Ginn enters NASCAR only way he knows

Bobby Ginn

It's venture not without risk -- NASCAR history is littered with the wreckage of teams that held similar aspirations -- but to Ginn, risk is part of the job. "I've been taking risks all my life," said the 57-year-old, who started renovating houses with his father in Hampton, and soon was building 700 homes a year. He moved steadily on to bigger projects until 1976, where he turned his focus to Hilton Head, and his career nearly came to an end.

Ginn paid a reported $80 million for a collection of Hilton Head properties that included Sea Pines, home to the Harbour Town golf course that hosts a PGA Tour event each spring. It was his first move into the major leagues of development, and it was a disaster. Lots were sold with no water or sewer connections, cash-flow problems mounted, and debt piled up. "Honk if Bobby owes you" bumper stickers sprouted up around the island.

Ginn was prepared to file bankruptcy when a sympathetic judge, hoping to protect the upcoming golf and tennis tournaments, convinced him to sell out to other investors. Princeton development professor Michael Danielson chronicled the saga in a 1995 book on Hilton Head, and he pulled no punches. "Ginn left a trail of broken promises, angry property owners, and dashed hopes," he wrote, adding that the developer was "long on dreams and short on action."

There's been plenty of action at the Ginn Racing shop in Mooresville, N.C., with the jet aircraft and the seven-post rig standing as proof. Frye, who had never heard of Ginn before the sponsorship of Elliott's car last season, knows his new boss faced some trying professional times earlier in his career. But he said Ginn has provided everything he promised, and more.

"He's a risk-taker. His industry is like that, and this sport is a high-risk sport with large rewards if you can get over the humps. He's certainly helping us get over the humps. He's been phenomenal," said Frye, who has a minority ownership stake in the team.

"It's like, you have a contract, here's the deal, and you're supposed to do A, B, and C. Well, he's done E, F, G, H, I, and J. To say that he had something to do with the race [Sunday] night, in morale and enthusiasm and the ability do what we've done, yes. That certainly had something to do with our performance. But overall, what he's brought to the company is going to show more and more as we go."

Ginn resurfaced in the 1990s, when he moved his headquarters to the North Florida enclave of Palm Coast. With six employees, he successfully restructured a company that today owns a myriad of resort and golf developments stretching from Vermont to the U.S. Virgin Islands. In 2004, his company sold $174 million worth of real estate in four hours. The next year, he sold $320 million worth of land on a single Saturday to set a one-day sales record for the state of Florida.

Ginn spun off a division of his company to manage sports properties, which now includes two Champions Tour and two LPGA Tour events in addition to his NASCAR team. Driver Joe Nemechek had never heard of his new team owner until he met him at Daytona last season. Then he realized that Ginn owned all the resort developments he saw driving from Daytona Beach to Lakeland to visit family each year.

"You see all these new things going up. And then we flew down there to have a press conference, and all this new stuff going up was Bobby Ginn's," said Nemechek, who finished ninth in the Daytona 500. "You're like, holy moly. He has a huge organization he's put together to run Ginn Sports and Ginn Resorts, and this is another deal. But he's managing it just like he does his other properties."

Now Ginn Racing is on a five-year plan, where the old MB2 operation was on a "five-month plan, or a five-week plan," Frye said. There's talk of eventual expansion to four Nextel Cup cars. The team hasn't won in almost three years, since Nemechek's victory at Kansas Speedway in 2004. But it's also never had a driver like Mark Martin, or an owner who thinks quite as big as Bobby Ginn.

"I would not be very good as an accountant," Ginn admits. "But I like to go out and see things get built and organizations get built, and that's what this is."