What began as something of a test program in 2003 has grown into a strong NASCAR Busch Series racing effort for 2004. John McGill and Carl Natale, owners of DCT Motorsports, have committed to running at least 29 NASCAR Busch Series races this season, beginning with the 300-miler at Daytona. Former [Busch Series] national champion driver Steve Grissom will be behind the wheel. The team will be led by crew chief Ricky Pearson. This is the first NASCAR team with owners from the Cleveland, Ohio, area. The teams shops are headquartered in Spartanburg, SC. We started DCT Motorsports planning on building a top race team. This is the next step, said McGill. We have been able to bring some sponsorship in for part of the season, and Carl and I are going to foot the bill for the remaining races. Our goal is still to bring sponsorship into this race team but we have every intention of running at least 29 races, regardless of what happens, he added. McGill and Natale have put together a unique business plan for the team which does allow for full-season sponsorship but also allows for a series of race market-specific primary sponsorships to be a part of the program.
We can put together the most cost-effective sponsorship program, McGill said. We can develop tremendous business-to-business opportunities, mainly because of the great business relationships we already have in place. We can give a sponsor the bang for the buck it needs in todays business climate but do it in a way that fits their budgets. We want to develop a strong program that will help our racing efforts and, at the same time, meet the marketing and promotional needs of other companies, McGill added. By meeting their goals and making their programs work, our racing program will be able to continue to grow and build.
McGill and Natale have built a strong program at DCT Motorsports already, growing from a quickly-built Busch Series team that ran well in five races in 2003 to one running at least 29 events this season. We put the team together four weeks before the July race (in 2003) at Daytona, McGill said. We ran two short tracks (Bristol and Richmond) and three superspeedways (Daytona, Lowes and Homestead), and we had some pretty great moments.
From the start, Grissom, Pearson and the DCT Motorsports team showed it was capable of great moments. In its first race, just four weeks after the team originated, Grissom started dead-last at Daytona, but moved through the field to a 29th-place finish. DCT Motorsports followed that up with strong runs in every event, bad luck affecting finishes but not attitudes as team leaders saw tremendous progress and potential. When you look at what weve built, you have to be amazed, McGill said. Two guys from Cleveland hooking up with a Busch Series champion and one of the top mechanical and organizational minds in stock car racing, and putting together a 29-race schedule is pretty amazing. It shows an ability to sustain, to be there, he added. We have the potential to run at the front. We just need some additional sponsorship to get there. What we really want to do is run competitively. Our goal on a week-to-week and long-term basis is to be competitive. We want to give sponsors a major bang for the buck, and this sort of schedule hitting all of the major races and all of the major markets enables us to do that. We want to give sponsors what they want and need. We want to do a good job for them on the race track but we want to do a good job for them off of it too, he added. Were structuring things so that a sponsor gets a complete package – sponsor appearances, show cars, a good publicity program, hospitality . . . all of the things they need to make their program successful. Weve been looking at a business-to-business relationship, generating value-added through our development and earthwork contracting businesses, McGill said. The response so far has been very good. It all boils down to making the sponsorship work for them. If their program is successful, then so is ours.(Williams Company PR), the team ran the #36 in 2003.(1-26-2004)
