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INTERNATIONAL MOTOR SPORTS ASSOCIATION MEDIA CONFERENCE

January 26, 2019

Jim France

THE MODERATOR: We'll continue with Mr.France. Thank you for spending some time, joining us here after the drivers' meeting. Mr.France, 50 years of IMSA; could you believe that when it all started back in 1969 to today?
JIM FRANCE: Well, I can because I've been around for most of it, I think, so it's surprising how fast time flies. In some ways, it doesn't feel like it was 50 years ago when John and Dad got this started.
I was a fan of the sports car racing even prior to the start of IMSA when the three‑hour race started here with Dan Gurney winning. So to see where it started and where it's come to has been very special for me because I do enjoy this type of racing.
I think my father would be very, very proud, and John, with the growth of the sport and sports car racing and its significance in the U.S. it's a global racing platform that in the U.S. probably hasn't had quite the attention as open wheel or the NASCAR stock car racing has in the past, but I feel that's changing, and this event was started by my father. He was a global motorsports guy, and he truly wanted this track here to be an international icon for motorsports when he built it.
This sports car event is a cornerstone, a key part of that. When you see the drivers and the teams and the manufacturers, and most importantly the media that are in this room that come from all over the world to cover this event and be a part of it over its history, it's really impressive. We appreciate you being here, also. Thank you very much.
THE MODERATOR: When Mitch was in here earlier, he spoke of it as a family business and said it still has that feeling today. Do you think of it in the same way?
JIM FRANCE: Yes, I do. We've got part of the family still sitting here that we've been together for a long, long time. I can remember when Mark and I used to be the young guys in the room. That's changed a little bit. But the family‑‑ I've got family members, I've got a nephew, Ben Kennedy coming up who's a racer and involved in NASCAR, and I had visions of him racing in this event from time to time back when he was driving.
But the family commitments from our family, this is what we do, and we've got the next generation is coming. We plan to keep it a family.
I think it's one thing about motorsports, and it's not just‑‑ almost every form I've seen of it, the paddock, the teams, the competitors in one way become a big family. When you look at the competitors traveling all over the country, and if it's a U.S. championship or a global championship, they wind up spending a lot of time together at the events. They're competing, but they're also‑‑ we eat together at Marian's. A lot of the crew members will be on one crew one year and maybe working on another, but it becomes a community and a family. I don't know how football or the other sports operate, but just every form of motorsports that I've seen or been involved with has kind of that special what I call family atmosphere about it. They compete hard, but then you'll see somebody have a problem, and everybody jumps in from their competition even to try and help them solve it. I've seen that over and over again. If you have a tragedy or a sad moment in the sport, the family rallies. It's to me a special part of our sport.

Q. Mr.France, we've seen the sport evolve incredibly over the last few years, especially post‑merger, with a focus on international platforms with the different categories. How important is that moving forward and with your relationship with the ACO to sort of keep that, or are you looking at trying to create your own image in terms of categories and class formulas in the WeatherTech championship?
JIM FRANCE: No, the relationship with the ACO, this is a global sport, and our goal is to do everything we can to keep sports car racing, the discipline of motorsports, consolidated, working together. So it's important, I think, going into the future to keep everyone globally working together.
The challenge is for the technology changing everything so rapidly, and it doesn't matter what you're doing, if you're a big box store or a Target or whatever, they're all trying to figure out where the world is going, and their business model, and Amazon, if you're the automotive manufacturers, they're trying to figure out the next generation of technology and everything. If you're in the media, the changing landscape there is unbelievable, what we're going through and where the kids are going and how things are being consumed. We're up to our eyeballs in trying to figure that out, too, as key players in motorsports, and it's our, I think, most important thing just to work together to try and keep our sport healthy and relevant and important.
It's a globalization world we live in. Nobody is kind of isolated anymore. So we're trying to be the best stewards that we can be during this period, as my father and John and that generation were ahead of us and pass it off to the next group. But we're in, I think, a very interesting time. It's kind of scary, but it's very exciting, too.
And the great thing about it is we have some wonderful‑‑ a wonderful team of people that have a passion for the sport and what we're doing, and it doesn't matter if it's the IMSA sanctioning group or our OEM partners or the media. There's people that have a real passion for this. So I feel good about where we're going to wind up, but we've got to make it happen, too; it's not going to just happen on its own. Or if it will, it may not be what we'd like to see.
Long answer, but we want to continue working with the ACO and the rest of the world on where things are going.

Q. It's an expansion of that question, actually, the same basic question I asked Mark earlier, which is you've seen an awful lot of action, you've seen what have been termed golden eras. How do you think the track that you're currently on with IMSA and with this series compares to some of the best that you've seen in the past?
JIM FRANCE: I think it's right‑‑ to me we're in a new golden era, I believe, or the start of it. It's exciting in so many different ways with the number of manufacturers that are involved now in motorsports with great products and great support for the teams. The caliber of drivers and the quality of the competition I think is as good as any I've ever seen. Every category, it's not just the front, but you go all the way back through every category, and the racing is intense, and every team out there has got a bullet in it. They've got just really top‑notch drivers that are here competing to win a Rolex.
I think that this is in my lifetime some of the best that I've ever seen, and it's not just at Daytona. You go to every event on the series last year, and the last several years, it's just been growing. Having the NBC broadcasts coming in and Michelin and just kind of a little small kind of, I think, example of how things have progressed. This year we just broke a 26‑year track record with a car that probably had half the horsepower of the original record, but it took 26 years, but we're in that, hey, it's happening.
The number of cars that are running at the end together fighting for the lead on the lead lap‑‑ in what we call the golden age, that never happened. We had guys winning by 20 laps or 16 laps, one or two cars, here you go through the entire grid, and there's a fight going on for 24 hours amongst several cars for their category. I've never seen anything like that in the old days. We are in a special time.

Q. Kind of two questions, and you alluded to what I was going to ask you about, and that is how close the racing is now across all of them. And the second thing is if you could kind of speak to the caliber of drivers that you have and especially with the Rolex wanting to be a part of this race; every year there's someone new that wants to be, and on Twitter you've got a lot of NASCAR drivers saying, hey, I can't wait to get back to doing it.
JIM FRANCE: I think the best thing we've got‑‑ this event has some special things going for it, and I kind of view it as almost an Olympic‑type event for motorsports, partly because of the timing. There's a big off‑season for just about everybody‑‑ maybe Australia is running, but it's a big off‑season, so you've got a lot of drivers, folks that are ready to get back out and go racing, they've got cabin fever or whatever.
When my dad started this event, it's a three‑hour event. If you get J.J. O'Malley's book or look through the results on that thing, Dan Gurney won it. I think AJ Foyt might have been last. Roger Penske‑‑ just go through the names that are in there, Jim Clark, just the names from around the world, Roger Ward, Indy winner, there was that‑‑ kind of where we're back to today where you have really great drivers coming in.
And the one thing‑‑ the other big advantage that we've got is I believe the rules that we've got and the number of great teams and manufacturers that are coming in and competing and providing great cars and good teams, and because it's a 24‑hour race, there's three or four seats available. So you've got a capacity for somebody to come in and moonlight for a big event, and the thing that I've noticed is all the really great drivers are attracted to a really big event if they think they can win it, and if they can get in a good seat that can do that, they'll come. And that's, I think, one of the advantages of this, of our rules and our series and the teams that are here. We've got so many great teams with really good seats, and just about any one of them can win their category or win the race overall, and it becomes a much easier prospect to get these great drivers that want to come and compete in it.
So that's, I think, been a huge advantage for this event, that we get the talent that we can get here to compete. Buddy Rice that won the Indianapolis race a few years ago, he was running here, and he made this great comment to me. He said, it's unbelievable out there, I'm running up in the corner at 3:00 in the morning, I'm looking at who I'm racing over here, and it's all these great guys from all over the world that are Formula1 drivers or sports car drivers or whatever. He said, from a driver's standpoint, it's just a great experience. It's that kind of feeling that you get from people that tell you how special this event is to everyone. And I think we're going to have another barn burner over the next two days here.
It's fierce competition. It's hard. That's what Gary Nelson likes to say; it's hard. This race is real hard.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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