WRAL Sports Fan

NASCAR

R3 Motorsports grows despite poor economy

By SceneDaily.com

Mar 17, 2009

The struggling U.S. economy has taken its toll on a lot of NASCAR teams, but R3 Motorsports is bucking the trend.

The team ran part time in the Nationwide Series last year, but it signed two new sponsors for 2009 and is running its No. 23 Chevrolet in all 35 series races this year for drivers Robert Richardson Jr. and Ken Butler III.

How did they do it? A little skill, some good luck, and, of course, proper timing.

Robert Richardson Sr., who owns an oil-field supply company called North Texas Pipe, is the co-owner of the team, which has fielded vehicles for his son in several NASCAR divisions for a few tears.

Originally, the team was called Robert Richardson Racing, but that was shortened to R3 and now signifies the three “Robs” on the team, the father and son Richardsons and Rob Fuller, who runs the team out of his China Grove, N.C., shops.

Richardson Sr. sometimes has to pinch himself when he thinks about how many bigger teams have had to lay off staff and downsize budgets, while R3 is expanding.

“It’s almost unbelievable that we’re sitting in the position that we are when you look at these megateams, and they’re having so much trouble,” Richardson Sr. said. “The only thing I could say is maybe we’re offering the sponsor a better value for their money.”

And that’s where the team has been able to compete against the bigger organizations in the sport. For starters, Richardson Sr. said, the bigger teams need more money because they have more overhead and more employees.

R3, though, can race almost as well on much less money, perhaps a little more than half of what the bigger teams need.

“We’re offering to sponsors a different alternative, to still have the exposure on track but not having to spend the kind of money they are with those big teams,” Richardson Sr. said. “I’m thinking that’s a niche we’re going to try to create and build on.”

Richardson Sr. credited Scott Shore of the Erohs Group for helping to set up meetings with potential sponsors, and then Richardson Sr. and Fuller closed the deals.

That’s how the team landed Mahindra Tractors and Aaron’s Rents as sponsors.

“The trick to it is our cars, our people, our engine program is just a little bit tiered below what these big teams are,” Richardson Sr. said. “They see that they’re going to get a good product when we show up on track, as opposed to just some start-up team that is running cars that aren’t very good, running motors that don’t have much horsepower, just throwing together a mediocre crew and saying, ‘We’re going to stick you on the car and ride around for 250 miles.’”

R3 isn’t a start-and-park team, and even though the results haven’t been spectacular this year – the best team’s finish was a 17th by Butler at Las Vegas – it is a building year.

“Top-20 finishes are my personal goal,” Richardson Jr. said. “But we’re definitely capable of getting top-15 and top-20 finishes.”

Part of Richardson Jr.’s optimism is the addition of some talented crew members who were unemployed after the end of the 2008 season. R3 normally would not have been able to afford them, but with a flood of good workers on the market, salaries were down.

“One of the things that also benefited our race team is the fact that [Dale Earnhardt Inc.] and [Chip Ganassi Racing] and some other teams put some really good people on the street looking for work,” Richardson Sr. said. “We got to pick up a couple pretty good guys who are going to help us a whole lot.”

Those crew members aren’t making the money they were, but they do have a job, giving R3 a discounted value.

Both Richardsons said they are fortunate to be in this position, knowing what’s happening in the United States these days.

“I feel very fortunate considering everything that’s going on with the economy and the way a lot of the teams are struggling right now,” Richardson Jr. said.

But they are taking advantage of the times, hoping to build their team into something that can last a long time.

“I’d like to think that we did a good sales job with what our race team is going to be able to provide a sponsor,” Richardson Sr. said. “When they came in and saw all that was going on with our team, our facility, our race cars, our people, that was a big selling point with them.”