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NASCAR MEDIA CONFERENCEAugust 21, 2015Robert KauffmanTHE MODERATOR: We are now joined by Rob Kauffman, co‑owner of Michael Waltrip Racing. Rob, we also appreciate you coming in and taking some time with the media and answering some questions this morning. ROBERT KAUFFMAN: No problem. Good morning, everybody. I just wanted to elaborate to the extent people wanted on the news and what the background is. As people saw, we agreed to part ways with Clint Bowyer and let him go on his merry way career‑wise. Unfortunately, MWR will be more or less ceasing operations for the most part in 2016 and beyond. As people saw previously, I have agreed to purchase an interest in Chip Ganassi Racing, so I'll continue to be involved in the sport going forward, and just kind of at this stage kind of processing all that stuff internally. So happy to answer any kind of questions we can or clarify things for folks. Q. Rob, you obviously were invested in Michael Waltrip Racing, and Michael said yesterday that whatever the team experienced after 2007 would not have been possible without you. I guess a lot of folks are wondering why you didn't choose to stay with that organization and then jump over to the next one; what do you tell them? ROBERT KAUFFMAN: Well, Mike and I are business partners and good personal friends. I think what's probably missing there is the financial side of the picture. Michael Waltrip Racing really wouldn't have existed through today without substantial and continued financial support from me. I think that just from a business standpoint that didn't make sense any longer. You can't have a top 10 budget and top 10 resources and not be in the top 10 for a sustained period of time. So it's a performance‑related business. It's all about performance. It's a great sport, but a very difficult business model, and from a business decision it just made sense to not go forward with that organization that just isn't commercially viable. On a completely separate note, I think I'm voting with my wallet as well as heart and investing‑‑ continue to invest in the sport by Chip Ganassi Racing. Q. Rob, with your new, whatever your new role with Chip Ganassi turns out to be, and recently you've been known very well as the leader of the RTA, do you foresee that your role in that organization will continue in the same fashion as it has recently? ROBERT KAUFFMAN: Absolutely. I think the Race Team Alliance has been a great development over the past year or so. We've gone from kind of nowhere to a real counter‑party, I think, for people, and been able to make some real good progress, I think, on a variety of levels around the sport. I think it's an honor and a privilege to be a chairman of that organization. All my fellow teams have asked me to serve on that, and I'm happy to do so and will continue to do so, and maybe even have a little more time to focus on it. Q. Same question I asked Clint. How much do you view this as kind of stemming from what happened at Richmond in 2013? ROBERT KAUFFMAN: Well, certainly that was a pretty heavy body blow to the organization, caused a big restructuring. 2014 was at some level a large reset year, certainly competitively and also financially. I think as we got into the late spring, April‑May 2015, really from a performance standpoint the company wasn't where it needed to be, and that kind of forced some decisions and thought process over the summer and that's kind of where we've wound up today. So I think at the end of the day it's a competitive business and that's where we are. Q. (Indiscernible)? ROBERT KAUFFMAN: I don't think‑‑ my crystal ball, unfortunately, is not clear. In a parallel universe I'm not sure what would have happened. Q. A couple things, Rob, one, when do you anticipate everything being finalized with the Ganassi agreement, having that all done? When you have now more time to do with the RTA, what does that allow you to do that you couldn't have done or that was a little bit more challenging because you were more involved with this organization? What will it more allow you to do? ROBERT KAUFFMAN: Well, certainly in the past year or so I've been pretty involved with the day‑to‑day operations of Michael Waltrip Racing, and I think now I'll be able to step back from that. I'm probably not the best person to run a race team day‑in and day‑out. I think one of the attractions of partnering with Chip is he runs his business himself. He's a racer. He's at a race, I think, almost every single weekend. So that will free up some of my time to do a variety of different things. As people know I'm involved in vintage car racing and other business ventures and the like, and the RTA is one of several things, and that's progressing well and I think that will move pretty quickly over the course of the next three to six months. So I look forward to some developments there as well. Q. Since you won't have day‑to‑day duties, will you pull further away from the sport or will you still be as involved or as visible? ROBERT KAUFFMAN: I think it's a great sport. It's just a really difficult business model, which I'm trying to work to help fix or at least make some progress in that regard. But I think I'll pull away from trying to figure out what's going on in the aero department and maybe more what's going on overall with the structure of the business. Q. Will that change for next year? Will the structure change for next year, the business model that you say‑‑ you say you're working on it. Do you feel like there is going to be something in place for next year for teams that give them a little bit more viability or give them a little bit more to avoid something like that? ROBERT KAUFFMAN: I'm quite optimistic, I think, on the discussions with the folks at NASCAR regarding a variety of things around the sport, the competition side, the long‑term equity program. They're all initiatives well underway and people are working quite hard on those, so I'm pretty optimistic we'll make some good progress in the next number of months. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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