Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: You're listening to the Motorsport Prospects Podcast.
Hey, it's Mark from Motorsport Prospects and welcome to the Motorsport Prospects podcast. This is where we dive into the world of motorsport with the people who live and breathe it. From driver coaches and sponsorship experts, to team owners, pro drivers and more. You'll hear real stories, practical advice and insights you can actually use, whether you're just starting out or already chasing success on the track.
Now, I've been asked by many people why I've started Motorsport Prospects. And the reason is very simple. I founded Motorsport Prospects and the Verified by Motorsport Prospects designation after hearing the same question time and again from drivers, aspiring drivers, their families and advisors. And their Their question was always the same and it was a very simple one and yet very complex. Who can I trust?
Many of these people cannot find reliable guidance on who they can trust. So that's a simple reason why I started Motorsport Prospects and the professionals I feature on this podcast represent this kind of trust that Motorsport Prospects is all about.
So I just want to point out that if you work with drivers or racing teams, building trust is one of the most important things you can do. Over the years, I found that being clear about what you offer, following through on your proposals, and genuinely caring about your clients goals makes all the difference. So I took that and I basically built out a free white paper called the Three Essentials for Motorsport Business Owners. And it shares simple ways for you to strengthen relationships, attract the right clients and grow your motorsport business. Naturally, if you're interested, you can find it in the Show Notes or@motorsport prospects.com and it's completely free.
So let's get started.
My guest today is Dan Demonte. Dan is the Chief Revenue Officer and part owner of the Skip Barber Racing School in conjunction with his brother Anthony Demonte, who serves as the CEO. They have owned the school for eight years. Dan has overseen many of the school's partnership acquisitions and is responsible for their increased outreach and partnership with various groups in the karting community.
These partnerships provide scholarship programs to rising talents and are similar to the program that drivers such as Alexander Rossi used to get their start in car racing with Skip Barber. Welcome to the Most Part Prospects Podcast. Dan, thanks so much for being on the show.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: Thank you very much for having us. We appreciate that.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: Now, the podcast is pretty straightforward. It's one question and it's. It's a simple question, but it's has many facets.
Basically based on your your experience and expertise as a motorsport professional, what would be the one most important piece of advice you could Offer a current or aspiring race driver.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: That's a, that's a. There's a very difficult one way road to potentially answer it. So I will answer it. It'll be more than, more than one concept.
The good news, the good news is we very much are the barometer of driving and racing school.
Introduction to the industry and learning since 1975. This is actually our 50th anniversary and with that we have 400,000 alumni and so we're noted to be like the guys in the space.
And it's the entire spectrum. You mentioned Alexander Rossi or it could have been Sergio Perez or Brian or Colton Herder or Joseph Newgarden or Ross Chastain or Jimmy Johnson or today it's thousands and thousands of drivers. So it could be somebody on that level, but it could be somebody who you never heard of, who wanted to act like one of those people for one or three or five days or at the end of the day became a track day person or ran an IMSA or SRO or NASA or Lemons.
And so it's very broadly accepted that we are the experts in the space and we, we carefully carry that mantle.
Very important.
You. The concept of our ability, our reputation is critical to what we do because at the end of the day that's, we have that and we have to maintain our credibility and the authenticity of what we do in various levels of racing. So I'm fortunate that we've got an amazing background as the company, as an institution to be able to do that. And we have owned this brand for eight years. We've been in the driving and racing school business for 16 years. We've been in the racing business for 32 years, ultimately with my brother as driver and raced almost everything you talk about eventually up into the NASCAR series. So great background for all those things.
So I think for us, when somebody comes to see us and they spend two scarce resources in life, right? Time and money. And so when you come out to do that with us, we're very, very, very respectful that some people are well healed and it's just an excitement or an adventure, whether as a young driver, as a gentleman driver, and some people may say 3, 5, 7, 9, 10 years, and consider this a bucket list event, that's exactly what it is at the Skip Barber Racing school since, since 1975. So we're very respectful of that.
My five tenants is when somebody comes to see us, no matter where they start and no matter where they want to go, they, they leave us with five things as a driver they are, they find those tenets of being safe, secure, comfortable, competent, confident.
If you leave our program, whether it's one day or if you're in our immersion program, you may be there 35 days of the year. In addition to the open wheel series, which we've been running since 1976, that's where most of these drivers come through and operate. We continue to operate that prolific series or you go to our race team that we operate just as well in SRO and imsa, that you leave with that and not just leave with that, you continue to have that. You know, we, we, we talk about the value of coaching and the value of credibility. And everybody needs a coach, everybody needs insight, right? You know, we have these great drivers, these great. Any professional athlete, if things aren't going their way, they call it a slump. How do you fix that? How do you get out of that? How do you deal with that? So we do it for the, the, the introduction to the sport as well on the highest levels. So if we can provide that and we do, it is critical to them. In order to do that, no matter what your talent, skill set, legacy genetics, you have to be a good student. If you're not a good student specifically in this industry, you will be out distanced no matter what your inherent talents are. You know, Max Verstappen, super talented. He works really, really, really, really, really hard in what he does. He doesn't just wake up and act like he does. He's got a great background. His father Joseph was a Formula one driver himself.
But he's a wonderful student, whether it's understanding his competition, tracks, locations, sim coaching, whatever or sim practicing, whatever he's going to do.
So you, you need to, you can't just show up and say I don you a great race driver. You really have to do, you really have to do your homework. You really have to practice. You have to take into consideration and that, that was the premise in 1975, Skip Barber himself, it was believed that you had to be born Mario Andretti or Fangio or Phil Hill. And he's like, that's not true. You can learn how to be a race car driver. Like you can be a basketball player, a baseball player or calculus.
And so he, that's, that's what he proved during, during his tenure of owning the, the business.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: Now if somebody's listening to this and is interested, is the school located in one location? Is it located across the country? How do you guys structure your, your different courses in that way?
[00:08:17] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. So a lot of people come out to skip Barber.
They come out because the history of the reputation, because of our curriculum, because of our skill set, because of the vehicles that we keep in pristine condition. We have over 150 of them.
And the locations, because when you come out to train with us, there are many different tracks across the country. Some smaller, easier to get to, in some instances less expensive for us to, to use or to rent.
But we feel like the importance to be on those kinds of tracks where you either need that learning or, or want that experience.
And so for us, we typically run between 8 and 12 tracks throughout the United States. And those are important places in road racing. Sonoma, okay, Road Atlanta, you've got Cota, for example, Laguna Seca, Sebring Road Atlanta, our home base is Virginia International Raceway, where We have a 45,000ft facility on site.
All the preparation and mechanical work that needs to be done on vehicle happens there as we move these out. Okay, and then we go, we head up into the northeast and we'll go to Lime Rock park, we'll go to Jersey Motorsports park, we'll go to Road America. And these are places where we operate and train and then also race. And that's almost everywhere, including places like Watkins Glen. And that's just domestically. We've operated programs in Mexico and in Europe and other places as well. But those. It's a good question because it's important to, to have that takeaway from either training. Every track, every car, every location, every day is absolutely different. And that's the, that's the complexity, that's the variables that, that come to play if you're, if you're a race car
[00:10:04] Speaker B: driver and you guys also run a race series and you run a, I believe, a sim racing series. And plus you're also involved in, I believe it's sro with a professional race team. Is that not right?
[00:10:20] Speaker A: All of those are all accurate and all true. And it's an important component and it puts us, we have to play at a very high level because we have what I call the Skip Barber no suck rule. I can't teach you how to be a race car driver if I can't show you how to actually get there. So the series is very, very important. Has been operating since 1976. All of those talented drivers you talked about, Sergio Rossi, Juan Pablo Montoya, Michael Andretti, if we talk about formula done. And then of course, I think it's 58% of all IndyCar drivers have a training history with us. And 62% of all NASCAR drivers do.
So it's, it's super, it's super critical that we're able to, to have that experience in those locations where we operate. But we are an academic institution by heart. And so when you come out, you're there to learn. You know, it's very simple and sometimes you have to get people to calm down a little bit. And there's a reason why we call it the Skip Barber Racing School.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: That's what, that's what we do for a little bit. And it's fun, it's exciting, it's interesting. I like to say we traffic in adrenaline because we do, but we're, we're there to teach people and to do it right and to be safe and to leave that track mentally, physically and economically in one piece.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: And I and your alumni clearly speak to the strength of the program.
You wouldn't have so many successful racers racing in, you know, professional motorsport if you didn't have a solid program.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it's, it's, and it's historical since 1976 and it's today. If you were to look at some of the really up and coming drivers, Caleb Gaffira and Oliver Weldon and Sebastian Weldon, they've all come through our program and it's not just historically important, but it's important today just as well.
And in addition to this very critical series, we do operate a six car race team in SRO and IMSA. We'll run touring car, we run GT4, we won GR Cup, a lot of different programs. We run McLaren Trophy series where we are an accepted and accredited licensing firm for anybody in that space. I think we do the same thing for GRCUP in sro. So again we, we kind of build this ladder that when you come, say you're starting to race and you could be 12 or you could be a gentleman driver at, you know, 55 or whatever. It is the time to get a racing and we give them knowledge, insight and a path to continue.
It isn't just come see us and leave. You can continue to work with us and learn from us and you know, participate in one of the, one of our varied programs. And we do a lot in the sim space. We have probably the best technically technical curriculum in Sims. We've got a probably a million dollar sim facility in our east of New York City at our corporate headquarters.
And we run a series of races, anything for professionals into individuals who want to have fun. And that could be the Ferrari Club or the Alfa Romeo Club or the Porsche Club. So we do a lot of that work and it's really exciting. We have a series that if you win. So we have created this, this ultimate comparison between reality from sim to what really could happen virtual to reality. And so we just had a, our latest winner from Spain actually that will be coming out to, will be coming out to see us and come from various parts of the world at the end of the day. And with that they're able to be a part of our own series in reality. And there's a scholarship that goes with that. So it's very exciting. And so we attract a lot of sim racers because of who we are, because what they could be and because of the scholarship, the prize.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: So what I'm hearing is Skip Barber Racing School is more than a school, it really is. It encompasses almost every part of the motorsport ecosystem. Experience from, from introductory courses all the way to that a professional team that you run, which is, which you know is, is. I don't think maybe people aren't always aware of that. They probably just see it's a racing school and a well known racing school, but might not be aware of all that. So if somebody wants to find out more about all of these programs, where do they go?
[00:14:53] Speaker A: Yeah, so the simplest thing to do is to go to skipbarber.com and we have a website that'll give you details on what you can do, where you can do it, sometimes why you should do it, depending upon what you're trying to accomplish. We've got a full staff of salespeople and scholarship event coordinators that can take you through the process. So very good information, very insightful, very direct, very honest, very transparent. All things that you're trying to do as a business and to create that, the clarity in our industry and thank you for, for taking on this responsibility is something near and dear to our heart.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: Oh, that's great. Thanks for the kind words. Now, before I let you go, Dan, I have one final question.
Favorite racetrack, current or historical? What would it be going to put
[00:15:45] Speaker A: me on the spot here again? Because we not just operated all the iconic tracks across the country, these are our partners And I mentioned eight or nine or 10 of those. And so every track has its own beauty and its own experience, whether it's the bumps of Sebring, whether it's a corkscrew of Laguna Seca or the beauty of Lime Rock park, which is literally in a park in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains. So all these places rhododend really are.
They have established an important position in racing that's why we're there.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: Again, correlating the instruction to the actual race bed, if you will. That's really important historically from New York. So we actually my brother towards the end raced at Bridgehampton so that was an amazing place to be.
But for a series of reasons with great respect to all the people and all the tracks that I mentioned in this podcast, it probably would have to be Vir. And that's for a series of reasons. We are physically located there.
My office is there which is cool and anything we get to it's our most probably a comfortable space that we have because of that and the relationship that we have with the track owners, with Connie and Mark who are terrific and so that's home to us. Right? So anytime you have any individual who wants to gravitate, look at the holidays, people do what they go home says home for us. It's an amazing track too, I have to tell you. There's actually four different configurations that run from anywhere from 1.3 to 4 miles.
It is built into the into the landscape at in Alton, Virginia. If you've not been there, it's an amazing place.
But we, we offer lots of lots of places to have lots of beneficial work and lots of fun and lots of excitement and lots of lots of history that you can get involved in when you participate in our program.
[00:17:51] Speaker B: I have not been but it's definitely some place that I do want to check out. So I will, I will let you know when I'm heading out to to check out Vir.
I really appreciate the time Dan.
Love to know more about the school. I'll put the information in the show notes as far as the website address so that anybody listening if they want to find out more information they can go directly there.
That's it for this week. This is Mark from Motorsports Prospects reminding you to stay fast, stay focused and keep chasing that checkered flag.
Thanks for listening to the Motorsport Prospects podcast. For insights advice and the latest news racers can use, visit Motorsport Prospects.com SAM.
