NASCAR State of the Sport - Transcript

Yesterday at 03:20 PM

NASCAR Media Conference
Press Conference
Friday, November 8, 2024
An Interview with: Steve Phelps & Steve O’Donnell

THE MODERATOR: Good morning, everyone. My name is Eric Ryan, the Chief Communications Officer of NASCAR. It’s wonderful to be here with you again in Phoenix for our championship weekend races. A warm welcome to everyone here in person as well as those joining us on NASCAR.com and SiriusXM.

Today we’re gathered for NASCAR’s Annual State of the Sport where I’m joined by NASCAR president Steve Phelps and Chief Operating Officer Steve O’Donnell.

I’ll toss it to Mr. Phelps. Take us way.

STEVE PHELPS: Welcome, everyone, to Phoenix Raceway and our championship weekend. I’m very excited that we are going to crown four champions, the ARCA Menards Series West race today, our Craftsman Truck Series race this evening, the Xfinity race tomorrow, and then obviously our Cup race here on Sunday.

I want to wish all the competitors, the drivers, teams, crews good luck this weekend. A culmination of a lot of hard work. I did want to say something about the gentlemen that compete tonight, tomorrow, and a lot of chatter around the four that are going to compete on Sunday. I’ve heard some words like… They’re not deserve. You’ve got the wrong driver, or two, three, four drivers.

What I would say is that all of or drivers knew the format, and these drivers in all three national series competed and went to the highest level, and they deserve to be here. So just take the Cup race, right? You have a former champion who won to get in, as he did last year. You have a regular season champion who won to get in here. You have a two-time Cup champion who won to get here. Then the young man who pointed his way through, William Byron, is an incredible talent. So all four of these drivers deserve to be here, full stop.

So I have some thank yous to dole out. I’ll start with the media corps. We appreciate you and want to thank you for your hard work, whether you have been to 38 races or you have been to one. What you do to tell the stories of NASCAR is important in whatever outlet you have, and we are sincerely grateful for that.

Fortunately, you’ve been able to see some tremendous racing and some tremendous storylines, so we’re super proud of that. To continue on that theme, I want to thank the entire industry, our teams, our drivers, our media partners, Fox and NBC, our other outlets, PRN, MRN, NASCAR.com. All the things you do to communicate what is happening on the racetrack during the live event, thank you for that.

Tracks… the significant investment that tracks make to bring and host races. I want to thank Speedway Motorsports and the independents and obviously our own tracks. We’re here at Phoenix Raceway. Latasha Causey and her team, what a tremendous job they’ve done here. The place looks beautiful. Super excited about hosting the championship here again.

Attendance, they will have a sell-out here again. I think if you look at attendance over the last three years we’ve made small gains, single-digital gains. Would I like to have greater gains? Yeah, and we’re going to endeavor to do that.

If you think about ’25, we have a race at Bowman Gray, which will be a sell-out. You have a race in Mexico City, which I believe will be a sell-out, and you have a race at Richmond on Saturday night in August that I also believe will be a sell-out to add to the double-digital sell-outs that we had this year.

Would we like to sell out every race? We would. Is that feasible for ’25? Probably not, but we’ll keep digging at it. We need to make sure we continue to invest in the fan experience and the capital required in order to keep these facilities looking good.

Ratings… I’ll spend a little time on ratings because it’s super important. I want to go back and have a little story time at the beginning of this year to early February. We had an event, The Clash At the Coliseum, and we were looking at a historic atmospheric river event I believe is what they called it. Just a lot of rain. I guess we’ll go with that.

So we did something we had never done before. We pulled a race up a day, and we raced on Saturday night. Got crushed in the ratings, right? So fans didn’t know when it was, how we were going to get there. Saturday night is the lowest rated day of the week, but it was the right thing to do. It was a financial bath for us, but it was the right thing to do for the industry.

Go two weeks down the road, and we had more rain. So we delayed the start of that race a full day, and we took a ratings bath. So we were down minus-27. Then we had rain-shortened race at the Coca-Cola 600. A rain-interrupted event at the Chicago Street Race. So three of your biggest races down double digits; mid-teens for the 600 and for the Chicago Street Race and then minus-27.

If you had asked me at the beginning of the year, I will bet you that you can dig out of a 27 percent hole at the 500 and then two double-digital ratings declines on your next two highest rated races or two of the three highest rated races, I would have said, There is no way that’s going to happen.

As we sit here for our Cup races, we are in the positive numbers. What does that say to me? It says the sport is resilient and the sport is growing.

Let me pivot real quickly to our productions facility that we built this year. It opened in January. Two things that facility does. It does live event broadcasts, and it does content creation. What we’ve done so far in that building is nothing short of extraordinary.

I’m super excited about the content that we’re creating, content through different channels of distribution like Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, through Max, and TruTV, and other outlets either owned or not owned. You must meet our fans where they are or potential fans where they are. Those outlets do exactly that. We need to make sure that we are delivering better and more content through those channels of distribution and we’re going to do that.

The other component to that is data and the amount of money, millions and millions of dollars, that we’ve invested in data and our data garage. Once you know who those people are, you can market to them. You can deliver great content to them, and that’s exactly what we are doing.

Just a quick shout-out. I know this is going to sound like a bit of a non sequitur, but I did want to make sure that I said something about Martin Truex and his retirement from full-time racing. Martin has been a class act. He is a clean race car driver, never dirty. He’s got a great fan base, and we will miss him. We are hopeful that he will come back and do one-off races or participate in other ways in this sport.

Then, likewise, Tony Stewart selling his charters. So Tony is going to concentrate with Leah on their family and on drag racing. So we wish Tony well. Tony is always welcome at our racetracks as well.

All right. Now, a bit of a pivot to charters. Probably a lot of frustration in the room that NASCAR over the last two and a half years has not talked about charters publicly or with the media. We’ve done that purposefully. We don’t believe the media is a place to have discussions about our negotiation with our race teams and our charter extensions. That was by design. I know people are frustrated about that.

We are not going to negotiate in the media about charters ever, and we are very happy that 32 of our 36 charters were extended. We are excited about that because those race teams were — the deal that was put on the table for them, which primarily the big win for the race teams was money, and I won’t go into what that money split looks like, but what I will say is that amount of money now puts the race team starting in ’25 as the single largest beneficiary of our media deal. We did that because the race teams were upside down financially.

So two ways to get out of that, right, you give them more money or help them earn more money through sponsorship. So we have done the former. We’re going to do the latter to help our race teams. And then trying to cut costs. That provides for healthy race teams, and that’s our expectation is moving forward that the race teams are going to be financially healthy.

Why should fans care about that? Fans should care about that because healthy race teams provides better racing, full stop. So we’re excited about what that looks like.

One last thing as it relates to charters. We are not going to answer any questions today about charters, so that was a statement about charters, but we are not going to talk about charters or answer any questions. We are in active litigation, and that matter is closed at least at this point.

Looking forward to ’25, and I’ll be very brief so Steve can actually say something and then get to your questions because this is not meant to be a filibuster. ’25 is an important year for us. So we’ve got two media partners who are tremendous that are coming back in Fox and NBC. Then we’re going to welcome the CW for the Xfinity races. Then Amazon Prime and Warner Bros. Discovery, or Turner Sports. We are thrilled for that.

So what can you expect? You can expect great racing in ’25 because I believe we’ve had the best racing we’ve ever had, and Steve will get to that.

The other thing you can expect is tremendous promotional support for NASCAR on a level that we’ve never seen before. So let’s just take the beginning of the season. So you’ve got Fox, NFC Championship game promoting NASCAR. You have The Clash, and Fox obviously the promotion of that and then the Daytona 500 promotion that comes with it. Then Fox has the Super Bowl. They’re going to promote the Daytona 500.

Then you have the CW that will be promoting the Xfinity races. You have the CW — I’m sorry. Then you have Nexstar, which owns the CW and their 201 affiliates, that will also be supporting the start of the season. You’ve got Amazon Prime that the next week after the 500 is going to start practice and qualifying on their outlet, so they’re going to be promoting the season. Then you have Warner Bros. Discovery with the subscription product on Max, which is the in-car cameras and marrying that with the audio, and they too are going to support it.

So our five media partners alone — four of them starting in February or late January are going to promote the Daytona 500. That’s going to be an important thing for us as people migrate to those platforms.

So I will turn it over to Steve for his comments.

STEVE O’DONNELL: All right. Thanks, Steve. Just a couple of things on my end. I think Steve covered most things, but as we talk about the competition area, I want to recognize our team and our folks, but just give you a couple of stats to think about in terms of the Next Gen car and where we are today. Probably need to come up with a new name because it’s not Next Gen anymore.

But two teams that now have or will compete for the championship did not exist before the Next Gen car. So when you look at the history of the sport, how long it took teams to come up through the ranks, build a championship caliber team, have a championship driver, it’s been a game-changer in terms of who can come into the sport, who can compete at a high level, and who has access to different parts and pieces.

So we continue to look at that as a huge positive for the sport. Again, we had 18 different winners, 10 different organizations, all three OEMs not only winning, but here competing for a championship. Another testament to what you are seeing in the sport.

Just this year three of the seven closest finishes in our history since 1993 with the scoring data in one year. So unbelievable performances on the racetrack. Really dedicated to the teams and the drivers stepping up, working closely with our folks at the R&D Center.

When you talk about the team that we have with John Probst, Elton Sawyer, Scott Miller, Brandon Thomas, a lot of work behind the scenes that continues to go into this car. We see fan comments. We know when there’s challenges around short tracks or what can we do and how do we make improvements upon the product?

You look at the race at Martinsville, and we’ll address things that happened, but when you look at the quality of that race what Goodyear delivered from the tire, how that’s working together with the car, it’s going to be tough to challenge really performance for that car with the diversity of tracks we have throughout the schedule.

That allows us to have the best drivers in the world competing on a variety of different racetracks, and it really opens up an unbelievable market for us to continue to look at new tracks wherever they may be or whatever they may be made up of.

So our group, I also want to recognize, has had to navigate Steve referenced weather and some other things. We’ve had it to navigate some tough challenges throughout the year. But I will say about our group, especially those officiating each and every weekend, there is no harder sport to officiate. We don’t have time-outs. We don’t wait during the action. The car is going 200 miles an hour. You have to make split-second decisions. We don’t always get those right, but for the most part we do.

What I’m most proud of is we come, we speak to the media, we’re transparent on every single call that we make. When there’s a challenge or when we can learn from something, we’re going to do that, and we’re going to make adjustments like we always have.

I can tell you I’ve been here almost 30 years, and every race you probably see something different. Then it’s our job to react to that and come up with a new rule or come up with a new policy that we’ve got to go after.

So Steve mentioned just a thank you to the tracks. I’ve had a lot of time this year to spend more time with our different groups, the tracks especially. The investment they’ve made you around the fan experience has been terrific. A lot of new fans coming to the track trying to navigate for the first time what it means to be a NASCAR fan and the work that Michael Verlatti and his team have done around the event experience has been tremendous.

Then the work that both Brian Herbst and Tim Clark continue to do. Steve talked about new media partners, content, digital. Huge asset for us. We want to be forward-thinking, and we are in terms of what we’re bringing to our fan base. Pretty much so if you are looking for content in a sport that’s really going to over-deliver for our fans, look no further than NASCAR because we have a really talented team that’s with the best in the industry, and we’ll continue to innovate like we will this weekend as well.

Proud of the group. I’ll also give one shout-out. Steve and I talked about Wayne Auton, who I think everybody loves in the sport. It’s hard to do to be loved by everyone in the sport, but I think Wayne actually is, which is unbelievable. He’ll be retiring, and he’s done a heck of a job. Just a great all-around guy as well.

With that, I’m going to turn it over to Eric to open it up.

THE MODERATOR: We’ll start with questions.

For Steve Phelps. You opened by talking about the deserving drivers who made the Championship 4 this year, exciting that they played to the system and did what they had to do you should the system. In terms of the system itself, though, none of the Championship 4 drivers are leading in any of the major statistical categories. Just for the system itself, not deserving to be there, why is this still the best way for NASCAR to decide its champion?

STEVE PHELPS: So I think — listen, Jeff, the format is the format, right? We are always looking if there are opportunities for us to tweak something, so be it. We are not the only sport where the best statistical team does not get to the final four or the Super Bowl or the World Series.

There was a huge emphasis put ten years ago when the format was put into place about winning, right? Three of the four on Sunday, they won to get through. I go back to the format itself I think creates incredible racing. So if we are all going to be honest and say, Hey, how has the racing been during the playoffs in these nine weeks, I don’t think it’s been ever better.

I think part of that is due to the system itself. They race their guts out. They did. Tyler Reddick two weeks ago, Ryan Blaney last week, chase Elliott trying to get in, Larson trying to get in. Racing their guts out.

I think it provides great, great racing for our race fans.

STEVE O’DONNELL: It’s fair to say weave talked about this too. The format is one thing, but playoffs. We’re not going to go away from playoffs. We read fans and everything. We will, as we always do, right, and Steve has led us to this, we’ll absolutely look at what form the playoffs take in the offseason. You always learn, like I said before, but playoffs in and of itself, as Steve said, you cannot argue with the quality of racing that the playoffs have delivered.

You can talk about the format if we do some different things, but absolutely we’re going to stick with it.

What was the message delivered to the OEMs this week after race interference last week, and how much weight is really behind your words when Elton Sawyer said this week that there was no mechanism in the rule book to penalize them? What did you say, and how much weight is behind your actual words to the OEMs?

STEVE O’DONNELL: Let’s go back to what what just happened in Martinsville. I would argue before what we saw, one of the best races we’ve seen in the playoffs, and it’s unbelievable that we’re sitting here talking about this topic, right?

I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this, but I’ll say it anyway. I’ve been around a long time, but Bill France used to say, Being pissed off is not a plan.

What I saw in Martinsville pissed me off, and it pissed everyone off at NASCAR because we all know better, and we know what happens.

We do have rules in the rule book where we can address it, and we did. We had a call with our OEMs where we were very clear in what our intentions are going forward. It is true, do we have a rule right now where we could do something? We don’t. Will we have a rule next year? 1,000 percent.

They’re aware of that, and they’re aware if anything happens this weekend, which it won’t, but we will react. Then we have a meeting with our drivers on Saturday. The reason we chose not to penalize the drivers — I’ll just address that now because we’ve seen that a lot as well — we made the decision that the drivers are holding the wheel, but the drivers were told essentially what to do.

We gave them the benefit of the doubt. Saturday’s message from Elton and John to the drivers will be that that’s your warning. We know what happened, and going forward we’ll have to penalize you as well. What do our words mean? We’re not going to let people, drivers, teams, anyone, OEMs challenge the integrity of the sport.

Does not talking about charters include the Stewart-Haas charters that potentially could be transferred and any plan for those?

STEVE PHELPS: I don’t know what’s going to happen with the Stewart-Haas charters, Bob. It would be speculating.

It’s in the lawsuit that they’re going to purchase them.

STEVE PHELPS: I have no idea what’s happening there, so do we know about Justin Marks, he has signaled that he is going to purchase one of those? The answer is yes. Nothing else has been done, so everything else is going to be hearsay. So I have no comment on it.

This is probably a question for O.D. You talked about officiating. Officiating has had several controversial moments this year. It seems to be following a pattern the last few years. Is there anything you’ll be doing over the offseason to look at revamping the officiating process to get this to be more streamlined so you have less of these moments?

STEVE O’DONNELL: Can you name one sport that doesn’t have officiating questions throughout the year, right? So absolutely. Every year we address those, and I think a lot of it is around technology, right, and a lot of it is around format that is you look at and different things that come into play now.

So one of the biggest ones that we saw consistently was the damaged vehicle policy. Through really no fault of trying to, in essence, save the industry money we created a challenge in terms of how we officiate. That’s something we want to continue to investigate, and I think one of the biggest things you want to do is how do we continue to use technology in realtime to notice what may or may not be occurring on the track, address that as soon as possible, but I don’t believe we have an officiating issue at all.

I think we have the best and the brightest in the business. Yes, we make mistakes. They’re humans. Hopefully we’ll never get to just AI making calls, but we will make adjustments.

I think if me or John or Elton or Steve are not up talking before the Daytona 500 about adjustments we’ve made, then we haven’t done our job because that’s what we always do in the offseason.

This is for either of you. I know NASCAR is taking the Cup Series to Mexico for the first time next year. Are there plans to sustain that beyond next year and potentially expand the series international footprint, say, Canada, maybe elsewhere?

STEVE PHELPS: I’ll take it. We’re excited to go to Mexico to Mexico City. As I said, I think we will have a packed house. We’re going to see some great racing. Our intention is to stay there past next year.

We kind of typically look at a three-year deal and see how that works, and if it’s continuing to work, we go to year four or five or six or whatever that might be. Have we had discussions with folks in Canada? We have. Would I like to see us go to Canada? I would.

I think schedule variation works, and it’s proven that it works. It works from an attendance standpoint. It works from a ratings standpoint. Not insignificantly it works from kind of a brand standpoint, what it means to be bold and innovative and do things differently and change things up. That drives success.

I think that’s what we’ve tried to do as a sport is do those things. And not just schedule innovation, but other things as well. So I anticipate further expansion.

For O.D., It’s kind of been lost this year that at Chicago we did debut — you guys debuted the EV car. That platform in the works for several years. You said it was adaptive. What has been the progress since then on making — going to a hydrogen format? Do you have anything planned for that for this year offseason and next year?

STEVE O’DONNELL: Yeah, good question. I think around EV it was a great debut with our friends at ABB as well. Brandon Thomas has led that project for us.

It’s a bit of a challenge for us, right? You see it in the automotive industry right now navigating hybrid, electric, hydrogen, V8s. What is it going to be? A lot of folks have the luxury of playing in all of those spaces. For us we’ve sometimes got to pick and choose.

But I think what I’m most proud of and we’re all proud of with our R&D group is they’ve been able to showcase new technologies. Maybe not necessarily race it in a series, but showcase what we can do and if we ultimately went out and created a series, we’re more than capable of doing that.

What you saw with the electric car, I believe it’s here this weekend, same thing. Showcasing it to fans that we have the ability to do this. Then when you pivot to a hybrid, which could potentially be in play or even hydrogen — a group of us went over to Japan last year, looked at a hydrogen race car. There’s a lot that goes into that. But the good news is there’s a lot of talented engineers at the R&D Center that can work with the industry to start developing that concept if need be.

A lot of words to say that all of those are in play for us, and I think as you look at you are on R&D Center in the future the goal will be here’s what with he race, but here’s what we have in the future to tease the fans and maybe develop those maybe into racing series in the future.

You said what you saw at Martinsville pissed you off. How is that any different than Keselowski not being pushed to the win at Talladega because it was a different manufacturer than the way that the manufacturers work together at Talladega and Daytona? I guess 15 years ago we were at “Boys have at it,” and that seems to now not exist anymore in the way that officiating is. What is the standard going forward, and does the eye test from Martinsville apply to Talladega and Daytona?

STEVE O’DONNELL: So the era of “Boys have at it” no longer exists? I would say we have the greatest racing we’ve ever had in our history. So what we are looking at is there are different variations, right?

I think we all are smart enough to see what may happen from an OEM at Talladega with teams drafting together versus what occurred at Martinsville. Are there some things we need to look at in terms of how things are communicated, what can be communicated between team alliances or OEMs in general during a race? Absolutely. We’ll continue to address those.

I don’t think anyone has any doubt. I would look at what Ricky Craven said, what Mark Martin said, guys that have been in this industry a long, long time, raced during “Boys have at it.” Unequivocally said what they saw at Martinsville, everybody understands what happened. We made that call.

Was it perfect in terms of all the data? No. But we will put things in place to make those calls going forward. I guess, Jenna, the thing I would say is we’re not going to allow the integrity of the sport to be called into question.

It sounds like a bit of a push, but you always see something new, and I would agree Talladega is one thing. I think, okay, this is kind of how the sport works. Martinsville, no way. That was very different.

So to your point, how do we officiate so it’s consistent through those two tracks? Maybe we can’t, but we will make that call again if we ever saw that happen.

I was just wonder if anything you could please give an update on whether Xfinity will return as part of the title sponsor of the Xfinity series in 2025?

STEVE PHELPS: So the answer to that is, yes. We are working through some final things with the Xfinity or Comcast about their premiere partnership and what our overall relationship looks like. So nothing to announce today other than apparently I’ve just announced that they’re coming back next year.

If I was not supposed to say that, I’ll retract that. They will be back next year.

Steve, do you anticipate that we’ll see more intermediate tracks on the schedule in 2026, and particularly could we go back to Homestead as season finale?

STEVE O’DONNELL: Well, let’s see. Let me answer the second part first. So the championship, which is a hot topic, but as we talk about it, it’s very difficult to replicate what we see this weekend. The atmosphere, what goes into it, the crowd that shows up consistently. As we look and consider other venues, all of that has to come into play.

So Miami certainly has been one that we’ve looked at. I would say that in March when we go back, how do we do from an attendance standpoint? That’s going to be really big for us to see can we gain some momentum? We already know the racing is terrific, right? We are going to deliver on that, but we have a job to do collectively as a sport to drive attendance.

Then you look at a number of other venues that are out there. You know, Darlington, Charlotte, you name it, Vegas. There’s a lot of considerations for us.

I think the goal for us would be to get well ahead in the future on the schedule so that we’re talking about not necessarily the whole schedule, but championship 2032 will be here, 2031, and we can back that up.

A lot of work to do this coming year, but I think Ben and his team are really looking to really advance that forward. So long-winded explanation.

On intermediates I will say you’ll have more of the same balance. I think we really like the balance we have right now. You could see maybe a tweak here or there, but for the most part it’s a good balance of all different types of racetracks.

Steve, this is for you. In regard to the short track racing we’ve had — okay. We’ve tried a lot of different things to improve the short track racing, and it seemed like at Martinsville with the softer tire maybe you really hit the nail on the head finally. Do you see that going forward as what you’ll focus on rather than trying different aerodynamic situations and possibly road courses as well?

STEVE O’DONNELL: Yeah, what we saw at Martinsville was a result of a ton of hard work from Goodyear. Like NASCAR, right with aero packages, we don’t always get it right, but it’s not without studying and putting a ton of effort into it. Goodyear’s efforts throughout this year, be it a rain tire, softer compound, I think Martinsville nailed it.

So, yes, we’ll build upon that for future. As we look at kind of the road course and how that played out with short tracks and lean pretty heavily on Goodyear in the future, but they’ve proven to us that they can deliver. I think the challenge is potentially always going softer.

We always hear from the industry that softer, softer, softer, but yet, if there’s a tire problem, they’re the first to get blamed. That’s unfair because they’re trying to put out a great product on the street, and an even better product in terms of racing. So they both go hand-in-hand.

Our job is to push them. They continue to deliver, but I think that’s what you’ll see is more from Goodyear.

We ask this every year, but has there been any change to the look for a new OEM to come in? I mean, it’s something we’ve needed, and we ask this every year, and I’m hoping that we get a little bit of a door opening this year in that.

STEVE PHELPS: Yes. I’ll expand on that. Yeah, we’ve had a number of discussions. I would say is that we’re in different phases depending on the OEs. Right now we’re in discussion with several OEs about coming in. I won’t get into exactly where those are and who they are, but we have an OE that is close. That OE has buy-out from those that are in the racing portion of that. So it really just comes down to the business portion and can we strike a deal that is advantageous for them and for us? Are we the right fit for their brand? Are we not?

But I’m cautiously optimistic, and then we need to being accelerate the other discussions we’ve had because I think in our opinion five is probably the right number of OEs. Obviously we’re at three right now. Would the frontrunner, if you will — we are a couple of years away. It takes a while obviously to get up and running, but we’re excited about it because we would like to have another OE or two.

So do our existing three OEs. They want to have additional competition from additional OEs for a number of reasons.

To follow up on the short track tire a little bit, was the fall-off that you saw at Martinsville soon enough and extreme enough or would you like to see more of that?

STEVE O’DONNELL: I think you always like to see more, but there’s a balance too, right? I think that’s part of what the group is going to study during the offseason. What did we see? How quickly did it fall off? Because the opposite, right, maybe of a Bristol situation, and you don’t want that either.

So somewhere in the middle there. The ultimate goal is that if you go out on a brand new set of tires and you just go after it, somebody better be catching you or you better pay for that. I think that’s what all the competitors want in some capacity. Even when you have the best car out there.

We’ll continue to strive for that. A lot of testing will continue with Goodyear, but I would say directionally absolutely in the right place, but maybe if we could tweak it a little more we would.

I know you said no charter discussion, but during the conversation here today, the ruling came in, and the teams were denied their preliminary injunction. I’m wonder if anything you could comment on that?

STEVE PHELPS: I have no comment on that, Jordan.

THE MODERATOR: Steve, any final remarks?

STEVE O’DONNELL: Other than you can’t make it up with timing, right (laughing)?

STEVE PHELPS: Again, good luck to all the competitors this weekend. We have a race that’s about to start. I’m really excited about it. I think it’s a great cap to the season, and I think we’re going to have on the national series three great champions.

I do think it’s important for everyone to understand charters notwithstanding and what’s going on there, our relationship with the race teams is really important, and our race teams working with NASCAR is really important to the success of this sport, as is our relationship with Speedway Motorsports and the independent tracks, as is our relationships with our broadcast partners and our sponsors.

It’s what makes this entire thing go, and I would suggest over the last five, six, eight, ten years that we have not optimized the opportunity in front of us.

If we do that where we have alignment and everyone understands the division, the strategy about how we’re going to move this sport forward, then I am positive we are going to have success.

If we don’t, it’s up in the air, but I’m confident that we can get this group, this stakeholder group to come together because everyone is going to benefit, including the race fan. I’m really excited about that.

Kind of to that, we are going to continue to be bold and innovative in everything that we do. Not just the race schedule, but everything that we do to drive this sport forward. It’s the only way you will grow is to be bold and innovative in the decisions that are made, and we’re going to do that.

I’ve said this at every single one of these States of the Sport. This is my seventh year saying this, and I will say it this year, next year, and the following years, which is… “The best days at NASCAR are not behind us. They are ahead of us.” And I believe that to be true. Thank you for your time.

— NASCAR —