Tony Stewart (left) with Mike Helton and Jimmie Johnson (right). Credit: Autostock

Conversation: Mike Helton

LOUDON, N.H. -- Mike Helton has a thankless job. If things go well, no one notices him, even with his imposing presence in the NASCAR garage area.

But if things don't go so well, boy, the fingers are all pointed in his direction.

Audio Trackpass Audio Conversation: Mike Helton

But the NASCAR president has learned to have thick skin through the years. And he has proven to have been right more times than not.

When Helton and NASCAR officials announced the Chase for the Nextel Cup in January, reaction was almost totally negative. But now that the Chase is on, the screams aren't as loud.

Helton sat down with NASCAR.COM's Lee Montgomery recently to talk about the Chase; about its architect, Brian France; and about some other issues facing Helton and the sport.

This is the one-year anniversary of Brian being the president. We've seen a lot of changes since he took over. Have you liked what he's done and how the sport is going under his direction?

Mike Helton: Yeah, actually, it's a year ago he took over as chairman of NASCAR, taking his father's place.

My bad.

Helton: I think Brian has brought an energy level that has modernized NASCAR, has modernized the enthusiasm around NASCAR.

It's brought in some fresh ideas and put into motion some key components of the business side as well as the competition elements that will make NASCAR continue to grow.

Now that the Chase is here, is it a feeling of relief that it worked out so well? Or is that just a confidence in the system, knowing it was going to work?

Helton: Well, I think we had confidence in it when we announced it in January. When the concept was first developed, it started out as an idea and turned into a project and then turned into reality.

Through those phases, it was a matter of gaining confidence enough in it to put it into play. By the time we announced it in January, we had confidence that it was the right thing to do.

Certainly, we're pleased that it has turned out the way it has and it probably helped a lot of other people understand and have confidence in it like we did.

Can we expect any changes in the format or anything at all for 2005? Or are you just going to leave it alone?

Helton: I don't see anything right now that would warrant a lot of change to it. I think it's worked very much on to the target that we had expected of it.

Helton with Brian France (right). Credit: Autostock

I would tell you in December, from the banquet to New Year's, we had an army of folks internally - Steve O'Donnell, John Darby, David Hoots and others - that sat in rooms, literally locked up in rooms, for days on end to analyze and bombard with as many components as they could to figure out what would happen and what could happen and what might happen and what to expect.

From that came the template that we announced and said, "Here's the procedure and here's what the Chase for the Nextel Cup is all about."

I give credit to those groups who sat in those rooms in December and noodled it all out as it unfolded. In doing so, what we've created is a product that once we announced it, we didn't want to make changes to it. We wanted to give it ample time to prove itself, and that's probably more than one year.

I don't know of anything that we would change in it as we sit here on the beginning of the last 10.

Is there any chance that at some point, Busch and trucks will adopt this, too, or do you like them staying the way they are?

Helton: What the Busch and the trucks offer up is the overlap of competitors from the Cup garage on a consistent basis in those series. So the elements of the Chase for the Nextel Cup would not necessarily work in the Busch and the truck series because of that influence of the Cup drivers.

The other component is that our intentions were always to go in and create a Chase for the Nextel Cup that was unique to the Nextel Cup Series. That also keeps us from looking to expand it into other national series.

You talked about this, about preparing for the Chase and getting everything ready last December. Has there ever been any concept of doing something like what the NFL does: getting some owners and drivers together and having an off-season rules meeting and set them and then stick with them the whole year?

Helton: Well, we do that today in a manner of speaking. We spend a good deal of time all year long with owners and crew chiefs and drivers to discuss what we've got and what we may be thinking about doing before we put it in ink.

Once we put to down on paper and put it in the rule book, if it doesn't come up with something we haven't thought of, then generally we don't try to change it.

We've been very consistent the last few years of announcing rules earlier and not deviating once them once we put them down.

That's been a big value, and the owners and the crew chiefs brought that to our attention a few years ago, and we've tried to adapt and make it work out that way, and we think we have.

The input from the teams, whether it's the owners or the crew chiefs or drivers, is always that's something that's a non-stop flow.

Going back to the Chase, when you guys first announced it, it was not received very well by fans. What kind of a response have you gotten personally lately?

Helton: Well, I've had a lot of people say that they like it. That doesn't mean that everybody does, but I think it's like any other big change or major change. You sit and wonder why you would make changes. If something's not broke, why fix it?

About Mike Helton Mike Helton assumed the role of president for NASCAR in November 2000, succeeding Bill France, who had served as president since 1972.   He became the first person outside the France family to take over the day-to-day operations of NASCAR when he was promoted from his position as vice president for competition and was named senior vice president and chief operating officer in February of 1999.

This is where Brian France has stepped up and helped all of us understand that we like where we're at and we need to continue to improve our sport and our product so that we can maintain the growth and the position in professional sports.

But when you make a major change such as the format that determines the champion, it has great debate around it, and it will have until it plays itself completely out and people see it and come to accept it.

The good thing about in the garage area is we had a huge amount of debate in December and early January with the competitors.

But once we drew the line in the sand and said, "Here's the way we're going to do our '04 championship for the Nextel Cup Series," they said, "OK. We know what we're racing and everybody racing the same thing, so let's go get it."

We've attracted people to it that might have been hardcore against it. We've convinced people who might have been straddling the line and said, "Well, I don't know yet." Over time, it will become an accepted way of doing it.

I think I was one of those who was straddling the line, but now I love it, so I'm sure there are lots of people out there like that. As far as your job officiating these next 10, is it going to be any more difficult under this format than the old way just because there are 10 guys in the spotlight week-in, week-out?

Helton: I don't think so. We turn the wick up every year. Our job is to officiate the sport consistently all year long, and that's what we intend to do the last 10 races of the year - to officiate them the same way we did the first 26 races.

The element that certainly cause us to do what we have to do is the circumstances that happen on the racetrack.

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A lot of conversation has been flying around, "Well, so and so is going to do this and so and so is going to do that." That's a lot of speculation that we've heard in the past when we come down to the end of a championship season. It doesn't quite get played out that way.

Certainly, NASCAR is going to stay in a good deal of conversations. We live with these guys, they live with us. We'll continue to police the sport just like we've done the first 26 races, and that means, what we'll do is we'll be fair and we'll be consistent. That's what the industry expects us to do.

We're not going to take any consideration that this may change the outcome. It's just the matter of taking into consideration what the violation is and what the standard reaction is from us.

And these guys are professionals. I don't think there is any reason to expect them to change the last 10 (races)?

Helton: No, I don't think so either. Matter of fact, I think what you'll actually see is them become even more professional because there is a lot at stake, but these guys are athletes, they're competitors and they're hardcore, driven competitors.

But they're also good guys.

One of the reasons you guys changed the format, one of the reasons speculated, is compete with the NFL TV ratings-wise. What kind of a ratings bump do you expect these last 10?

Helton: Well, we expect to hold our own, certainly, and attract people to the racetrack and the TV broadcasts of the races that might wander away during this time of year, typically.

We saw a 13 (percent) bump last weekend in Richmond on the ratings, and hopefully, we continue to do that the rest of the season.

Is it fair to expect you guys to compete with the NFL, being as big and powerful as they are? Is that a lofty goal or is it reasonable?

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Helton: Everything has to have a benchmark to judge against. As we've grown and become more and more accepted, the last benchmark out there to judge NASCAR against, particularly when it comes to TV ratings, is the NFL.

That doesn't necessarily mean we're competing against them, but it's the benchmark that we get compared to.

Our job is to grow our sport, grow the awareness of it, grow the exposure of it, grow the audience that participates with us and make it consistent and constant. The NFL has the same goals that we have. We're not necessarily competing with each other as much as we're in the same industry.

Last question, I get a lot of negative e-mails about you and about the job you've do - obviously from fans outside the sport who don't necessarily understand everything that's going on.

But with all the changes and some of the controversy that's gone on, what kind of a job personally job do you think you've done this year?

Helton: Well, I don't know that I'd self-rate at any point in my career. What we try to do as a group in NASCAR is to do it correctly, do it fairly, as it relates to the competitors in the garage area.

We've been around long enough, and I've been around long enough to know that the amount of details and the amount of information we have, the general public generally doesn't have.

While it could appear, particularly if you're driven by your support of a driver or maybe dislike of a driver or team, those opinions can be created that way.

We expect that, and we're glad that our fans are enthusiastic, we're glad that they're involved in the sport by their emotions and their emotions and everything.

I don't like to be criticized; nobody does. But at the same time, I have to be open-minded to the fact that that's the nature of the decision-making process.

We try to do it correctly, we try to do it fairly, and we try to do it based on the totality of the circumstances and the knowledge that we've got about it.

Most of the time, we know a whole lot more than other people know, and we should because we're the ones who have to make those decisions.

Some of them aren't very easy to make, and some of them don't come with great acceptance, and that's part of it. But we keep plugging along.

Conversation appears every Monday on NASCAR.COM.