(L-R) Robin Pemberton, NASCAR Vice President, CompetitionGene Stefanyshyn, NASCAR Vice President, Innovation and Racing DevelopmentSteve O’Donnell, NASCAR Senior Vice President, Racing Operations speak to the media at NASCAR Research & Development Center on July 15, 2013
Photo – Street Lecka/Getty Images

Fans are you ready for the future of NASCAR? NASCAR executives are preparing to take fans and competition to the next level.

NASCAR is recognized as a sports leader in bringing fans closer to the experience both at the track and to those watching from home. And today NASCAR reinforced their goal of constantly improving their core product by announcing their launch of a wide-ranging initiative to transform its Competition and in turn, enhance the fan experience.

This initiative began in 2012 with direction from NASCAR CEO, Brian France, as a careful evaluation of Competition, with a world-class consulting firm, who has worked with about every major sport in America and globally, McKinsey & Company. Also brought on for this project is automotive executive Brent Dewar.

“…this really started back in May or June of last year with Brian asking NASCAR to really lead in the technology and innovation space,” said Steve O’Donnell. “So we started out, a group of us, going out to a number of the leaders in the technology space from a company standpoint.  We met with a lot of the leading universities in the U.S., as well, and gathered some data as to what are some of the new emerging technologies, what could we be at NASCAR’s research and development center, and from there really applied that to what we have in place today and how we needed to change or evolve to become worldwide leaders in the innovation space. That led us obviously to the guy on my right with the hiring of Gene Stefanyshyn and initiatives that we’re looking at today.”

A steering committed led by Mike Helton, Steve O’Donnell, Gene Stefanyshyn, Robin Pemberton and Steve Phelps created and guided four internal ‘working teams’ to create a blueprint accomplishing their goal of transforming Competition in four key areas of Rules, Governance, Deterrence/Penalties and Officiating/Inspection.

There have been two primary goals from the outset – continue to modernize Competition by injecting science and technology into all of their operations – as Brian France has repeatedly declared – and position NASCAR as a leader in the sports and entertainment marketplace of the future Continue reading →