Rob Kauffman has partnered with team owner Chip Ganassi Racing after pulling his resources from Michael Waltrip Racing, which closed its competition department after the 2015 NASCAR season. Kauffman arrived in NASCAR from the world of high finance and was picked by an elite group of Cup car owners to chair the Race Team Alliance. The RTA has been tasked with improving series-wide efficiency among race teams – such as saving money on travel and pooling together for things such as health insurance. Last year Kauffman and RTA members started a conversation with NASCAR to create some sort of charter system to give race teams more tangible value, similar to a league franchise. NASCAR and RTA are expected to announce the charter plan before the start of this season, which begins with the Feb. 21 Daytona 500. Daytona Beach News Journal Motorsports Editor Godwin Kelly conducted an exclusive one on one interview with Kauffman during the Rolex 24 At Daytona for NASCAR This Week.
A few of the Q&A’s:
Q) Define your function with Ganassi Racing?
Kauffman: Business partner. This is the early days of us figuring it out. Both of us are pragmatic people and we’ll see what makes the most sense for me and what areas I can help benefit the team the most. I’m pretty flexible.
Q) Based on your history at Waltrip Racing, you seem to be able to spark performance with a race team.
Kauffman: We achieved some level of success at MWR but not the level that we wanted to reach. Chip is pretty successful and hopefully I can add to the mix. We did combine some parts of (Waltrip Racing) with Ganassi Racing, so some of the people, technology came over and we hope that makes us stronger on the NASCAR side.
Q) Talk about what you have been talking about with NASCAR.
Kauffman: I think it is pretty well known by now, this is a charter system with NASCAR to put more structure around teams so there is more value potentially to teams over time, so that NASCAR racing looks like other sports, which are organized and structured. We’d like team ownership to (look like) that of baseball or football. We are quite optimistic we will have something in place for 2016.
Q) Where does that now stand?
Kauffman: We have worked on this for a while. The teams have been working on it with NASCAR for a number of months. I think we are quite close to getting something done for the 2016 season, and the season starts in three weeks. I think all the major issues have been ironed out at this stage and now it’s a matter of dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s and getting the paperwork sorted out. I’m quite optimistic we’ll have something for this season.
Read the full interview at the Daytona Beach News Journal (2-2-2016)