PART I
Sun, 14 Apr 2002
ADAM SAAL: Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for your patience as we get a
little bit of a late start here. It will be a very exciting announcement.
Joining me for this announcement here on the podium today to my
immediate left is John Lopes, the vice president of racing operations
for CART; Chris Pook, the president and CEO of CART, no stranger to Long
Beach; Mr. Brian Griffin, manager of motorsports for MG Rover; and John
Judd, the managing director of Engine Developments, Ltd.
We're happy to announce today, and of course all four of our guests will
be available for questions, that officials from MG Rover and
Championship Auto Racing Teams have announced a new engine supplier
relationship for the CART FedEx Championship Series for 2003 and beyond.
This will bring the MG brand and its winning motor racing heritage to
American open-wheel Champ Car racing for the first time in the marque's
rich history. It's an outstanding announcement. This is the first! of
several manufacturer announcements that we will announce over the course
of the next couple of months.
But to start with a brand rich in heritage such as MG is outstanding. To
make some opening comments and talk about the details of the
relationship, how we'll interface with CART as well as how we'll
interface with Judd, I'd like to ask Mr. Brian Griffin to speak.
Welcome, and give us your thoughts on what is a very exciting day for us
here at CART and hopefully for MG.
BRIAN GRIFFIN: Yes. This is the first time I've been involved in racing
in North America, but we as a company have an enormous heritage over
here, going back some years. We're delighted to become associated with
CART. We see CART as a global sport, and it helps us to enhance our
brand image worldwide.
ADAM SAAL: Brian hasn't done a lot of press conferences in his day. He's
usually the man behind the scenes. Give us a bit of a glimpse of what it
will be behind the scenes in! your partnership.
BRIAN GRIFFIN: Our relationship with John J udd is going to be primarily
on a technical basis, but we are very, very obviously keen to see the
relationship develop and hopefully succeed 2003 onwards.
ADAM SAAL: Having said that, we are going to move to Chris Pook. Brian
hasn't done a lot of press conferences, neither has Chris, yet today.
Chris, it has to be a great source of pride, great sense of
accomplishment that still fairly early in your tenure as CART president,
CEO, we've been able to establish a relationship with not one but two
great manufacturers. Talk a little bit about how you feel today.
CHRIS POOK: This is obviously a huge announcement for the company, for
both companies, and indeed for me personally. I come from England, so I
know about MG and the heritage of MG. So there's a lot of emotion in
this announcement to bring MG to this series.
I think the real issue here is that MG Rover are rapidly growing as a
global marketing company. The fact that we have been able to find an
ali! gnment together in the global markets, I think, speaks to the
strategy of CART in the sense that we have been talking for the last
four months about our critical markets, Pacific Rim markets, European
Economic Community and the North American Free Trade Association
markets. The fact that we also have a global television distribution
system to help support what we do in motor car racing I think fits well
in with what MG Rover is seeking to do.
But I think it has to be said that also MG has a huge heritage in this
country, tremendous heritage. This particular race here in Long Beach is
heavily supported by the MG Car Club of this region, which is one of the
largest MG car clubs in the United States. Their membership have been
involved in this race since we started in 1975.
So this kind of ties a total ribbon around the whole package as far as
I'm concerned and as far as the company's concerned. We're delighted.
I think the fact that with John Judd and ! his company, John already
this year, his engines have won the 24 Hours at Daytona, I think you're
going to see a very interesting, very interesting combination here with
the technical research that MG Rover can provide to John and John's
experience already.
I think a message is being sent here.
ADAM SAAL: Chris, our friends in the media have tried to track all of
your trips around the world as you visited with John Lopes, all the
various manufacturers and so forth. Talk about how the MG relationship
came through on a fairly fast track, essentially how the partnership
we've been talking with John Judd, John Lopes can talk more about that,
but MG was definitely a pleasant development rather late.
CHRIS POOK: I mean, John, all credit to him, and his team, and MG
Rover's public relations team for coming together. I mean, John and I
were in Europe, John Lopes and I were in Europe, seems like an eternity
ago, but it was three weeks ago or something. We were on a small
sight-seeing tour. We thought we were going to have a quie! t Thursday
morning. Then we had a breakfast meeting. Next thing we were from
Houston station to Rugby, at Rugby our very overpaid chauffeur, Mr.
Judd, picked us up at the airport (laughter), and we went straight into
MG Rover.
We had a very productive meeting. We were told we had one hour for our
productive meeting. After that meeting, there was a lot of work behind
the scenes between MG Rover's public relations agency, who probably
should be introduced actually for the work they've done.
ADAM SAAL: Brian, if you could take us through the introductions of MG
representatives on your team.
BRIAN GRIFFIN: Over there is Elena and Allison. They've been working for
us for 18 months, helping us. Although it's a very small company in
Brighton, they're almost global for the amount of traveling they do.
ADAM SAAL: I'll be happy to introduce any of the members of the media to
Allison or Elena later on talking about how we can service your needs
going fu! rther as we get the new relationship going.
John Judd, you've been successful this year. Max Papis, one of our
regulars, was one of the drivers on your winning entry. It was a Dallara
powered by a Judd V-10 that won the 24 Hours at Daytona.
Great way to start the season. You're no stranger to open-wheel
competition by any means with your power plants, have even won races in
the CART Championship Series with Judd power. Talk about your enthusiasm
heading into what's going to be another chapter in an already
established career for Judd.
JOHN JUDD: We do look forward to this with great anticipation. We think
it won't be easy. It's very competitive. Personally I'm quite excited to
get back into a competitive and tentatively challenging engine
environment. I just want to build engines and go racing. For us it's a
great opportunity.
I'm pretty excited about the MG relationship. I think anybody in my
position would be very happy and proud to be associated with MG. It is a
technical partnership and a sporting one, both ! of those things. I
think there's potentially great benefits for both parties.
ADAM SAAL: What is the next step? What has already taken place? It's
going to be a co-engineering relationship as you build the next
generation. How entirely new will this engine be that's designated for
Champ Car competition?
JOHN JUDD:> It's probably got one percent carryover from something we
have already. It's a new engine. That's basically it. We use the bore
centers from an existing V8. That's it. We can use some of the common
fixed rings. New heads, manifolds, block casting, pumps, internal parts.
It's all new.
That wasn't necessarily the intention in the first place. That's how
it's turned out (laughter).
ADAM SAAL: It will be a new motor for what our new regulations for the
FedEx Championship Series series next year. We are going to a 3.5-liter
formula, non-turbocharged engines. John Lopes was at the very beginning
of those discussions with several of our o! wners on a committee to
establish these rules. John, here we have the first official
announcement of a manufacturer, two outstanding manufacturers,
supporting these rules. Talk a little bit about the Judd-MG relationship
in particular and how you feel the overall new regulations are being
embraced by the automotive industry.
JOHN LOPES: At first, when we made the rather sudden decision to switch
to the 3.5-liter formula back in the Houston franchise owners meeting,
at the time we were walking into unchartered waters with respect to
manufacturer participation.
John Judd was one of the first individuals to pick up the phone and say,
"I see this as an opportunity. I want to participate with the CART FedEx
Championship Series series." At that time we immediately began seeking
out partners for John.
This is just the first example of what I believe is going to bear fruit
in the future. I think it's important to point out that (CART Vice
President of Marketing) Steve Fusek and his marketing group have been
hard at work speakin! g to manufacturers around the world. We believe
this is the first marriage that you're seeing between a constructor such
as John Judd and a blue-chip manufacturer such as MG, with CART, and
also embracing our global reach.
We're excited. But it is certainly the fruit of an awful lot of
negotiation and traveling. And I want to publicly thank John for his
commitment to the series and his diligent efforts in bringing MG to the table.
ADAM SAAL: We'll open it up for questions at this point.
Q: Can you tell me about how many cars you think you will be able to supply?
JOHN JUDD: I say we need about four to make it viable, and probably
eight would be really good. Down a stretch, we could do 10.
Q: John, could you give us a timetable on testing, when you expect the engines?
JOHN JUDD: First test, mid-June, that's on schedule. I'd say engine
delivery to the teams, that really needs to be October-November, to
coincide with the new cars.!
Q: (Inaudible)?
CHRIS POOK: I know you were going to pin me down on that one. I suspect
you'll see something merge here probably mid-June, maybe a little
earlier. Right now our focus today and for the next few weeks is to make
sure we understand how we can make our MG Rover relationship work for
them in the various markets. They need to have it work also through our
television packaging, and of course bring them into our pace car program.
So while they don't sell cars in this country at the moment, we want to
be sure that the MG product is out there in front of the North American
eyes, as well as the North American television cameras.
Q: (Inaudible)?
BRIAN GRIFFIN: Well, I'm only associated with MG Motorsports. I can't
really speak on behalf of the company as a whole. We were here for 31
years I think previously, so we have a long association. I think you'll
just have to wait and see what our board decides to do later this year.
Q: Is this marriage between Judd and MG only for CART?
BRIA! N GRIFFIN: It is to start with, yes, that's correct.
Q: John, Mr. Judd says he can do possibly up to 10 cars if he had to.
Eight would be a good number. If we wind up with a field of 20 to 24,
how many engine manufacturers are you going to have here in order to be
truly a competitive series?
JOHN LOPES: I think with respect to the direction CART is going as a
global marketing company, reaching out, being a manufacturer-driven
series, delivering value to the manufacturers, the answer is really unlimited.
Our intent is to have as much manufacturer involvement in our sport and
to deliver as much value as we possibly can. So we are not going to
close the door to anyone who wants to participate and use cars as a
marketing platform worldwide.
There is really no set minimum. Our intent is to bring as many players
to the table. Each one of them has unique marketing and branding issues
on their own, as does MG. Our intent is to create a mechanism to d!
eliver each of them a certain amount of value.
To go back to y our original question on supply, the supply rules, each
constructor is required to be able to support half the field. In 2003,
we had to set a number to give the constructors something to plan upon.
So that number, the field, the minimum field number next year would be
20. John had to commit with us with a supply agreement they would be
able to support a minimum of 10 cars, with no set maximum, that's up to
his business to do.
Of course, as certain competitive situations play out on the track,
certain manufacturers will garner a greater percentage of the field.
At this point I think it's safe to say that our intent is not to
restrict participation to any company.
CHRIS POOK: We're not going to restrict participation to any company.
But the first thing to do here is get our arms around the Judd-MG Rover
relationship, make sure that's solidly entrenched with the right teams
that they want to go with.
We'll open those doors, we'll help drive that! . Steve and his group
will be hard at work making that work. I think you know about our
philosophy of approach towards these relationships. We are going to
build this relationship and build it solid, make sure that MG Rover are
getting value out of their relationship with this series.
Q: (Inaudible)?
BRIAN GRIFFIN: Yes is the answer to the question. Le Mans was a
spectacular success for us, even though we only lasted about 12 hours.
The cars performed extremely well. They were competitive. They weren't
durable because they were so new.
We've also last year, the end of last year, embarked on the British
Touring Car Championship. We're increasing that this year to four cars
instead of two cars. We also have embarked on the Junior World Rally
Championship. We are in true MG tradition competing in lots of different
levels. Our association with CART is even more global than what we've
achieved so far.
Q: (Inaudible)?
JOHN LOPES: Yes. We ar! e working--specifically our marketing group is
working with Cosworth t o find them a partner, the same way John made a
commitment. We work closely with John in developing the MG relationship,
our Cosworth has made a commitment to CART as well. We are working
diligently with CART to help to badge that engine.
Q: (Inaudible) Toyota?
JOHN LOPES: Three for sure, and hopefully more. Toyota has indicated
that their benchmark for next year is they would like to construct for
10 teams. Whether it plays out that way or not, the market will dictate
what happens.
But certainly, a little insight for you, we had a briefing of the engine
manufacturers recently this weekend to go over the preliminary final
rules and supply rules just so they all understood and they were all on
the same page.
We discussed issues such as what the rev limit will be set at, making
sure they understood that the cost cap was a hard cap, not a soft cap,
and they played within those rules. It was a great dialogue.
Of the committed constructors ! who were in the room, there were five.
Q: John, now that you have fairly committed manufacturers for engine
supply, what kind of commitment have you gotten (inaudible)?
JOHN LOPES: It would be disingenuous to avoid the issue that the chassis
manufacturer situation is a bit in flux right now. Certainly with
Reynard's recent challenges, it's created a bit of uncertainty with
respect to Reynard moving forward, although we have been working very
closely with them.
It's been something that we have focused on with the receiver in the
U.K. to help Reynard continue. It appears right now that our teams are
taken care of for the team being with respect to all the bids they need
to go.
Lola of course is committed. We have also received strong indications of
a desire to construct in our series from the other well-known
manufacturers in open-wheel racing. How that will play out still remains
to be seen. It's really on the front burner right now for us. So I would
say as we move forward in the next three to four week s, the chassis
manufacturer situation will take shape. I think it's also safe to say
that we are not interested at this time in being a single-supplier
series. Our intent that is we want as much participation again as
possible while still creating a viable business model for the chassis
manufacturers so they can make money in the series.
Q: (Inaudible)?
JOHN JUDD: I don't understand the question.
Q: (Inaudible)?
JOHN JUDD: Good names, not the favorite. I would like to be the
favorite, but I think maybe not.
CHRIS POOK: What's going to happen, the significance here, this is the
first European manufacturer since Mercedes to come into this series.
John has committed to MG Rover. That's his partner.
The other major manufacturers will have to make a decision what they're
going to do. Some might decide to build their own engines, some might
decide to partner up. He is committed to MG Rover. They're first out of
the blocks and they're! running. The others need to make a decision what
they're going to do.
Q: What is the nature of your technical arrangement with John?
BRIAN GRIFFIN: We're based in South Birmingham, John is in Rugby down
the road, which is not far.
Our relationship is going to be a technical one. We haven't as yet tried
to specify the boundaries of that. That is a very open question as we
sit here.
This all happened very quickly. We've had a small number of meetings so
far. Next few weeks we'll work out the details.
CHRIS POOK: It's important to point out that MG Rover has a huge
tradition of engineering. Those of you who have known the brand in this
country for years, maybe some of you are a bit too young, and some are
not (laughter), but they have a huge engineering tradition here. Don't
take that level of the relationship lightly.
They've also made great strides in their competition, as you heard, in
the European arena. This is a company th! at understands where it's going.
JOHN LOPES: However, at this point we're not prepared to announce the
return of the MG Liquid Suspension Special.
Q: (Inaudible)?
BRIAN GRIFFIN: No. Am I the only person that remembers the liquid
suspension (laughter)?
Q: Last year you had your association with Lola (inaudible)?
BRIAN GRIFFIN: Like any relationship, you have your highs and lows. We
currently have a good working relationship with Lola. We're continuing
this year with Lola at Le Mans. We are not continuing with Lola with the
British Touring Car this year. That's all I have to say at the moment.
We haven't made any plans for next year yet in terms of either of those
relationships. But we do expect to continue in most forms of motorsport.
We also have a desire to become more self-contained within our own
outfit, not necessarily all our motorsporting association with other companies.
Q: John, you referred earlier to discussions with manufacturers (inaudible)?
JOHN LOPES: I mean, that is! something we're working on. We also do not
want the motor to stray too far for our teams. We want them to be able
to develop the motor, number one, to be able to race it effectively on
the road and street circuits, the various venues we race on; but also,
number two, we want them to be able to take that motor to our now
hometown track in Indy.
As a follow up, the difference in rpm with respect to the revs, you will
not see us go to 12,000. With 10-3 (10,300 rpm) being run on the oval
circuits in the U.S., I think you will probably see our revs somewhere
between the 11,000 and 11.2 (11,200) range for next year. Chances are it
will be around 11.2. There seems to be a building consensus among the
manufacturers.
We're working with each manufacturer as our partner to help determine
that. Lee Dykstra, who heads up our technical staff, has been working
with them on that.
If I were to predict right now, I'd think you will see us at around 11,200.
AD! AM SAAL: CART headquarters will be relocated to Indianapolis May
17th. We'll be open for business May 20th.
Q: (Inaudible)?
JOHN JUDD: That depends on how many cars we have finally. Up to about
three or four cars, we'll do it all in England. We run the sports car
business quite well from the U.K. at the moment. The freight is really
quite easy. Not too bad. We can turn that around pretty efficiently.
If we get to five or six cars, we'll certainly consider reopening
Brian's place in Torrance. It is a pretty ready facility. We could open
that quite easily.
Q: (Inaudible)?
JOHN LOPES: I think without getting into too much detail about the
current situation with the manufacturers, we have stated that we would
like to have a certain amount of commonality obviously with the engines
and both with the chassis. We're still exploring to what degree that
will or can be.
Our technical staff has advocated that we remain to a certain degree
true to the Champ car heritage with respect to our aerodynamic package!
s. We're still weighing the balance. I think that more than anything
else will determine what direction we ultimately go upon our final
chassis package. We have a lot of purists in the garage who would like
us to maintain true to some of our aero packages. We're working through that.
CHRIS POOK: I think we're just going to see what happens, plays out
here, in the next couple days. Stand back and see. We're trying to
extend some olive branches and reach out. Maybe those branches are going
to get cut off.
Q: How does this affect your staffing for your company there?
JOHN JUDD: Well, obviously we will need more staffing. I think it's
probably not too hard to do. We're pretty well-structured
management-wise. I think we have a reasonably organized place. The
sports car business, you know, has most of the right people in the right
jobs. Just mainly be a question of taking on engine builders, race engineers.
The design department is just doing the n! ew engine right now because
the sports car thing is pretty mature. It' s been around four years now.
We don't need to develop it too much. The development is pretty limited
there. We're basically glad to have the extra work.
Q: (Inaudible) still with all the other programs you're doing?
JOHN JUDD: The main other program is the sports car stuff. That will
continue. It's not that big a market for us. We have quite a large
proportion of the cars in private entrants. There aren't really that
many cars.
ADAM SAAL: John, Brian, Chris and John, thank you so much. The press
releases have been distributed. If you need any further assistance, both
I can help you, Elena or Allison. Thank you MG and Judd (and welcome) to
the CART FedEx Championship Series.
--
Eric
'68MGB MkII
Adelaide, South Australia
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