WRAL Sports Fan

NASCAR

Geschickter recalls humble start as first year in NASCAR's top series looms

By SceneDaily.com

Jan 16, 2009

HARRISBURG, N.C. - The road to becoming a NASCAR Sprint Cup team owner was literally scratched out in dirt for Tad Geschickter.

When Geschickter and his wife, Jodi, decided in 1994 to start a team in what was then known as the Busch Series, a barn attached to a chicken coop served as the team’s first headquarters.

Geschickter’s upstart operation with driver Jeff Fuller had only three cars, two engines and five employees in its infancy. The floors of the barn-turned-racing shop were dirt.

When the Geschickters traveled to races, they drove the team’s souvenir trailer to the track as part of a sponsorship agreement.

“We sold souvenirs, we pulled show cars, we built shocks, we painted cars,” Tad Geschickter says. “I mean, when you’re bootstrapping in the early years, I think you learn more about the business than the people that just don’t do that. We’ve really learned it pretty intimately because we’ve had to learn it by doing a lot of the jobs in it.”

Little wonder Geschickter has come to place a high premium on teamwork and resources. That’s why he decided not to make the move to NASCAR’s top series this season by himself.

First, he added a new partner and co-owner in former National Basketball Association all-star and current NASCAR TV analyst Brad Daugherty - which led Geschickter’s JTG Racing to become JTG Daugherty Racing last summer.

Next, Geschickter aligned the team with a new manufacturer in Toyota for the 2009 season, switching from Ford.

Finally, to aid the transition from the Nationwide Series where Geschickter has spent most of his time as a NASCAR owner, JTG Daugherty entered into a new technical alliance with Michael Waltrip Racing, another Toyota team.

“I think the benefits are endless for both groups, but I think for [Tad] it totally gave him a chance to get up and running immediately,” says MWR owner Michael Waltrip.

Though JTG Daugherty will be listed as a one-car Cup team, its Cup program with driver Marcos Ambrose - a former V8 Supercar champion in his native Australia - is operating completely out of the MWR complex in Cornelius, N.C., that serves as home to MWR’s Cup teams for drivers Waltrip and David Reutimann.

The alliance is unlike most in the Cup series, where competing organizations share data but not cars and physical shop space.

“Arm’s-length technical alliances don’t seem to work,” Geschickter says. “Hall of Fame [Racing] had it with [Joe] Gibbs [Racing], ... the Wood [Brothers] have had it with Roush [Fenway Racing], Haas [CNC Racing] has had it with Hendrick [Motorsports]. How do you look at what other people have learned and really put together the right structure and the right relationship?

“Our partnership with Michael Waltrip Racing is not arm’s length. We’re letting them build our cars; we’re operating together with them in every way, shape and form.”

JTG Daugherty fielded two full-time Nationwide teams in 2008 out of its Harrisburg, N.C., shop but is scaling back that effort this year to put more emphasis on Cup. MWR fielded three teams last year in its second season of competition but has cut back to two full-time entries this year, in addition to the No. 47 of Ambrose.

Geschickter, who has an office at both the MWR and JTG Daugherty shops, says that although the 140,000-square-foot MWR facility doesn’t differ much from the JTG Daugherty in terms of size and machinery, the MWR group is more advanced in other areas.

“I had eight engineers; they have 32,” he says. “I was on generation one of my Cup chassis, they’re on generation five. I think the real difference is just the depth and breadth of the human resources that they have is different.”

With the help of MWR, JTG Daugherty already has 14 new-model Sprint Cup cars in its fleet, Geschickter says.

“They’re a great group of people over there. They want to win,” says Geschickter, noting that Ambrose’s team will include personnel from both JTG Daugherty and MWR. “They’ve made huge strides and overcome some great obstacles. They’re giving me an opportunity to learn from their mistakes. They want to make sure I don’t have the same struggles starting up my Cup operation that they did. Hopefully, we can all help each other in this tough economy.”

The No. 47 Cup team with Ambrose figures to be one of only two definite full-time Cup entries that didn’t compete on a regular basis in 2008, offsetting a recent trend that has seen a number of teams merge or go away altogether due to lack of sponsorship. While now may not seem like the ideal time to start a Cup team, Geschickter felt like the time was right, partly because of the struggle to make money in the lower-paying Nationwide Series.

“My entire racing budget in the mid-’90s was less than my travel and my motor and my labor budget is now,” says Geschickter, who entered the sport after working as a sales manager at Procter & Gamble. “For me it was becoming increasingly difficult to have a business in the Nationwide Series and remain viable. So that poses two questions: Do you change with the times and play the hand you’re dealt, or do you whine and you just go out of business?

“I realized that the way the sport has changed and even the economics of it made me say, ‘Hey this is how we’ve chosen to make a living for 15 years now. How do we take a look at what the industry is doing and where it’s going and make sure that we change with the times?’ … To remain a viable business, [competing] at the Cup level is critical.”

Jodi Geschickter has looked forward to the day she and her husband would field a Cup team from the very beginning.

“Actually, I thought we’d be here sooner. I really did,” she says. “The first year [in the Busch Series] we finished 10th in the points and did really well, so I thought it was going to be easier. That was a little disappointing to not progress as quickly as we hoped, so it’s a long time coming.”

As several more established Cup teams are still searching for a primary sponsor for 2009, Ambrose has full sponsorship for all but three races, with Little Debbie, Kingsford, Clorox and Bush’s Baked Beans sharing the hood.

“Tad and Jodi are great owners,” says Ambrose, who has 11 previous Cup starts, but only two with JTG Daugherty that both came last year. “One of their strengths is to look far into the horizon and plan their direction. I think their decision to move into Cup has come at a great time [as far as car count is concerned], which has been no coincidence.

“Tad has managed to steer his race team for over a decade in the Nationwide Series when almost every other team of his vintage has gone, showing that Tad has the fortitude to stick with it when the times are tough. But most of all, Tad's marketing and value adding for sponsors is his greatest attribute.”

Waltrip concurs.

“Tad has done a great job of doing something I deeply respect, and that is caring for your sponsors, taking care of the people that pay the bills,” he says. “I think that with him signing up with MWR, it’s just a better example of Tad looking out for his sponsors and doing all he can to ensure they get the most bang for their buck possible.”

From fielding a race team out of a barn to becoming a new owner at NASCAR’s premier level, Geschickter has always tried to have a solid plan in place. He’s hoping it pays off again in the Cup series.

“I’m not afraid of it,” he says. “[I have] a healthy respect but no fear.”