Dodge: The First 100 Days

What follows below are the highlights of a teleconference with Jim Julow, Vice President, Dodge Global Brand Center about the first 100 days of Dodge's return to Winston Cup racing.

DAVE ELSHOFF (Senior Manager, Motorsports Public Relations)

“As we now unofficially celebrate what has turned out to be 100 days in the milestone toward Dodge’s return to the NASCAR Winston Cup Series, we’re now at T plus 106. We challenged ourselves early on to prepare a competitive Winston Cup effort in 500 days. As we counted down to the Daytona 500, you’ll recall we provided updates at 100-day increments, and we felt that it would be natural to follow the progress now as we enter into our first season and hopefully are able to continue this throughout the year. I’ve asked Jim Julow to share some of his early impressions with the program.

JIM JULOW (Vice President, Dodge Global Brand Center)

“I do think it’s relatively important since our press activities have been mostly race-track related over the past couple, three months as we’ve unfolded this Winston Cup effort to point out there were a lot of objectives set down. I guess it’s now been 606 days ago we stood at the Waldorf=Astoria or Talladega, which ever place you happened to be, and first and foremost in all of our thoughts and minds at that point in time were to develop a credible Winston Cup effort that would be competitive from day one, that would have reliability established so we were finishing races, that hopefully we would be successful in getting most if not all of our cars into the races each weekend in terms of qualifying and that it would be great to finish near the top and get some poles and maybe collect a win or two in our first season out of the gate. At the time, we said somewhere between six and eight race cars would have a Dodge moniker on ‘em when we started at Daytona in 2001.

Where we stand today after 106 days of racing, we field 10 cars. Week in and week out, we’ve got pretty much, if not all of the cars in the race, 9 of the 10 cars into the race. I think we’ve established a fairly sound record for reliability. We are finishing races with most cars that don’t have a particular accident or problem along the way with a close wall or two. We’ve gathered a couple of poles. We’ve had a couple of 1-2-3 starts. We’ve led 400 plus laps of the various races. We’ve got Sterling Marlin clearly in the fifth position of the top 10 drivers points. I think overall, even our competitors would have to say we’re fielding a competitive and credible set of race cars week in and week out and have added to the interest and value of Winston Cup Racing. All the while, I can’t help but put the commercial in, having won every single Craftsman Truck race that they’ve had so far this year (eight), which we view as very important because of the importance of the Ram pickup truck to the Dodge franchise as a brand. I’m not ready to declare victory and run off the field, but I think our operational success this year has been even better than what any of us could have hoped for 600 days ago as we stood in front of you saying, ‘we think Ray Evernham can develop a pretty decent car and engine and we’re going to go for it.’

“Having said that on the operational side, I’d be remiss not to say that I think the marketing part of this equation, which was an equal to second component of what we wanted to do differently as we went forward with motorsports at Dodge, has actually gotten off to a better start than I think any of us could have reasonably hoped for. Ever since Daytona, in terms of dealer participation and the notion of local market activation of the various race venues in terms of sale events, official vehicles of the track, sponsorship entitlements of the race, we are ahead of pace and on our way to really being able to leverage across our dealer franchise system of this sport to every dealer that’s in the Dodge franchise system, not just a select view. I think on the operational side, we’re very much where we want to be and have a vision of how that gets better and on the marketing side, actually ahead of where we want to be. We just need to keep the pressure on to keep that high level of performance going throughout the season and hopefully raise it a notch as we become sophomores. That’s kind of the top-line view from my chair after 100 days of actually racing.”

DISCUSS THE IMPACT OF RACING ON DODGE SALES

“There’s a lot of variables that go into sales at the retail level, and I would be absolutely incorrect by saying we’re pleased with the rate of travel of Dodge sales at this point in time. I think it would be a little too early and disingenuous to try to link those two things too directly. Part of the reason we made this a long term program is that it’s really a brand building exercise. We didn’t go into this with a win on Sunday, sell on Monday old adage. We went into it (saying) this is an important public proving ground for the Dodge brand. It’s one that’s going to take a great deal of time in order to get its full impact felt. Having said that, I think we can show some pretty interesting numbers in terms of conquest shoppers in terms of people we’ve captured to Dodge Garage that are not Dodge owners, in terms of some of the test drive things we’ve done in connection with some of the event activities centered around the races and in terms of some of the name acquisition we’ve done with motorsports-related programs in terms of prospects, most importantly like a Dodge City. We were putting 5,000 people an hour through Dodge City through Daytona and that’s been something the dealer associations have picked up across the country. It’s a great direct marketing approach to put people into a Dodge environment. We’re building data base. We’re building prospect files. We’re seeing success at the test drive level. We’ve tracking in terms of lifestyle, the incremental impact of motorsports and specifically Winston Cup in terms of the Dodge people buying today, and we’re going to measure those over time. It’s not going to be a short term activity for us. It’s something we’re going to measure and continue to measure. It’s a long term image building program for us.”

WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE TO MAKE THE WINSTON CUP PROGRAM BETTER?

“The glass is certainly more than half full, but it’s not completely full. For us to build image with motorsports, we have to be successful and successful includes winning. We’ve got to find a way to do that. I think in a lot of people’s minds, our early success at Daytona and some other places kind of built a kind of false expectation, that it’s easier than it looks. This is a very difficult business, Winston Cup in particular. It took us five years to sort ourselves out on the truck level to be as successful as we are today. Certainly we don’t want to have to take five years to do that at the Winston Cup level. We need to find a way to get faster, and we need to find a way to make our teams even more competitive. As a public proving ground, you have to win at this level of motorsports to be effective on the marketing level. We’ve had enough success to be credible as marketers right now, but for us to continue to leverage that and get better at it, we’re going to have to win and that’s what we’re focused on. We think we’ve got the right teams, and we think we’ve got a lot of advantages with our one-team approach in terms of sharing of technology, sharing of information. We like the way the chemistry of those teams is working together, and that one-team approach, we believe, is a competitive advantage that will get us, for instance the truck level of racing we have today, much quicker in Winston Cup. I guess we’ll see if that vision will come true over the next six, eight, 10 months. That is what we’re hoping to leverage and like I said, it’s all about winning these races and we need to do that.”

COMMENT ON SUCCESS OF GANASSI TEAM

“We have almost weekly team meetings, and sometimes those are at the owner level and sometimes they’re at the crew chief level. We have been very good about sharing technology. We have most of the folks hooked up with our CATIA system which is our engineering CAD/CAM system so that we can share data electronically in real time. We give equal access to all teams and in fact share in many cases test programs for wind tunnel and on-track with our own engineering group. We’re very much about sharing best practices at this point. Sterling has run very consistently and strong for us. I think that’s great. I think on the other hand, we’ve got to give Ray Evernham credit. He sat out the race year last year while everyone else was running around racing trying to develop a car and an engine which he did an admiral job of. He’s probably been less than 100 days as a team owner focused on Evernham Motorsports. He’s been more of a development partner the last 550 or 560 days. I think that now he’s getting in the regular mode of team owner with his group of people that we’ll see great results out of him as well. I think Casey had a great finish this last weekend. He’s coming along real, real well. I just think the whole one-team concept is something that should raise the bar on everybody’s ability to compete, and that’s our bet anyhow. We’ll see over the next several months how that unfolds.”

BREAK DOWN YOUR DUTIES WITH THE DODGE PROGRAM

“I guess kind of soup to nuts. I’ve got the Dodge marketing initiatives here at the brand center, so I have that part of it working for me. As Lou Patane has seen fit to retire to Charlotte and go on more of a part time basis on the operational side, that also reports to me through Bill Tracy and Bob Wildberger. We’ve kind of got both sides of the house, at least for these five minutes. Things change momentarily in big companies, but we found values in trying to keep the motorsports operations and the motorsports and brand marketing as tightly together as we could. It’s something Lou and I strove to do when he was still here. He’s still a very valuable part of the team, although not full time, for us down in Charlotte. We think there is an advantage in terms of having those in the same basic area of the company. As long as my friends back in engineering and all our technical stay working as hard as they have been for the betterment of the program, I think it’s a great organizational way to do business.”

ARE YOU THE GUY WHO GOES IN THE NASCAR TRAILER WHEN THERE’S A PROBLEM?

“We’ve been working day-to-day through Bob Wildberger (Senior Manager, NASCAR Operations -- Dodge Motorsports) and Tim Culbertson (Program Manager, Dodge NASCAR Winston Cup Engineering). I think we’ve a great relationship with NASCAR, and I think we feel we’ve been treated pretty fairly. I suppose if the day comes when I think it’s necessary for me to run in there to either get yelled at or to yell at people, that that will happen. More than likely to get yelled at.”

DISCUSS PERSONNEL CHANGES AT EVERNHAM MOTORSPORTS

“I won’t speak to the specifics of it, but I think we’ve had several teams with personnel changes over the last several months. Everybody is trying as hard as they can to be successful as they can be as early as they can be. That’s true, not just of our race teams, but of the effort being put in here at the tech center by our technical group. We’ve spent a lot more time in the wind tunnel than we anticipated because we think it’s important.

We’ve spent a lot of time with engine development, and the guys are working hard on that because we know we think we’re a couple of pounds heavy on the motor. Like I said, everybody is working as hard as they can. Nobody wants this momentum that we have had since we really announced this program almost two years ago to fall off. There has been a sense of urgency and a sense of energy from the very first moment we announced Ray as our partner for development and that we were getting back into Winston Cup Racing. If anything, you want to continue to elevate that modestly day in and day out as time goes forward. I’m hoping if luck is with us and we manage to win a race here in the not too distance future that that won’t be a letdown, either, because that’s not what it’s all about. There’s a plan here, Ray spelled it out a lot better than I could have at the Waldorf a couple of years ago, we’ve got a plan that says the first thing we’ve got to do, we’ve got to submit a car and engine to NASCAR and have them accept it. The second thing we’ve got to do is build what we think is a critical mass of race teams that can go out and run that car for us competitively. Qualify it week in and week out and run at the top of the field and be a credible, competitive force. Then we’ve got to win some races. Then we want to win a championship. That’s the vision.

Nobody is suggesting that’s going to happen this year or maybe even next, but I think we’ve checked the box on a couple of those pretty hard. We need to check the box on winning some races, and then we need to check the box on becoming a threat to win the championship. That’s kind of the five-year long view of it. Hopefully we can do it less than that. If we’re not lucky, it might take longer than that. I think personnel changes at the race team level are part of our owners trying to do the best they can to put the best people in positions within their team structures to put us in position to win races. I can’t speak more highly of our technical people who are going the extra mile to do the same thing in terms of technical support and facilities here at CTC for this company. In all fairness, putting the cards on the table, we have done better to this point in the race season than I would have expected us to do a year ago today. It’s given us enough taste of success that we want it real bad to get to the next level.”

ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH THE INTREPID NASCAR TEMPLATES?

“There’s two issues to silhouette. One is race performance and the other is appearance. I separate ‘em only because I have both a marketing hat and an operations hat on. I think our teams have done an excellent job of trying to put a Dodge face and a Dodge look onto the templates that we’ve been allowed from NASCAR to use. I think that’s great. Obviously, we think there are things we could do and things we’d like to see to be a little more competitive. Those are issues in conversations we need to have as time moves forward. We’ve got to build a consensus on changes we’d like to see, and we’ve got to put a case together that says those are valuable and worthwhile to do. That’s something we’ve got to get out.”

DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF THE VOICE OF DODGE RACING?

“Well, I guess I’m doing the press conference, so in one way that kind of answers it. I think clearly there needs to be not just one face of Dodge Motorsports but several. I think there are faces that will come through as people know better. Tim Culbertson or Bob Wildberger who are our people on the ground, I think there’s dealer personality we’ve got to put on this because that’s a huge and important part of our program. We’re very much team oriented in this company, and Dodge and Dodge Motorsports are no exception. I think to boil everything down to one person or face would be different than the way we like to do business. Everybody on the team has got their own function. Chip Ganassi and Felix, the Pettys, Davis, Melling, they’ve all got a role to play and they’re all part of the Dodge team. That’s the way we’d rather portray ourselves in the public forum, not so much as one czar or one face, but there’s a team of people. Maybe you don’t know us well yet because we’re still relatively new kids on the block, but over time I think you’re going to find several personalities and faces that all have a very important role to play in the success of Dodge Motorsports.

I’d rather that Dodge was in the limelight. Depending on what the particular subject matter of the article or interview or of that particular day, certainly I’ll tell you I’ll run from wherever I am to victory lane and you’ll have trouble getting me off stage. In this particular case, everything we’ve done with this particular program, from the development from the marketing launch, from the way we want to capitalize on it, everything is invested in this team approach. What I’d like you folks to know about it and learn about it is the team and what each particular person or individual team member brings to the team. I think it would do the program a disservice if any one personality whether it’s me or whoever became the personification of Dodge Motorsports. We’re an eclectic bunch for a purpose.”

“Let’s talk semantics since it’s apparently important. Redesign in my business means you kind of take a whole new approach to what you’re doing. I don’t think anybody has ever suggested that, at least to me. Obviously we’re looking for ways to make the engine lighter, design changes that might enhance the reliability and durability. We’re looking for ways to make the car better, faster, stronger, and the motor is a big piece of that. I will tell you the basic design, in my mind, has proven durability which was the most important and critical factor. We didn’t want those things blowing up and not finishing the race because of engine or mechanical failure. I think if you look back over your shoulder, we’ve pretty much done that. We’ve been pretty bullet proof in terms of power train, which is I think a great place to start. We still think we’ve got some weight in the engine we could take out. We still think there are design changes which would help us in terms of making the car a more credible competitor and we’re pursuing those. I wouldn’t characterize those as redesigns. I would characterize those as tweaking. I think there are some (changes) we could incorporate this year, assuming that NASCAR agrees they’re not significant or wholesale changes and within the realm of continuous improvement. As we find those and prove those out and have the data we can take to the sanctioning body, we’ll do that.”