Appeal to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Board

Citizens, we must expose the entrenched interests that threaten the future of IndyCar Racing!

We know that the correct price of sponsorship for a top IndyCar team is $1.3 million. However, recent comments by Terry Angstadt make clear that the IRL hopes only to reduce costs from their present level of $7 to $8 million per season.

Not Good Enough

The cost of operating a top IndyCar team must be no more than $1.3 million. Otherwise, there will be no new sponsors for IndyCar Teams. Advertising decisions are made by MBAs who are trained to do what their spreadsheets tell them to do. The secondary market for NASCAR Cup sponsorship (think: Subway) will continue to be of greater value.

Robin Miller has floated a $3-$4 million dollar target. We believe that Robin has very good intentions, but his figure is still at least double the market value of the product. Furthermore, we believe that his valuation was likely provided by Target Chip Ganassi Racing, an organization that distributes abnormal economic returns to Chip Ganassi and Mike Hull precisely because TCGR competes in an overpriced series.

Unlike Team Penske, Target Chip Ganassi Racing is financed with a sponsorship artifice that is divisible. TCGR does not have to compete with other IndyCar teams for consumer products sponsors. Why? Because TCGR can offer something of much greater value than team sponsorship - namely, concessions from a large national retailer. Therefore, Ganassi and Hull would act irrationally if they were to accept a cost structure for IndyCar teams that is equal to the promotional market value of those teams. They do not have to lose sponsors outright in order for their individual returns to decline.

We are confident that TCGR has contacts protecting its interests inside the IRL and the IMS; it would be foolish not to because so much is at stake. Ganassi and Hull have every incentive to see that the IRL manager who dares to bring operating costs in line with market value loses his head.

To the IMS Board of Directors

Please consider the individual economic interests of your suppliers of racing teams, which vary greatly. The interests of Target Chip Ganassi Racing are not at all aligned with your own. Do your managers defer to them out of fear for their jobs? If not, then you have marvelously courageous managers.

We would not blame you for disregarding the pseudonymous writer of an obscure website. We therefore encourage you to hire a consultant to provide analysis and protect the Board of Directors - not management, not partners, not suppliers, not customers, and not family members who are not Board members.

This consultant should not be someone who knows racing, but rather someone who knows business. He or she should be a complete outsider who does not travel in racing circles. Contacts of "friends" should not be trusted because "friends" have interests that are not aligned with yours. We can provide the names of several candidates that are highly respected in industry and academia. They have no interest in auto racing. Therefore, they are free to look out for yours.

Our email address is provided.

Roggespierre

IndyCar Economics: TCGR Deep Capture

IndyCar managers, competitors and fans have been sold a myth. Conventional wisdom posits that marketers of consumer products will not sponsor individual racing teams and events. Empirical evidence informs us that this is not true. We need only look at NASCAR's (sans-culottes!) various divisions to find consumer product logos prominently displayed on racing cars.

Deep Capture: Target Chip Ganassi Racing

In fact, IndyCar has many consumer product sponsors. The problem is that most of them contribute funding to only two cars. This is due to the supply chain arbitraging activities of Target Chip Ganassi Racing. Here is a partial list.

• TomTom
• Energizer
• Vaseline
• Polaroid
• Gillette
• Memorex
• GLAD
• Nicorette
  
• amp Energy
• SoBe
• Brita Filter
• GE Reveal
• Lysol
• Maxwell House
• Dove
• Oreo
• Air Wick
• Champion
• Sherwin-Williams
• Purina
• Life Water
• Lexar
• Bosch
  

These are not Mom & Pop operations. They are large firms that spend hundreds of millions each year on sports advertising. Unfortunately, almost none of it goes to IndyCar racing. Yes, these companies have logos on the Target cars, but that is only because they have received much more valuable consideration in a completely separate market.

Protectionism through Technology

The most vocal proponent of high-tech racing among team managers is Target Chip Ganassi Racing's Mike Hull. This would not surprise an economist. Hull and TCGR's interests are completely misaligned with those of the IRL and the balance of IndyCar teams.

Target Ganassi Racing has every reason to want the cost of IndyCar racing to exceed the product's market value. We know that this is counter-intuitive but ask that you stick with us.

Given the cost of operating an IndyCar team, Ganassi possesses an insurmountable advantage when it comes to acquiring sponsorship from marketers of consumer goods. He can arrange for concessions at Target Stores, a very large and powerful national retailer. That is why new consumer products sponsors such as Vaseline and TomTom seem to show up only on the TCGR cars.

Robin Miller and others have reported that Chip Ganassi's deal with Target does not permit him to add another primary sponsor for an additional car unless that sponsor's total contribution per car is greater than Target's. This clause is extremely important. It is likely the foundation of Mike Hull's fondness for expensive technology.

Breaking Up TCGR's TomTom Club

TomTom has been Dario Franchitti's primary sponsor at three events this season. We do not know how much TomTom contributed to TCGR via Target's arbitraged supply chain, so we will assume that the value is $3 million; that's $1 million per race of primary sponsorship. Remember, however, that the amount has little if anything to do with TomTom wanting its name on a race car. The payments to Ganassi are the cost of consideration in another market - shelf space, in-store promotion kiosks, or some such for TomTom products at Target.

Now, let's assume that IRL management decides to get the cost of operating an IndyCar team aligned with the market value of the product that IndyCar teams produce. That, of course, would mean that a 17-race season would cost approximately $1.3 million per car for a championship caliber team.

Adjusting cost to value would provide TomTom - indeed, all of Ganassi's associate sponsors - a broader range of appealing options in the IndyCar Series. Primary sponsorship of an Indy car - a competitive Indy car that could win the Indy 500 and the season championship - would be a rationally justifiable marketing expense because its price would match its actual value, $1.3 million. However, Chip Ganassi is unable to add a TomTom entry to his stable; $1.3 million doesn't come close to the amount per car that he arbitrages from Target's supply chain.

It is entirely plausible that TomTom would choose to decrease its contribution to TCGR from $3 million to $1.7 million. It could then reallocate the $1.3 million to another IndyCar team that has no restrictions on the amount it can accept for primary sponsorship.

Target would not suffer a cash loss. It would continue to grant $1.7 million in non-cash consideration to TomTom. Chip Ganassi and Mike Hull would suffer greatly. The entire $1.3 million cash decrease would come from their operating budget.

Extrapolate this result across multiple TCGR associate sponsors - Energizer, Gillette, Nicorette, Lifelock, Polaroid, Vaseline, etc. - and you will discover that the financial risk accumulates rather quickly for Target Chip Ganassi Racing.

Good for IndyCar; Bad for TCGR


A redistribution of consumer products sponsors across multiple IndyCar teams would be very good for the IndyCar Series. It would be very bad for Target Chip Ganassi Racing. Mike Hull therefore has every incentive to prevent the IRL from adopting a rational cost structure for IndyCar team operations.

That is why Hull loves expensive technology. He has said on many occasions that technological solutions are the future of the IndyCar Series. He had better hope so, because a reasonably priced series won't just cost him on the race track. It could remove a considerable sum from his pocket, as well.

The Committee of Public Safety finds it both sad and hilarious that Hull has so many allies at lesser teams, including some that are dormant, who follow his lead on the tech issue. Hull is pantsing these guys on the track and at the deposit window, and they apparently can't get enough. Perhaps it makes them feel good to agree with a winner.

We hope that IRL management does not take Hull's comments at face value. Someone must recognize the economic interests and resulting behavior of IndyCar stakeholders. However, our previous Deep Capture analysis of Honda and IndyCar TEAM does not encourage optimism.

The IRL appears to be the type of organization where a cliche such as, "You can't put technology back in the bottle," passes for wisdom and ends all debate. In fact, you most certainly can put technology back in the bottle. That's why sanctioning bodies write and enforce technical rules. When all but two teams can't afford technology, you really have no choice but to put it back in the bottle. Who at the IRL is going to tell that to Mike Hull?

Target Chip Ganassi Racing has the most to lose - by far - in the event that IndyCar reinvents itself as a competitive product in the consumer marketplace. We hope that IRL management understands and moves forward with plans for new specs that cost no more than $1.3 million to operate for a 17-race season.

Roggespierre

The Deal: IndyCar, Danica, Chip & Gillette

Is a deal brewing that involves Danica Patrick, Chip Ganassi, the IndyCar Series, and the Gillette division of Procter & Gamble? It's certainly plausible. Here's what we know.

• Gillette is part of Ganassi's leveraged supply chain deal with Target
• Chip Ganassi is rumored to have a sponsor interested in Danica
• Ganassi said publicly that Danica should stay in IndyCar and that he will not take her to NASCAR
• Jerry Gappens of New Hampshire International Speedway spilled the beans on a proposed IndyCar race at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts
• Gillette has rumored interest in title sponsorship of the IndyCar Series
• Danica remains non-committal about her IndyCar/NASCAR "decision"

The Committee of Public Safety suspects that Ganassi is trying to strike a deal with IMG's George Pyne, Danica's representative, to put her in a Ganassi Indy car with primary sponsorship from Gillette.

The Problem

Danica starring in television commercials featuring Gillette products is worth much more than Danica driving an Indy car. Sponsoring her IndyCar program means Gillette must spend at least $7 million per season (probably more) of which $5.7 million is not justified by consumer demand for IndyCar racing. Pyne, a former NASCAR executive, therefore plans to take Danica and Gillette to NASCAR, where the price of sponsorship is justified by market demand.

Plausible Scenario #1

Ganassi tells the IRL's Terry Angstadt that IndyCar will lose Danica unless somebody underwrites Gillette's sponsorship of her ride at TCGR. Angstadt recalls that Gillette owns naming rights to the football stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts. He proposes the "Indy 200 at Gillette Stadium" to sweeten the pot and keep Danica in IndyCar.

But that creates another problem. Who will pay the sanction fee for the Gillette Stadium event? Angstadt turns to the best tool in his toolkit, Apex Brasil. He lines up the International Events Unit to promote the Foxboro race and to assume the financial risk that goes with it.

Then Angstadt goes for the home run. He pitches Gillette a Brazilian-manufactured alternative to some product it has to buy anyway. It could be steel, plastic, payroll software, toilet paper - it doesn't matter so long as Gillette buys a lot of it. The Apex Brasil firm kicks some of its newfound Gillette revenue to the Indy Racing League and some to Chip Ganassi Racing.

If the deal is big enough, then IndyCar becomes the Gillette IndyCar Series. Danica Patrick joins Chip Ganassi Racing in a "Gillette" sponsored Indy car. Apex Brasil pays for both deals but fulfills its mission, landing a large new account in the United States for a Brazilian firm.

IndyCar takes to the parking lot at Gillette Stadium. Jerry Gappens' head promptly explodes. Bruton Smith looks even more like Don Rickles. The IRL invites Ganassi Racing's Mike Hull to design the new Indy car. The IMS breaks ground on the Terry Angstadt Luxury Suites & Day Spa.

The transaction did not increase ticket sales at IndyCar races. Television ratings did not improve. But the IRL is convinced that those things will happen just as soon as Gillette activates its IndyCar title sponsorship. Supply chain arbitrage saved the day!

Three years later, the IRL is still looking forward to Gillette's sponsorship activation. Gillette wanted and got Danica Patrick at fair market value. It did not care that in the process it had somehow acquired IndyCar Series naming rights, a race in a parking lot, and 15-million cubic feet of Brazilian gauze.

Plausible Scenario #2

Gillette declines the Deal of the Century and takes Danica to NASCAR, where fair market value includes the cost of operating a racing team. IRL management rationalizes that George Pyne, the former NASCAR executive, had intended to deliver Danica to his former employer all along. IndyCar returns to the business of planning a new generation of cars and engines it can't afford.

Roggespierre

IndyCar: Why no Miller Lite, Energizer?

Why do we not have a Miller Lite car or an Energizer car in the IndyCar series?

Loyal citizens already know the answer. It is because the value of full-season primary sponsorship of a one-car IndyCar team is $1.3 million. If the cost of sponsoring a team for the season were equal to $1.3 million, then there would be a Miller Lite car, an Energizer car, and many others.

Regrettably, putting an entry on the track at all 17 IndyCar races costs approximately $4 million. If you want to run near the front and get whatever television exposure is available, then the budget needs to be in the $7 million range. Miller Lite and Energizer are not going to pay $7 million, or even $4 million, for a $1.3 million product. That would be stupid.

The two dominant teams in IndyCar have figured out how to sell a $1.3 million product for $7 million or more. Team Penske is leveraging its long-term relationship with a tobacco company that is forbidden from advertising anywhere else. Target Ganassi Racing arbitrages the Target Stores supply chain. Andretti Green Racing is using Ganassi's arbitrage strategy to leverage the supply chain at 7-Eleven (and, we suspect, Meijer Stores). That's why Miller Lite has a decal the size of a postage stamp on Tony Kanaan's car. Wonderful.

Many of Ganassi's associate sponsors would be good candidates for primary sponsorship with other teams. These are large firms with money to spend if the advertising opportunity is priced at its actual market value. In fact, Energizer was primary sponsor of Robby McGehee's IndyCar efforts in 1999 and 2000. This ended when Chip Ganassi moved his team to the IRL full-time. Coincidence? Maybe, but maybe not.

Examine the list of consumer products among the associate sponsors at Target Chip Ganassi Racing. Some are paying more to Target for in-store concessions than most primary IndyCar sponsors distribute to their respective teams.

Is it any wonder that Target Ganassi Managing Director Mike Hull is a big fan of high-tech racing? His firm needs high-tech racing in order to keep team costs greater than team values. Otherwise, TCGR's associate sponsors might become interested in primary sponsorship elsewhere in the series, just as Energizer did with Robby McGehee in 1999 and 2000.

Why don't we hear the Penske guys lobbying publicly for technology? Perhaps it's because the only threat to take their sponsorship is the federal government.

IndyCar needs a Miller Lite car and an Energizer car. The only way to achieve this outcome is to slash the cost of "producing" an IndyCar entry until it is equal to $1.3 million annually per car. That's the proper valuation. To those who don't like it, we're sorry. We don't like it either, and we didn't make this mess.

Team owners with legitimate sponsors can hire drivers that fans might actually want to see. This, too, would be bad for Target Ganassi Racing because it would likely have to compete with those popular drivers in order to keep its sponsors.

Much is at stake. Few understand. The examples above are not the exception - they are the rule. Perhaps some day we'll share the story of Moen, John Menard and Paul Estridge. It's good fun. We apologize for teasing.

For now, we're much more concerned with Ganassi. He and his surrogates, in our opinion, are obstructing the only economically rational path to growth for IndyCar Racing and hastening the decline of the Indianapolis 500. We don't blame them - their incentives are misaligned with the rest of the series, and that's not necessarily their fault.

We seek only to reduce the influence wielded by TCGR with regard to the new specs.

We even root for them sometimes.

Chair of the Committee of Public Safety

Roggespierre

IndyCar Arbitrage: The Emerging Strategy

Typically, if you pay $7 for something that is valued in the marketplace at $1.30, then you lose money and look pretty stupid in the process. But what if you could simultaneously sell the same product in another market for $10? Now you've made $3 risk-free and your friends think you're a genius. This is arbitrage, and it is the emerging strategy to finance the Indy Racing League and its suppliers of racing teams.


For those who are familiar with finance, we note that this is proximate, rather than pure, arbitrage. For everyone else, the technical difference does not matter.


We have established that the value generated by a championship-caliber, one-car IndyCar team over the course of a 17-race season is approximately $1.3 million. Published reports suggest that the actual price of such an effort is in the range of $7 million to $8 million. So, using these numbers we can assume that the Penske and Ganassi teams incur costs of $7 million per car each year so that they may operate racing teams that are in fact worth $1.3 million. The astute observer will argue - correctly - that Roger Penske and Chip Ganassi do not seem like men who would tolerate losing $5.7 million annually per car.


Team Penske - Abnormal Returns and Market Inefficiency

Roger Penske is not an arbitrageur with regard to his racing operation. Team Penske is financed primarily by sponsorship revenue from the Phillip Morris USA division of Altria Group, maker of Marlboro and other brands of cigarettes. Phillip Morris is subject to severe advertising restrictions enumerated in the Master Settlement Agreement between cigarette manufacturers and states attorneys general.


Unable to advertise anywhere else, Phillip Morris apparently discovered a loophole with Team Penske. The IndyCar Series therefore does not have to compete with more popular media for Phillip Morris's advertising dollars. Its relative value to Phillip Morris USA is significantly greater than it would be for any other sponsor. Penske is thus able to collect, we shall estimate here, $10 million annually per car from Phillip Morris.

Thus, the equation: Penske incurs costs of $7 million for a product that is worth $1.3 million. Then, for all intents and purposes, he sells the same product to Phillip Morris USA for $10 million. Penske can keep $3 million for himself or distribute it to loyal employees (our guess is the latter - he doesn't need the money, and there's a reason employees stay at Team Penske.)

Penske collects abnormal returns because Phillip Morris USA paid him $10 million for a product that costs him $7 million and would be worth $1.3 million to any other firm. This is not arbitrage, but rather a market inefficiency. Advertising via IndyCar racing truly is worth $10 million to Phillip Morris's Marlboro brand because its paint scheme (we don't say livery here) is iconic, and because its only other alternative is to not advertise at all.



Target Chip Ganassi Racing: Sponsorship by Arbitrage



Chip Ganassi, on the other hand, is fully engaged in arbitrage. Like Penske, he incurs costs of $7 million per car annually in order to operate a racing team that is worth $1.3 million. Chip Ganassi's sponsors do not believe that advertising via IndyCar racing is worth $7 million per car, per season. That is why the bulk of Ganassi's sponsors in fact pay for consideration that not only has nothing to do with consumer demand for IndyCar racing, but also is of far greater value than IndyCar racing in its present form could hope to be. Most of Ganassi's sponsors are, in effect, using his racing team to purchase a product in a different market altogether.


Associate sponsors such as Tom Tom, Polaroid, Vaseline and Energizer receive concessions from Target Stores in exchange for the money that finances operations at Target Chip Ganassi Racing. Retailers are prevented from receiving kick-backs in exchange for shelf space. The money that goes to Ganassi is more like a kick-aside, but we prefer to call it supply chain leverage. Having incurred costs of $7 million to produce a racing product that is worth $1.3 million, Ganassi then extracts $10 million from the supply chain leveraging activities of Target and its suppliers. Andretti Green Racing has a similar but less lucrative program in place with 7-Eleven, just as Sarah Fisher Racing does with Dollar General Stores. Newman Haas Lanigan leverages Newman's Own products to get funding from McDonald's. Except for Phillip Morris USA and Danica Patrick's backers, IndyCar teams owe virtually all of their financing to supply chain arbitrage.

Notice, however, that arbitrage is strictly a financial engineering activity. No real value has been added to the racing product. No additional fans bought tickets. Television ratings did not increase. In essence, this financial structure eliminates the need for market acceptance of the racing product. Multiply the Ganassi example many times over, and you will begin to understand why CART was unable to land a decent television package despite its armada of high-profile sponsors. That CART was exquisitely financed is undeniably true. That it was something more than a niche sport in the competitive marketplace is not. Many of CART's more lucrative "sponsorships" were generated via supply chain arbitrage. The respective companies signed on for reasons that had nothing to do with consumer demand for CART's racing product.

The Emerging Strategy

This is the path that the IRL is now following. This is the strategy. It won't make IndyCar racing competitive in the marketplace, but that is not the intent. Supply chain arbitrage is the easiest and fastest way for IRL management to generate risk-free returns that will look good to the IMS Board. Supply chain arbitrage will prevent additional heads from rolling across Gasoline Alley. Supply chain arbitrage will pacify teams that are feared by IRL management. Supply chain arbitrage will allow the participants to do the kind of racing they want to do, even if there is virtually no consumer demand for it.

Supply chain arbitrage is a scourge that could threaten the very existence of the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race.

Supply chain arbitrage robbed the Indy 500 of the Texaco Star. It felled Team Valvoline, priced Hardees' out of Indy car racing, and eliminated the Budweiser car at Indy. Supply chain arbitrage was and is faux sponsorship that enables team owners to spend beyond the value of the product they produce. The underlying assets happen to be Indy car teams and events, but they could be professional Parchesi and hot dog-eating contests, and it would not matter. It is the derivative - the leveraged supply chain - that counts.

Welcome to IndyCarbitrage**

We thought this royal scourge to be dead, but now the serpent is slithering back to the house that Carl Fisher built and Tony Hulman saved. Bonaparte's name is APEX Brasil, a behemoth that exists for one purpose: to extend Brazil's industrial supply chain in the United States. Is there any doubt that Terry Angstadt is now a double-agent, a salesman for both the IRL and APEX Brasil? His racing product has almost no value, but the teams will have his head if he doesn't give them high-tech, high-cost racing. He must construct an artifice, and the best tool in his toolkit is supply chain arbitrage, courtesy of Apex Brasil!

And, by God, it just might work. If you want an IndyCar Series that honors consumer demand, one that creates real value, then you had better hope for a severe devaluation of the dollar (likely, in time) or a flurry of hostile takeovers.

A devaluation would slay the behemoth APEX Brasil. Takeovers would handle the rest. Why? Because supply chain arbitrage has an Achilles' heel. It is laden with hidden costs! The marketing kids must be in the hospitality tent, drunk and hitting on pole-sitters, when they sign off on these stink bombs! Following hostile takeovers, the pros take charge, evaluate the contracts, and the entire artifice dissolves. Who knew that there is no such thing as a racing team that is paid for by nobody?



If allowed to reach its logical conclusion, supply chain arbitrage will turn the Indy 500 into a bad imitation of the US Grand Prix: half-filled grandstands, a minuscule television audience, drivers known to no one. But the IRL will be profitable. The teams will be sufficiently financed to do the kind of racing they like, consumers be damned.

Louis lost his head, that he be replaced by Bonaparte.

And, finally, the guillotine blade shall come down, bringing a once undeniably awesome institution to its merciful end.

Show them my head - it's worth it!

Roggespierre - (closing by Georges-Jacques Danton)

**Apologies to Dr. Jack Badofsky

IndyCar News: Target Ganassi Racing Without a Fire Suit?

In the latest example of why a corporatist approach to motorsports is akin to racing without a fire suit, billionaire hedge fund manager William Ackman apparently will not leave well enough alone at Target Corp. Rebuffed in his previous attempt to remove four board members and replace them with independent directors, Ackman has decided to retain his Target shares in what analysts believe could be the beginning of another hostile takeover bid. What would an Ackman-led Target Corp mean for Chip Ganassi Racing?

Let's just say that Mike Hull might want to reconsider his position in favor of high-tech, high-cost racing.

Target Ganassi Racing generates sponsorship revenues that far exceed the value of the racing product that it supplies. That alone is likely of little concern to Ackman.

However, the mechanism that is used to lever Ganassi's returns would be a good candidate for reconsideration under an Ackman regime. Financial buyers, particularly those who grew up in Westchester County, New York, are not typically big fans of motorsports. More important, they are not even little fans of granting concessions to suppliers just because those suppliers assist in funding a racing team.

Let's use distributors of GPS systems as an example. Garmin is the clear market leader, a still-growing, profitable firm that commands premium prices for its products. Tom Tom had cut into Garmin's market share lead before reporting disappointing quarterly earnings in Q2. Tom Tom is a major associate sponsor of Target Ganassi Racing - that's why Dario Franchitti occasionally drives that pea-green Tom Tom car.

An investor such as Bill Ackman, or at least one of his surrogates, is likely to ask the question: "Why the hell are we stocking so much Tom Tom? Garmin is easier to sell and commands premium prices."

A legacy marketing rep from the previous regime replies: "Tom Tom is a partner in our race team."

Ackman Surrogate: "Our what?"

And that, as they say, is that. This exercise is repeated for all suppliers that are involved in Target Chip Ganassi Racing. The racing program is determined to have come at much greater cost than previously believed due to the carrying cost of unsold merchandise and the opportunity cost of not stocking brands that are easier to sell and at better prices.

Cue the press release. "We appreciate all of the hard work that Target Chip Ganassi Racing has done over the years, but we have determined that alternative marketing and promotion incentives will be more effective...."

Like all IndyCar teams, Target Chip Ganassi Racing is effectively racing without a fire suit. Its revenues are highly concentrated in payments it receives from its leveraged supply chain agreement with Target. There is almost no probability that Ganassi will be able to replace those revenues, again because the cost of the product he supplies is greater than the price at which it is sold. His team manufactures approximately nothing of value. Appearance money won't begin to cover the cost of participation. Without Target the future does not look good.

Of course, it's entirely possible that Ackman will strike out again. If so, then TCGR is likely preserved for some time to come. But know this: there will be another Ackman, and another after him. One of them will pull off the deal, and Ganassi will be out of luck and other people's money.

The same could be said of Roger Penske, who has to be hoping that the FDA doesn't regulate his sponsor out of existence once it commences oversight of the tobacco industry. It is distressing enough that The Captain's own company had to pony-up to allow Will Power to get five more starts in 2009.

We therefore reiterate: the low cost versus high-tech debate is a moot point. Low cost - and we mean really, really low cost - is the only viable strategic option. Choose it now, IRL management, and you might just be surprised to discover who comes around to agreeing with you.