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Adam Saal: Good afternoon. We wanted to take the time just to meet with the press. This is our first time racing in more than a month and quite a bit of news. In fact, some of it even positive has been out there on behalf of CART and may not be readily apparent, but we just wanted to take the time to say hello. It's not the best of weekends for Chris, he did lose his mother Thursday night but still wanted to be here to basically get the balance of the season off. Thank you, Chris, we appreciate it.
We need to sell tickets to this thing. We have this number of people in the room and probably have a gross of about 100 grand here. I wanted to chat with you a little bit. Obviously the month of May is a tough month for CART. We're obviously out of the limelight, although we manage to get drug into the limelight. It is the month of the Indianapolis 500 and we all do respect that. (Inaudible) The race is still undecided in the fact that we happen to have one of our drivers in the "appeal mode," I believe is the correct terminology. That will work its way out. I know all of you suddenly got very surprised by the Honda announcement which was surprising to me in the sense that you were surprised because this announcement came out in October last year at Laguna Seca. And we knew it was going to happen. We worked very hard with the Honda folks. I personally apologized to (President of American Honda) Mr. (Koichi) Amamyia about the treatment that Honda had received last year during the year. And I must say also that a few other manufactures weren't treated as well as they should have been last year as well. But Honda was particularly on the end of the brunt of some pretty difficult rulings, so they made their statement in October and they stood by it. We're obviously disappointed to see them leave. But as I told Mr. Amamyia and (Executive Vice President of American Honda) Mr. (Tom) Elliott, we will honor our relationship with Honda through this season and make sure that they get true value out of their relationship with the series. I think the fact that Motegi goes away with Honda should not come as a surprise. Disappointing. We built it up, we had a very good crowd there this year; a couple of you were over there for it. But they are owned by Honda and Honda is going to do what Honda has to do in their own corporate culture. And on that point, CART is going to do what it has to do to run its own business. I think I've talked about the difficulties of the past. I have talked to you about some of the management deficiencies in the past. That doesn't come as any news to you. But we are now managing this company and running this company, and we intend to build this company. We still have some of the finest venues in the world. We still have the finest racing car drivers outside of Formula One. We still have some of the finest teams outside of Formula One. And we intend to build on that and build with them. And build this business back. It's too good. Our audiences are still good. Believe it or not, if it doesn't pour rain tomorrow we're probably going to see 25,000 or 30,000 people at an oval race. That will be novel, won't it, to have something over 10,000 or 12,000 people. And in talking to the fans this morning coming in, it's because they want to see our guys perform in these cars on this particular oval which is a very unique one because it's wide and flat, and our drivers can excel under these true tests of driving conditions. So we will move forward. We will have, you are aware of two engine agreements between Judd and Cosworth. We will have another announcement, I would say to you, in a week or ten days; that's more definite in that area, and we will continue to move the company back to the level where it should be and beyond. Adam Saal: This weekend we debut on CBS. We have been in the position of having to defend our TV package and we're quite proud of it. Tell us what that means from our point that we actually have had the seven CBS races as well as the Fox race for Long Beach.
So the two of them are working extremely well together - the production side and the network, and we're confident that we'll have a really super quality television show. Hopefully we don't get very, very low cloud cover so we don't get our in-car knocked out as what happened to us in Long Beach. But I think to - take a look at it. See how we're growing that side of our business. Question: The field is down under 20 cars. Does that have some ramifications as far as the contracts are concerned?
So everybody is on board. I should remind you that CART has run races before with 16 cars and I am on record of saying to you that anywhere between 18 and 22 cars is where we want to be. We can put on an excellent show with 18 cars. We have got 15 guys that can win, I think out of those 15 on any one weekend and again this is not about quantity. This is about quality. That's the focus we're going to have on going forward. Overseas races shipping more than 20 cars is a big problem for us. Question: Comment on where Milwaukee fits in. Do they get a rebate or something?
Question: I don't know.
Question: Conversation yesterday about the stock price, what would happen if it bottoms out? Is that a bad thing? Taking it private again, is that in the plan at all?
Question: (Inaudible)
Question: Can you talk about the progress for next season on trying to get a new venue into the Orient and any other new markets?
Question: I can't see you from back here, Chris, it seems to me that there's sort of a balancing act here on the one hand saying that CART needs to do what is good for CART and yet at the same time, come away from about a six-week layoff where CART wasn't racing and everything was happening at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Again, a lot of that was done so that some CART teams could participate in the Indy 500, but in the interim, a lot of them lost momentum. CART, correct me if I am wrong, seems to have been a loss, do you have a different perspective on the calendar for next year, or as we go into the future about clearing much of the calendar for Indianapolis or what?
Adam Saal: We'll have a happy hour reception in the next couple of races then. Question: How can you still keep CART in people's minds, yet still allow the teams to compete at Indy?
On the other hand, as David so eloquently put it, there's a big hole in the schedule. So we are in a rock and a hard place on that and we need to go back to our teams. But on the other hand, we intend to manage this company ourselves and not be managed by others and I think part of our problem has been that there have been one or two individuals or companies who have tried to manage CART in the past for their own personal gain. We're going to take a look at that whole thing. Question: What do you think about the results and the controversy at Indy last weekend?
I don't think there could have been a better driver under those particular circumstances in the position challenged for the lead, Mr. (Paul) Tracy, and I certainly wouldn't want to have been Mr. (Helio) Castroneves with Mr. Tracy up my ass with two laps to go. Question: The stock price has fallen quite a bit lately. Does that concern you?
Question: Why should sponsors and potential sponsors get involved or stay involved with CART?
Now, we have not done a very good job of that in the past. But we're doing an excellent job now and you have just got to go look at some of the business to business stories that are going on inside CART. We are putting companies together. You can go talk to Simple Green, talk to Pioneer, talk to these folks. We are actually putting people together so they are doing business deals and growing their businesses. That's what we're supposed to be doing as a marketing company. Yes, we're a motor racing company, but to make the motor racing work, you have to have the marketing. You have to have the corporate side of it working as well. That's why we're a marketing service company; still a sanctioning body. Question: There has been a lot of talk about teams leaving, following Penske over to the IRL. We've heard all the names there. They are big teams, if they do go, obviously it will hurt CART to lose them. Where are the replacements? This is obviously a major issue for CART that you have. Where are the replacements for these teams going to come from? Do you have a clue at this point where they are actually going to come from?
But we are focusing on where the new teams are coming from, and the first thing that we need to do is we need to get our costs under control. Because what's happened. Yeah, you have had companies involved in sport that have been hand-grenading volumes of cash around, so we need to understand that we have got a process to go racing with a budget under control. We have got a model where we need to be now. I am not making any announcements for any of that, I am just telling you that that's what we have got done. Now, having got that under control, we have something to go back to motor racing teams around the world and talk about. That process is underway. Bear in mind, we are not all ovals. We are a combination of road, street, and oval. So the predominance of the motor racing in the world takes place on road courses. So there's a huge number of teams around the world who we can go talk to. That process is underway. Question: In the past CART has made a number of attempts to get closer to the IRL. The most recent being - you attempted to adopt the same engine formula as the IRL and a chassis that was somewhat similar. How do you view that and going forward what do you think you are going to do in terms of CART?
Question: If I could get back to the issue of teams. One team packed up its stuff and hauled out of here. I guess I'm assuming you are working with teams to try and keep them on board. Have you talked to the people at PWR and are they coming back in the future?
They said they were going down to one car. I think they made that announcement ten days ago so they - obviously they had some level of disagreement with their driver who is a very talented racing car driver. And the good news is that the folks at Milwaukee are going to see Mr. Dixon do what he does very well and that's drive a racing car. Question: Following up, everybody says there's not enough room in this country for two open-wheel Indy Car type series. How do you respond to that and what does CART do to ensure that its model works, given the oversaturation of the market so to speak?
I can only say to you that on our side of the map with the number of spectators that are showing up, something must be right. I can't focus on the other side, the tens and the 15,000's that show up for those race, I can't deal with those. That's not my business. Focus on what we've got. So I think what we have got to look at is make sure that our spectator business model continues to work well, which it is, and if we have got a glitch in any of the places we go to, consistent glitch where the numbers are not good, we have got to look at it and see why. This world works by supply and demand and right now we have got demand from the public and our television ratings are coming back thanks to Speed Channel, Doug Sellars is in here someplace, Doug, thank you, congratulation to you guys, at Fox. That's why Fox is the fastest growing and best television network in the world today all over the world. Thanks to guys like Doug Sellars who make the shows work. Our numbers are coming back there. Mark, I can't answer your question about if it's oversaturated. I really can't. Our promoters are getting done what they have got to get done. Question: CART has all these spectators showing up at the races and in some respects, might be the stronger series, but yet everybody is saying CART is going to die. How do you counteract that kind of negative perception.
Adam Saal: You get used to it.
At the end of the day, the facts are going to be the facts. The customers will read the material and look at the material and will judge about what they read. Question: Is there a movement within your team to try and get Oriol Servia with another team like Derrick Walker said yesterday when he put his name in the hat. Is that what you'd like to do here in the next month?
Question: Will you try to help support these teams so you won't lose any more from the field?
Question: We keep hearing that there are some other teams besides PWR that are in financial difficulty and might not make it through the season which would obviously affect the car count even more. You are saying even 20 is an ideal number. But there's always the possibility that it can go below that this year because and do you have a thought or thoughts how to combat this? Is there some plan to help these teams so that they don't follow PWR out the door?
Question: I'd like to first say I think you are doing a great job. You have taken this division quite far. What do you think about the Stars of Tomorrow's program?
Adam Saal: Among Chris's scheduled appointments today after he goes on our qualifying show on speed channel he will go right over and address the Atlantic drivers. As a former Indy Lights guy I can tell you wasn't a lot of time you get from the league office, so it will be time well spent. We appreciate it. This is time well spent as well. Chris, thank you very much. | ||||||
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