to do for the next nine and a half months. But huge opportunity.

I think we have great partners down there with Ossessa and the entire team. And just excited to do. to see it on the schedule finally. Yeah, when you look at that type of event, I was a part of those events that we did back in 2005 and 06 and the ones that I did. And when I got there, we were immediately met with security and went to the hotel and everything was very structured. What is that process like for you to set it all out for the teams, or is that a continuation of everything that happens over the next nine and a half months? Yes, and yes, it's all the above. So, We've already done a handful of planning so far just to exactly that. And we're going to have a lot over the next nine and a half months. And, you know, that's everything from making sure our haulers can get from Michigan. If they're going to stop in Charlotte, they can get to Charlotte and then make their way down to Mexico City. If you think about it, I mean, it's a pretty far drive to Mexico City. I mean, it's a drive to Laredo, Texas, or, you know, just south of that to the border. And then it's about double that to get to Mexico City. So just thinking about the time.

of that. And then, of course, any contingency plans you might have around Michigan, you know, God forbid, we have another rain delay and you end up on Monday to make sure that everyone can get down there in time for practice. And ideally, we start to have cars on track by Friday. So, you know, the almost 200 haulers that we have for our industry from Michigan, all the way down to Mexico City and back is going to be part of our planning. Obviously, you have all of the people that are flying, whether it's over commercial or chartered aircrafts, You have all the on-ground transportation, you have hotel blocks. So all of that we want to make sure it's buttoned up as well as we can.

And we've already started a lot of that planning. Naturally, it's a little bit tough to plan when something hasn't really been announced yet. And now that it's been announced, I think it just accelerates a lot of that too. So we're putting together a team internally that is, I mean, we're going to have people that are going to be dedicated solely to this is just transportation, logistics, and all of the on-ground kind of movement that's going to happen in around that event. I mean, you lived it. It's quite, you know, kind of a process that we put together. And, you know, with our industry, it's a massive industry. It's thousands of people that are going to go down there. We're going to make sure that everything's buttoned up. When you look at internationally, you know, I think that the Mexico City events were great to be a part of. And I had, other than the Manasuma's revenge, I had a great, you know, a great time running both of those races. And I look back at those as being great events.

But when I look at taking the Cup Series of Mexico City, that's a huge step. The international piece of it for us from the team side of things when we own the race teams always opened up new budgets for our sponsors. We had, I think it was Palan, Pellarico, instead of Rises on the car when we went to Mexico City when we were part of the Hershey brands. How important is that for not only to grow the sport, but for the teams to have another bucket of money to come out of? And is it important to get to Canada and that area as we go forward to open up those new buckets? Yeah, for sure. And, you know, as we think about it, we obviously, we think about NASCAR as a company. We think about our broadcast partners. We think about our teams. We think about our drivers and all the different stakeholders in the industry. That was a big part of our conversations, right? You know, as you take our racing to new markets in different places or different types of venues, and naturally should open the door to new.

opportunities. And a lot of those are partnership opportunities. So I think the good news is ever since last Tuesday, we've already had a number of people reached out to us. And hopefully on the team side, they've had some phone calls as well of some potential new interests that they may not have otherwise had. You know, should we be racing that event in the States as an example? So I think that opens up a new door for sure. And then, you know, as we think about other markets internationally, we've talked about Canada a lot. I think, you know, that kind of could potentially be an opportunity in the future. I've talked about abroad.

I think the biggest challenge that we have, you know, as soon as you start to go abroad, especially when you start to talk about going over water, is naturally we just have so much inventory in our schedule, right? It's 38 races. And if you look at next year's schedule, we'll do the clash one weekend off, which a lot of people don't call it an off week. We go Daytona 500.

We have one off week after that in April for Easter. And then we go straight through to the first week in November. and kind of keeping those two, you know, bookends at either side of the schedule. It makes it more challenging logistically to go from, you know, just make it up, let's say, a Kansas to Brazil or Europe, wherever it might be. You know, that's obviously in the back of our mind. I think it could be an opportunity as we think about, you know, the next few years and, you know, potentially do you take an exhibition race to, you know, one of those further markets,

you know, but we've always said, hey, it's a huge opportunity to take more of these domestic race is international, but at the same time, our core product is always going to be our U.S. markets, too. When you look at going and doing, well, let's just take the special event races, the All-Star race and the clash, do you ever see a time where you combine those? Because I look at the length of the schedule right now, and I think to myself, my goodness, it's not as hard for the drivers as it is for the team guys. And sometimes I feel like when you talk about the logistics of what we have to do to get from Michigan to Mexico City. You know, you think about all those things.

And it's just, it's hard, right? But when I look at the All-Star race and the clash, I look at, they're very similar. Do you ever think about combining those types of races to open up another weekend? Yeah, you know, we've talked about it. You know, I think the clash in particular, being two weeks before the Daytona 500, makes a lot of sense on many levels. It's an exhibition race. I think we've always said to ourselves, and we've heard from our fans that we want our first points race to be at Daytona, wanted to be our biggest event of the year. So kind of keeping that in

mind, if you have any of these exhibition races like The Clash, I think that is a huge opportunity for us to promote the Daytona 500. And then to your point, I mean, the All-Star race, I think, has taken on so many different evolutions over the past few years, right? We were at Charlotte, eventually went to Bristol, went to Texas, you know, now we're at North Wilkesboro. So it's something that we also talk about with BWed Motorsports is what does the future evolution of the All-Star Race look like. And, you know, I think there's a theory around the All-Star Race that every weekend is an All-Star Race. We have our biggest names and our biggest drivers on all of these races. It's a different format. It's a format similar to Clash. So, you know, we've talked about

all sorts of different concepts of, you know, do you continue to have that exhibition race? Do you have it look at, you know, like something different? You know, we still get to work on what that's going to be. I do think it's an opportunity we could look at with us in. When you look at the playoff schedule, we see New Hampshire in there. We see St. Louis in there this year. What is that mix? Is the goal to keep mixing those playoff races up so it doesn't become like it was, say, five years ago where we had kind of the same mix of racetracks every year?

Is the goal to keep mixing that up so that you have the different types of tracks? Or what's the thought process when you look at those, just those 10 races because obviously they're important and you don't want to, you don't want to lean towards a guy that's super good on a mile and a half racetracks. And now the balance is much better between how many of each style of race track are in there. Yeah, I think it's been a little bit of our thought process. You know, if you think about when we made a lot of those changes of the playoff schedule in 2020, we kind of set that schedule.

We didn't make a ton of changes to it. Maybe one of it here or there would move up or down. We weren't really adding many new venues. We weren't moving venues out. out, you know, this year, we'll see Atlanta and Watkins Glenn in the playoffs, which I think is going to add probably a new dynamic to that first round. First race this year. Out of the box.

Out of the box. Yeah. So that's going to be interesting. And then next year, you know, we'll have St. Louis. We'll have New Hampshire. And then I think another variable is going to be Talladega going to the round of eight as well. So as you think about just playoffs in general, I think our thought process is to still leave a lot of the things that our fans love, like those cutoff.

off races and like a lot of the events, Bristol night race is an example in the playoff schedule. But if there's opportunities for us to introduce a little bit of novelty and add some unpredictability to it, I think that's something that we're looking at as well. Much better sitting on this side of the fence. It is. You have that unpredictability that shows up on this schedule. When you're in the driver's shoes and you know exactly what 10, 10 events. You want it the same. Yeah, exactly. He wanted all the same. I'm going to back up just a little bit here. you talk about that novelty and you look at Bowman Gray. You guys made a big move from a NASCAR standpoint to go take over Bowman Gray in the lease that they have there. You make the clash go

to Bowman Gray. Obviously, it's in February. So who knows what the weather will be like in February. Tell me the thought process behind taking over Bowman Gray. Not only what that means for the clash coming there, was that a necessary part to take it over before the clash would come there? or is there more to it with the grassroots sides of things to make sure that that is healthy? Because Bowman Gray is somewhat of a novelty weekend and week out with all the drama and the racing and everything that happens. But it's full of people every single week. And it's not like going to the clash in California this year at the Coliseum. Now we're going to a place that's very well educated on the history of our sport, the things that happen.

And so just explain the whole Bowman Gray piece of the puzzle from all of those aspects. Yeah, it's going to be new. It's going to be different. It's going to be exciting for sure. And to be on Big Fox on February 2nd, like we talked about in promoting our season and the 500, it's going to be massive. So I'm really excited about it. I was there when we announced it a couple weeks ago. And, you know, the energy in that place every Saturday night, it doesn't matter if you show

up in the middle of May or the middle of August or whatever it might be, the energy in that place is palatable. It's incredible. And the fans bring it every single week. And people talk about what makes Bowman Gray so special. And it is on track product. It is the infrastructure and the history just that you feel inside that same. But it's also the people. It's the fans that come every single week. And I was telling this story when I went up there for the first time for one of our K&N races. Did you race? I raced. Yeah. I raced. Yeah. I raised. Race two or three times. First year of finish, the second year went side by side across the finish line in the grass, like for 10th or something.

Last year we ended up, I don't know how, winning the race, probably by a lot of luck. But what was so cool about it is that first year that I sat up and, you know, outside of turn two, it wasn't the best seat in the house. And it was 9.30 in the morning. And there was a family of four that sat behind me. And they were almost like looking over my shoulder half the time. And I asked him, I'm like, can I, can I help you and learn your way? Am I blocking your view?

And I said, no, our family's been sitting here for 25 years and we're just waiting for you to stand up so we can sit right where you're sitting. So I said, I'm so sorry, and we get out of your way. But no, it's a special part of it. And, you know, the fans bring so much energy. And I think for us, you know, it's an opportunity for us to get back to a lot of those fans, an opportunity to speak to our history and our roots. but then also an opportunity to put a spotlight on weekly short track racing. You know, we think about weekly racing for us. You know, that's our longest sanctioned NASCAR facility that we have since 1949.

We had cup racing there for a number of years. But every year since we've had, you know, some form of weekly or modified or street sock or whatever it might be there. And, you know, I think that's going to be another opportunity as we think about kind of that week leading into it is really put a big spotlight on weekly racing. Do you see anybody, any other series racing with the Cup series, or is it just going to be a cup only event? I know, I know the facility's tight as far as putting and things like that.

Yeah, so that was the first thing that came up is the garage footprint. It's a big parking lot and it's tight. So I think anything that you do would probably have to be a one-day show. Right now our focus is cut, but I wouldn't be surprised if we added some more stuff on is there anything that you have to do to the facility? to kind of change from what it is. I know the wall is kind of weird how it kind of goes around the grandstand.

You've driven there. I haven't. So you have to tell me if it's strange. But what do you have to do to the facility, if anything? So I think a lot of it, especially up in the grandstands and kind of hospitality areas, is very minor, not a ton of things. The pavement itself is actually in really good condition. It's new.

It's recently resurfaced. I know we talk about drainage, but there's great drains. inside of the track. So the track itself is in good condition. To your point, the guardrail is something that we've looked at quite a bit and trying to assess kind of what the outside barrier will look like. What we've talked a lot about is whatever facility improvements we need to make for a cup series and make sure that for the vehicles that we're putting on track,

that everything is safe and up to paris. We also want to keep a lot of what makes Bowman Gray, Bowman Gray. I have a picture on my phone of the guard. rail coming off of turn four and it looks like a snake coming back and forth. It's been hit for 50 years. It's been hit for so many years and it's leaning back and obviously that that brings with it some challenges but at the same time when we make any of these improvements we also want to make sure we protect a lot of integrity. So the way that it's painted, that kind of cut out that it has a lot of those things we've all been kind of measuring and trying to take this as kind of a

timestamp for us so that when we come back, you know, certainly for for next year's event, but then for all the weekly races as well, that it's as close to what it is today as it can be. So you go, you're going to Bowman Gray next year. We've been to the Coliseum the last three years. Do you ever see some sort of stadium series or, you know, you have the opportunity to move that race around to really any, you could move it to any stadium that you wanted to for the most part, you know, with what you did at the Coliseum. Is there a vision to do anything like that like you did in the Coliseum again, or is it just kind of see what pops up?

Potentially, you know, we've explored it. And, you know, I'd say for the Coliseum and for Chicago, both of them, you know, one of the biggest strategic rationales we had for it was a proof of concepts, right? If you can race in the Coliseum and prove out that you can build a quarter mile racetrack inside of the stadium, then that opens a door to all of the, the football stadiums around the world. And if you can run on the streets, then that gives you the ability to literally run anywhere that has a street on it. So, you know, it's something that we've talked a lot about is, you know, do you potentially turn it into a stadium series? Do you take

it to other markets? I think the biggest opportunity for us, frankly, is more so abroad. There aren't a ton of stadiums that you can actually build a quarter mile racetrack inside of it in the United States, but there are a ton outside, especially as you start to talk about Olympic venues and soccer stadiums and all of those sorts. So, you know, we have a deck that has hundreds of stadiums and which ones you can and can't do. You know, I think a lot of it for us is, you know,

like we did the Coliseum in Chicago and others, it's got to make sense for the industry. It's got to strategically make sense. It's going to be the right market at the right time. And, you know, something that will keep on the burner for sure. You mentioned Chicago. So when we did that on eye racing, I was like, man, what a mess is this going to be. And I don't think we really had any idea that it would actually ever happen.

And then it did happen. And I was really skeptical, walked out of the hotel, walked across the street, walked into what would be the last corner of the racetrack, and looked down the front straightaway. And I was like, my goodness, this is really neat. And we walked all the way around the racetrack and back over into the garage. And I know the first year was rain. I know we had some rain the second year.

But could you have imagined that it went like it did? Because I couldn't. I would have had no idea. And I think that the one difference for me when we do some of those things, you walk into the city. And you don't really know if everybody knows what's going on. When you walked into the city of Chicago around that racetrack for sure, everybody there knew what was going on.

And for me, it was a spectacular. experience that I would have never have expected. And I think now, when I hear you talk about stadium series and things like that, I think that opens up, you could go to any major city that you want to because that is now a, you know, that's a real event that has been embraced by the city. I think Julie's done a great job in running the event with what you guys have done and the activation of all that. But has that exceeded your expectations, I guess is the question. It has for sure. And to your point, you know, Julie Gesey and the team in Chicago have done a phenomenal job. This was a wild, crazy concept that we began talking about in the fall of 2019. And it was another two years later that it started to pick up a little bit of steam when we had the ir racing invitational event in June went up there. We sat down with the mayor and a number of folks at the time. And it still seemed a little bit like a pipe dream at that point. And it was also at that point that, you know, we we started to put our heads together with the Sports Commission to say, all right, we've had this

virtual event. Now, how do we actually turn this into a reality? And it was another two years of a lot of planning. And, you know, I think in retrospect, I wish we would have had three or four years for the amount of planning and work that had needed to be done for that. But, you know, for an event like that to be able to pull it off. And, you know, if you think about the kind of evolution of our schedule over the past few years, you know, we've gone to new markets and new tracks like Nashville and us in Texas, where you have these permanent built racetracks essentially. And you have people that are promoting the events to the Coliseum

where you have a permanent built facility, but you don't have the racetrack to build the track. You have to operate it. To Chicago where it's almost a complete other end of the spectrum, where in a way you're kind of operating it as any other brick and mortar facility. You have to market it. You have to promote it. You have all the comps.

But then the whole, new element of about it is exactly what you talked about. It's the walls, it's a fencing, it's a grandstand suites, hospitality areas to be able to do all of that with a number of different partners and vendors and then do it within a specific time frame. I mean, you know, we had about three weeks of load in and then a week and a half to two weeks of load out from the time that, you know, those first suites and walls start to go in to the time of the event. And then obviously tearing down was a whole new variable for our team. So, you know, thankfully we have a lot of incredibly smart people and a lot of great consultants and partners through it. But to be able to pull off that event, obviously,

operationally, was a massive lift, but then just to have kind of, you know, the brand relevance in somewhere like downtown Chicago, a massive market for us, a massive media market, a ton of fans that came out, a lot of people that had never been to a NASCAR race before attended that event. And then on top of that, to be able to get SBJ's event of the year for that event, last year was icing on the cake for us. That was pretty cool. Yeah. And so now let's just be, let's just be spectacle. Let's just be wild and crazy. What's the hole in the NASCAR market that you say, okay, I would take the street course here if I had to just fill the hole to say, what do we got to do to get there?

I would say there's probably a few things. I mean, one is obviously Southern California. You know, we've had the class share for the past few years. We've had Fontana for a number of years. We're not going to have a Southern California race on the schedule in 2025. That's a massive opportunity because it's a massive market. Massive market for our partners, massive market for number of people, massive market for a number of fans. So we need to find a way to have a presence in Southern California somehow. So I would say that one, we've talked about the Pacific Northwest a lot. We've had the Xfinity series of Portland the past two or three years. I think that's another market we'd eventually like to be in.

And then I would just say the Northeast in general, not any particular area, whether that's New York or Philadelphia or wherever it might be. But if you look at the amount of racing that we had four or five years ago in the Northeast, relative to where we're at today, we have a lot less inventory. I think the good news is as fans are showing up. You know, you look at Dover, you look at Pocon, know these places are packed. Even New Hampshire looks really good. So, you know, I think that's another market just as we think about continuing to expand that we'd love to have a, you know, a presence in the

Northeast. Well, I mean, we did have a great L.A. Street race. I know that the kids in today's world like to tell me that I raced in a different century, but I did run the L.A. street race in the Southwest tour cars way back in the late 90s. I think we ran there for for two or three years. And it wasn't wasn't far from the front step of the Coliseum. Yeah, I think we pulled up some videos of that when we started on the Coliseum project. Yeah, because we were talking about do we do it inside of it or do we have a race outside of it? And then we pulled up the video of some of those races. I didn't realize you were in it.

Oh, yeah. It was cool. It was an amazing backdrop. It was. Yeah. And I look back at some of those pictures and you can actually see the Coliseum in the background. When we go into next year, we have obviously a lot of new TV partners. We have things that are mixed up and changed.

What's the dynamic? I've always been curious about this, especially since sitting on this side of the world. What's the dynamic working with the TV partners when they say, well, I want the Daytona 500 and I want Chicago? What was that like working through that with new partners? Again, I know TNT has been here before, but you have Amazon. you have T&T, and then you have Fox and NBC that had already been there. What's that like trying to balance where everybody wants to be in the way that some of this worked out with the schedule?

Yeah, it's a balance of a handful of different stakeholders, right? You have the fans, you have the broadcast partners, the teams, the drivers, all of the different people that are involved. They're UE partners. So it's a matter of trying to find a way to balance all of that out. At the end of the day, it's not going to be perfect for any. anyone, but if we can find a common ground for a lot of those stakeholders, then we feel like we've created a good schedule. And I think the helpful part about it is, you know, we're able to

announce our new broadcast partners for the 25 season between Cup and Xfinity and then obviously the truck series. And we already had at least an idea of the path that we're heading down. You know, we knew that Fox was to take the first kind of 14 races, Amazon with five, T&T with and then NBC for the last four, the regular season, and then the championship races. And then really for us, it was a matter of just kind of moving the dominoes around the board. We knew which ones are broadcast partners prioritized. We knew which ones were important to teams.

Weather obviously has a huge impact, especially to think about February, March, and October and November. And then we just started to kind of lay out the schedule. And I would say, you know, we've stopped going through numbers of drafts. We just have a live schedule. now because it changes so much. But it's neat to see the evolution of where you start in the schedule, you get feedback from partners and then where it ends up. And I would say, you know, probably 60 to 70 percent of it is spot on when we start. And then there's another, you know,

the rest of it that will just continue to change and evolve as we get more. Are you a whiteboard guy or do you have it on your computer? So someone asked me about this. I used to write on my glass in my office. But then I realize that that everyone can see that. And then there's cleaning crews that come in every night and everything. If someone takes a picture of it, that may not be helpful for us. So we just, we keep it all on the computers now. Yeah. I have a whiteboard that I can flip over in my office.

That way when I'm writing stuff down about money, I flip it over so my wife can't see it in office that way. That's smart. Yeah, that way she doesn't know. I guess the last piece that, and then I'm going to talk about you, is the banquet moving to Charlotte. I think from an industry standpoint, we've been to New York and Vegas and Nashville. And I think that's a great move just because of the teams traveling all the time and giving them another weekend where they can just travel down to Charlotte and go back home that night is probably a welcome change, I would assume.

Yeah, I think so. At least from what I've heard so far, it's been welcome. And to your point, we've had the banquet in a number of places. going back to Charlotte, it's home for a lot of people. It's home for the race team. So I think it's going to be special. And, you know, with everyone traveling week after week to be able to do it two weeks after Phoenix and, you know, just kind of put an exclamation point on the season in Charlotte and everyone's hometown and still make it feel special. You've been our champion before. Do you know those small touches that really do make it special? Sometimes it's the market, but I'd say a lot more of

is the dinners and the ceremonies and the entertainment, all the other things that come around that week. So we want to continue to elevate that and then do it in our backyard. I want to talk about you now. You know, you've been around this sport your whole life. Just kind of give us a brief background of really how you got involved into the position, how you evolved into the position that you're in now and just your path to that. I know it's been a,

quite a journey. But, you know, you've raced, you've driven, you work on the business side. So you've kind of had your team owner, you've kind of had all these different aspects of the sport. So just explain to me how you got here and just your background of how you achieved the position that you're in now with everything that you've done. That's a great question. I'm still trying to figure it out. Well, I think it's important for people to know that, you know, I think a lot of these executives in today's world, and even in NASCAR, don't have a huge racing background. But you've been around this sport from the day that you were born. And you've seen a lot of things come and go. You've seen a lot of people. You've heard a lot of things. So I think it's, you know, it's important for people to understand that you're not just showing up throwing darts at this. You've seen a lot of it. Yeah, literally and figuratively, I've had the opportunity to grow up around the sport. You know, my mom, Lisa Kennedy, she's been involved in what was the former International Speedway Corporation, which owned a number of the different race tracks that we go to.

So I had the opportunity to grow up with her and then see the rest of my family on kind of the other side of the page on the NASCAR side of the business and how that all work together and how the tracks and NASCAR and the other partners all collaborated together. So, you know, I remember growing up as a kid, you know, I'd get out of school on Friday at two or three in the afternoon and go straight to the airport and fly to whichever race was going to happen that weekend. And that was, those were my memories growing up as a kid. And then, you know, eventually once I got into my teens, I played basketball for a number of years. I played a couple sports. I was terrible at every one of them. And it was a friend of ours that put me, he signed me up for a go-kart last. I played a basketball. and down at Little Miss Sumerahua Speedway. And I knew that I liked go-karting. I didn't know much about actually racing go-carts. And I went there and I had the time of my life. And I remember my dad brought me back. It was maybe two months later my first quarter midget.

And it was a used quarter midget. It was beat up. And we spray painted that thing. And we took it out to a track. Every Tuesday after school, we'd go and practice. And then every Friday, we would go out and race. and it was a really cool family moment for us because we had grown up around the business side of the sport

we had no idea what we're doing on the competition side of sport. I mean, springs and sway bars and all this stuff that was completely foreign language to us. And I think to be able to grow up on that side, you know, it was really cool. But then to get involved in the driving side was a whole new element. So I did that for a number of years.

Eventually it went on and competed in a number of series, K&N and Ease. I made it to the Crosman Truck Series, the Xfinity Series for my final year. And then I guess it was about six years ago. I made that transition. The last race I had was November 2017, as racing for RCR at Home said. But I finished that race, and I had some options to continue racing in 2018. And, you know, I really took those next two or three months and did a lot of just self-reflection.

You know, I accomplished a lot of things, I think, more than I think I would have expected in my racing career. I felt like I was finally hitting my stride as a driver where I was starting to get more comfortable kind of in the vehicles and a lot of these tracks we're going to. But also kind of looked at myself in the mirror, I realize I'm 25 years old. I'm immensely passionate about this sport. I'm immensely passionate about continuing to grow the sport to the next generation. and I feel like it could have somewhat of a positive impact on it. And it had a number of conversations with Steve Phelps and Steve O'Donnell and a handful of folks at NASCAR.

And I think it was the middle of January in 2018. I made a call to, I think he was Steve O'Donnell, and I told him, hey, I'm in for this thing. I'm not looking back. And I remember as soon as those words came out of my mouth because usually when I say something, I do a pretty good job of living up to it. As soon as I said those words, I'm like, oh boy, here we go.

I can't back out now. And then I started about a week and a half later and started on the truck side. So, you know, spent 11 years racing. It was a little bit of an easier transition starting in the competition world and just kind of knowing a lot of the people involved because I was at the track every week. So it started in the truck series, eventually got more involved in international expansion. in development, working with Chad Siegler and our group there. And then after that, and kind of tangentially to it, Steve and I were working on the 2020 schedule. This is in 2019, I guess,

you know, really started to pick that up. And then you challenged me. He's like, you know, you've been helpful on this. I'd like for you to put a team together to start to think about what the 2021 schedule looks like. And we need to find new markets and new venues that we're going to. So put together a team around that, start to focus on that for, about a year and a year and a half, kind of in parallel to that, I was working with the strategy team still international a little bit. And then I would say more recently over the past year or so, it's really been kind of scheduling focus. You know, I've been more involved with the NASCAR kind of regional side, so NASCAR Weekly and NASCAR Modifides. And then much more recently, I've been

working with Chip Weil on all of our racetracks and then Kerry Gritton, who heads up our admissions as well. And I think as I take a step back on, on all of this, my journey, I think it's also a bit ironic that I grew up in the family business, but I grew up around my mom who was, you know, larger responsible for the tracks. And now I'm working directly with the tracks and it's something that I'm responsible for. So I think it's a, it's an amazing opportunity. And I think it's, it's neat how it's kind of come full circle. And it's, it's also helpful to have, you know, people like Lisa and John Saunders and other people, that helped build the track side of business up to where it's at today,

that I can still reach out and have lunch or, you know, give a phone call to and get feedback on. It's good to have that. There's a lot of wisdom and knowledge there for sure. When you look back at the driving side, what was your favorite vehicle that you've never driven? Oh, gosh. I loved, I like the Xfinity cars a lot.

And I think a big part of it is, I mean, I love just the way that those vehicles, I mean, you could run the bottom, you run the middle, you run the top. I really felt like it was, and this was me going from a truck for three years to an Xfinity car, I felt like I could create more speed with that vehicle that I necessarily could a truck. The truck took a lot of learning to get used to just with all the down force and side force that it had. And then I would say of all the vehicles, I thought the K&N or the ARCA East cars were just a blast.

I mean, buy supply tires, you're slipping and sliding around. all the time. I mean, I learned a ton about tire management. I mean, you've raised bi-supplied tires at Pensacola and Greenville Pick and Speedway. It teaches you that if you go really hard for 15 or 20 laps and you burn your stuff up, you're toast. So I really enjoyed that. And then super late mall race. I would say if all of them probably, you know, the Arque East cars were my favorite. When you look back at, and I think the wreck that you had at Kentucky, was that a topic of conversation in the household? It was bad. It was bad. It was really bad. We were sitting there thinking to ourselves, Ben, maybe it's time to think about the side that you're on now. Was that

a topic of conversation at that time? It always was. I mean, you know, I think anytime I got in a wreck or an incident, you know, that would tore the catch fence down. It did. It tore the catch fence down. And, you know, thankfully, I was, I was, you know, in one piece afterwards. And and the vehicle did its job. But it was always a topic after I got out a lot of those races. And, you know, I think, and I respect this of my parents. They always wanted me to do whatever is passionate about, whether that was being on the business side, whether that was being a driver, whether that was being whatever it might be in the world. And I appreciated that about them. And, you know, they said, you know, if you want to continue to race, we're going to be supportive

of you. And, you know, we're going to continue to, to lean in and help you wherever you can and, you know, finding partners or finding your next ride or wherever it might be. But, you know, it also was the topic of conversation. I think the great part about it is, you know, the evolution of safety of these vehicles is, and these cars are safer than they've ever been before. And I was watching a YouTube video the other day. And, you know, you saw all these onboard wrecks and visor cams and a lot of just, you know, non-fans commenting about like, oh my gosh, I can't believe they walked away from it. And I think that is, you know, a testament to the R&D Center, but a testament to the entire industry for getting

to where it's at today. I've had some ugly wrecks, but, you know, thankfully, in knock on wood, every one of them I've been able to walk away and skate. As I tell my son, if you're going to race, you're going to wreck. So you can't leave with that answer in the same question that everybody else says. So what was your first car? Where is it? So my first car, it was a Dodge neon. It was 96 Dodge Neon that I had. And I wanted a car that I could just, I could work on and kind of make a kick car. So we, we painted it black, put seat covers on it and did all sorts of stuff. I eventually sold it to my friend. And then I would say my more first real. car is, I still have it today, is a 2000 Ford Mustang GT. And I always wanted stick shift. I always

wanted, I don't know why I was like really craving having like specifically a 2000 Ford Mustang. I thought they were the coolest cars. And they had so many aftermarket parts you could put on them. And same thing, paint it flat black, put a new hood on it, new front bumper, back bumper, new, put a wing on it. It's got like a scissor doors on it and all sorts. We just went crazy with it because we were teenagers. And rebuilt the motor. It was the most fun that we had growing up, being able to work on cars like that. And it's still sitting in my garage today. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Well, thanks for taking the time today. We're excited about the schedule. Can't wait to show up at the clash and get started. Can't wait for it. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for coming.

We want to thank Ben for taking the time to come in studio today. It was a great conversation. Hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I do. We want to encourage you to follow and subscribe everywhere that you can just so we can hear Mamba talk talk a little bit of junk in all of those conversations so we hope you enjoyed it and we'll see you next week