I was just about to move on to another point when Ragnar stopped me. His enthusiasm is contagious! “There is one other measure of success for us, an important one; the number of young British drivers and also British Carrera Cup teams who are able to compete in selected Porsche SuperCup races internationally, before progressing into a full international season and then, like Nick Tandy, right through the system to compete for Porsche and win at Le Mans in the LMP1 team”.
Here’s the big question. What turned an 11-car grid in 2014 into a 30-car grid in 2015? “Not just one thing, that’s for sure. We looked at everything, starting with a huge amount of research with the drivers, teams, sponsors and our customers. We also spoke to the external motor racing world to gain a perspective of how PCC was viewed. We sought the advice and expertise of our HQ in Stuttgart. We studied all of the feedback, both positive and negative.
Our first action was to reconstruct the race calendar. We knew that we needed to shorten the series from 10 to 8 rounds, each with two races, to reduce costs, and then include at least one overseas round which was close enough to keep within teams’ budgets. We chose Spa. Then we looked at other cost-cutting opportunities and imposed a strict limit on the amount of in-season testing that teams could carry out, as well reducing the number of sets of tyres that teams could use at each round. We then looked at the levels of prize money in Carrera Cup internationally and within other series and took the decision to bring ours in line, by doubling what we had previously been offering.
The overall desire was to bring the potential team budget for a full season of racing to just under the £200,000 level. It had previously been well above that. Another major initiative was to introduce the Rookie Class to try and attract young drivers into the series. We’d already introduced the Carrera Cup Scholarship, worth £80,000 to the winner, who was by definition under 24 years of age. To try to attract even more young drivers the new Rookie Class, for 17-24 year olds, would have a £50,000 first prize, £20,000 second prize and £10,000 for third place.”
And how much did the difficulties that were so apparent in single-seater series play a part in hiking the PCC grid sizes for 2015? “To see young single-seater talent like Dino Zamparelli being attracted to Porsche Carrera Cup in 2015 and then starting to win was a real bonus. This just added to the huge success of the series, but we mustn’t be complacent. This is just the beginning.”
So it really was a number of factors that combined to turn what had been a rather sparse grid in 2014 into one of the biggest talking points within British motorsport. Having talked to the man who drives the marketing for Porsche in this country and seen the passion that he and his motorsport team bring to this series, the future looks exciting. I’m convinced that what he has demonstrated so effectively is that in designing and running a motorsport series, the role of the marketing department is a key element. Too often we see a motorsport category effectively being run by engineers, administrators and legal personnel. There’s room for that, of course, but then we have also seen the incredible hike in costs that is ruining motorsport when technology is allowed free reign and engineers run the show. There has to be a balance and I think Porsche have found that balance.
[groups_member group=”Subscription_1,Subscription_12,Subscription_24″][/groups_member]
