Emerson Radio 250 - John Graham Notes

Canadian Owner, Driver Team At Richmond LeMans winner makes second Busch Series start;
MacDonald continues season-long trek with two cars

THOMASVILLE, N.C. – For just the second time in stock car racing history – and the second time for the two – a pair of Canadians will team up for a race in one of NASCAR’s top series.

John Graham, a winner just four years ago at LeMans in his Porsche 675, will drive a Chevrolet fielded by owner Randy MacDonald in Friday night’s Funai 250 NASCAR Busch Series race at the .750-mile Richmond (Va.) International Speedway. It will be the second time Graham has run for MacDonald, the first coming a few weeks ago when he finished 31st at Indianapolis (Ind.) Raceway Park.

“This will be our first chance to really put together our best effort,” MacDonald said of the Richmond race. “IRP was a one-day show and our first time with each other, so we didn’t have that extra time to find what John wants in the car and what we can give him in a car. Richmond doesn’t offer a tremendous amount of extra time but it does give us some. And the more we run together, the better I think we can run.”

Graham will be working with MacDonald Motorsports teammate Kevin Lepage, who will drive the #71 Vector Security Chevrolet.

“We’ve been talking with several people regarding sponsorship for the other races the rest of this season and into next year, and we’ve made some headway,” MacDonald said. “The uniqueness of what we have at MacDonald Motorsports and the fact we are a smaller team helps in a lot of ways. We have a lot more options and flexibility in what we do to meet sponsors’ needs.”

But the history-making pairing of a Canadian driver and Canadian owner in a sport stereotyped as having been bred by moonshining Southerners?

“NASCAR racing became a national sport a long time ago, and it is starting to become more and more of an international sport,” MacDonald said. “Canadians in the sport isn’t surprising at all. I believe you are going to see more and more competitors, especially drivers and crew members, from all over the world.

“Racing isn’t an American thing. Racing is a lifestyle with a language all its own,” he said.

MacDonald’s creativity in sponsorship procurement, as well as his team management, might well become the baseline for the smaller teams of the future.

Like most race teams, MacDonald’s goal is for his cars to be competitive and to maximize their performance based on available resources. “Our goals go past that of a lot of teams, though. Sponsorship for our teams is not as expensive as most other teams and we want our sponsors to get the very best we can give them. If somebody invests one dollar in sponsorship with us, we try to give them two dollars in results through exposure or show cars or driver appearances or whatever we need to do to make the sponsorship program successful.”

MacDonald’s sponsorship efforts – and results – have reached near legendary proportions in NASCAR. His abilities to find niche sponsors are tops in the field of sports marketing, and he has found ways to make those sponsorships – even one-race sponsorships – work.

One of the top selling books of the past several years – the Left Behind series – sponsored MacDonald’s truck when the books first started reaching book shelves. Drill Doctor, a drill bit sharpening tool, appeared on MacDonald’s car at Bristol, Tenn., in a couple of weeks. KB Home of Los Angeles, Calif., a $5.85 billion company, sponsored his car at last week’s California Speedway event.

“Giving our sponsors more than they ask for is important to us,” MacDonald said. “It’s obviously a business thing but it’s a moral thing too. We have an obligation to do the best job we can do for our sponsors, and we take that very seriously.

“It’s been quite the journey from the short tracks back home. With the realization of what we have to operate on and who we are racing against in the Busch series, we’ve had some pretty good on-track accomplishments. Our goal is to continue building and to do everything we can to keep getting better. And I believe that we are on the right track” he added.