Claire B. Lang interviews CEO Brian France

Claire B. Lang is the host of "Dialed In", which airs Monday through Friday from 4pm-7pm ET on XM Satellite Radio's 24-hour NASCAR Radio Channel 144. This week Brian France, NASCAR Chairman and CEO, joined Claire on the air to answer questions from her and the listeners. Here are some highlights of the half-hour he spent on the show.

Claire: Are the current auto manufacturers' problems going to affect our sport at all?

Brian France: Well, you hope not, and we haven't had any indications from them that it will. You've got to remember it's been well documented that their biggest financial challenge is in their health care costs and a few other things that are completely unrelated to the marketing impact of being a partner with NASCAR. And by the way, there are cycles you go through where you're not as profitable or you're having troubles but you don't just discard things that you know work well, because when the cycle comes back around or it helps you get there, so my view of it is they're in a difficult time but they will sort themselves out.

Claire B. Lang

Claire: Why is it that fines can be so different; one week, one guy gets fined one thing, the next week, somebody else will get fined and it won't be near the same thing?

Brian France: A lot of that is dependent on the circumstances, and although they appear a lot of times that they're similar, one incident to another, but the reality of it is there could be a lot of other circumstances that make us react a certain way. Let me just say that every fine and everything we do is pretty deliberate. We're thinking it through as best we can, but you can certainly see where fines would appear to be slightly different but they're really not when you look at all the circumstances that surround an infraction.

Claire: Is Darlington surviving? Is Darlington going to be around? What are your thoughts?

Brian France: My thoughts actually went back to the Fall where we thought they had a very good event, and exciting race, it ended under the lights, it was well received. And then they improved on that last Saturday night with a sellout, and quite ahead of time, too. And there's some energy in that facility. A lot of the drivers, not only the history, but they like it. It's a different configuration from other mile-and-a-halfs. Our goal is to help all our events be as successful as they can. When they're not, then we've got to deal with it, but right now they're doing a lot of things that are positive.

Claire: When will we know about next year, and is it a trade-off for New York?

Brian France: Well, it's not that. But we are going to sit own with all the tracks and all the events here shortly, and we'll deal with them directly. But our goal is to make those events successful and stay on the schedule forever. That's not always possible, but that's our goal.

Claire: Are there any plans to run the Truck Series at Talladega?

Brian France

Brian France: Without looking at all the schedules, which is really the dictator, there is a lot of interest in that by fans in the marketplace that go to the events at Talladega. Everybody knows by now the trucks are really an unbelievable show at Daytona, and it's just become a big thing on the Friday night of Speedweeks, and it is a real show to watch. And there's a lot of interest in seeing those trucks at Talladega, but we don't have any plans yet to do that.

Claire: With all the stuff in the news now, and not necessarily about steroids, are there any plans for a random testing policy in NASCAR or is it going of continue to be a kind of "as suspect" basis?

Brian France: Well, we really are pleased with our policy. We've had it for a number of years, and it gives us an enormous amount as the governing body, of latitude to do whatever we think is possible to test whomever we think has an issue to deal with, and it's been well-noted we've actually had some people violate that policy. The balance of it is we have the kind of reach with that policy to make sure that everybody is sane, mind and body, so we feel pretty comfortable with it.

Claire: Is there any chance of ever considering putting a limit on the number of races, either how many Cup guys can get in the Busch race each week, or say, "Okay, guys, choose the six races this year you want to get in and race." And this way it gives the regular Busch guys a little better chance of getting that win.

Brian France: Well, there's two sides to that. There's what you just said, and it would do that if they didn't have the Nextel Cup drivers racing on Saturdays. The other reality is, though, a lot of people like that. They like to see the best drivers in the world come with the up and coming drivers who are just making their mark. They find that real interesting, and so conversely the TV ratings, tracks do much better. We'd love to have it all ways.

The reality is you can't, and the Busch Series is having a phenomenal year. The racing on the tracks is fantastic. We've got some young talent there that's proving that they can really drive effectively and they're going to be great drivers, guys like David Stremme and others. The TV ratings, I think they're up 30 percent or something like that, so people are watching and the Busch Series is really, really doing well.

Claire: Brian what areas where you see that you really have to focus on right now?

Brian France: Well, there are two or three areas that we think are really important. One of them's diversity. You've heard me talk, Claire, before about how we've got to have the right initiatives, how the sport's got to embrace diversity like never before. And we are. We're making a lot of progress as an industry, and that's a good thing.

The competition side, we're way down the road with what we call our "car of tomorrow," and maybe an engine of tomorrow, which is designed to do two things, which is to build in more safety components to a car that otherwise doesn't exist today, or what you can't do wit the current frame and body that we have today. So that's the chassis. That's what we're working on, and also trying to narrow the envelope all the time as to how much money teams really need to spend to be competitive, and that's a very difficult challenge for us, but we think the "car of tomorrow" and the engine of tomorrow could accomplish both, if done correctly.

Claire: I have an e-mail here that says, "Please ask Brian what is the status of the 'car of the future' and why was it postponed?"

Brian France: It's not really postponed, it's just that we're trying to cycle out the teams, the current equipment that they have, in a real smart way for them. And you have various opinions on that. And by the way, we're doing more buy-in, in terms of getting feedback, from the teams and the drivers ... Mike Helton really believes this ... than we're ever done. That does take a little bit longer, because you're getting a lot of opinions, you're trying to take information and put it all in one place so we can make the best decision.

That's something we started several years ago, formally reaching out, not just thinking that we understood or having a casual conversation. Now, at the R&D Center, was there recently with several team owners, and we laid out the plans for one thing or another thing and it's great because we're getting the kind of input you would expect.

Claire: What are the plans for NASCAR to kind of start coming back toward maybe using some of the current available engine architecture that's available in the street cars, versus a lot of the technology that's been around a while, and it's proven, but I wonder if it makes the Big Three (auto companies) look at NASCAR and say, "Gee whiz, those cars are so far away from what we're selling we're having a real hard time making a connection here."

Brian France: I think you're thinking of things like fuel injectors or whatever else, but that isn't really how they view it. Their cars ... everybody knows that the inside of a race car is different than another car, and we've long ago gotten away from for safety reasons if nothing else. But the real benefit, if we can do the "car of tomorrow" correctly and we think we can, is to do a couple of things.

There's safety components ... there's no question we can make even better gains than we're doing now. We can help with the aero issue. You always hear the aero push, and aero this and aero that. We think we can make that a done a little bit smarter. Third, we'd like to narrow the window of what you can do with a race car, both the engine and the chassis, and standardize more of that, because that's where the money's spent trying to stretch this or stretch that or test this or test that. The more you can shrink what you can do between two lines the better off our team owners ultimately will be.

Claire: The TV contract, and looking ahead to '06 and the schedule, because NBC is planning to start the NFL pre-game at 7pm Eastern and the final three races at Texas, Phoenix, and Homestead could all run past that, especially if we have a red flag or a weather situation.

Brian France: Well, they obviously have signed onto a big commitment, but I will tell you they are more interested now than they were three months ago, notably because that is Sunday evenings, and there are a few races which perhaps have to be adjusted, but by and large they are looking at it as an exciting delivery of a big fan base to their evening game, and a lot of their events happen in July and August, too, but they're very enthused about NASCAR and there'll be some scheduling things we are going to work through but we'll figure that out if it comes to that.

Claire: Darlington was great at night, but are the little kids who are the future of the sport watching races at 11 o'clock at night, and would that race maybe be better a little earlier?

Brian France: That's true, I think they had 11 or 12 cautions and it was longer than anticipated and that may have us re-think, should it start half an hour earlier or something, I'm not sure. Of course, remember it finished later than we'd like, but that's a benefit to the West Coast people who were coming home from dinner or whatever the case is. But it doesn't matter, we have to finish it at a reasonable time and we'll adjust that if we have to.

Claire: A quick question about parity, because I know how strongly you feel about parity. Are you concerned about the dominance of the Roush and Hendrick cars, that they're won 9 out of 10 races so far?

Brian France: Well, I think you have to think that they have Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon, two of the best on one team in their own right. Roush has got some drivers like Carl Edwards coming into their own, already won a race, and the reigning Nextel Cup champion, and they have Mark Martin, Greg Biffle's having an unbelievable year; his talent's finally coming to the front for him. They're just good teams right now, individually good teams, and individually good drivers, regardless of who owns them.

Claire: Thanks you for taking the time with the fans today, Brian.

Brian France: Thank you, Claire.

Courtesy of XM Satellite Radio