Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Intro.
[00:00:06] Mark Boudreau: 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 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 often been asked why I started Motorsport Prospects.
I found a Motorsport Prospects in the Verified by Motorsport Prospects designation after hearing the same question time and again from drivers, aspiring drivers, their families and advisors. And that question was always, who can I trust?
Many of these people have struggled to find reliable guidance, so I create a motorsport Prospect simply to help them make informed decisions. The professionals that I feature on this podcast represent that trust.
So if you work with drivers or racing teams, building trust is one of the most important things you can do. As I've mentioned, everybody's asking, who can I trust? Over the years, I found that being clear about what you offer, following through on your promises and genuine caring about your clients goals makes all the difference. So what I've done is I put together some practical advice and a free white paper I called the three Essentials for Motorsport Business Owners, which shares simple ways to strengthen relationships, attract the right clients and grow your motorsport business. Naturally, you can find it in the show notes of this podcast or@motorsport prospects.com now let's get started.
My guest today is Mac Clark. Mac is a professional Canadian racing driver competing in the USF Pro Tour 2000 championships on the road to IndyCar with Exclusive Autosport. He has earned over 30 career wins, been named the Canadian Motorsport hall of Fame's rising star and has represented Team Canada internationally.
Welcome to the Motorsport Prospects Podcast, Mac. It's great to have you on.
[00:02:11] Mac Clark: Thank you so much. No, I'm very happy to join you today and I know this has been in the works for the last few months, but I'm glad we're finally getting to sit down and do this, man.
[00:02:19] Mark Boudreau: Yeah, yeah. And I should mention that my, my relationship with Mac goes down. It goes quite a way back.
I worked with Mac on his very first, I believe, driver suit sponsorship back when you, you were racing in 1600.
[00:02:38] Mac Clark: Absolutely. That was my first corporate sponsorship period.
No, you helped facilitate that. That was back in 2020 I believe.
[00:02:46] Mark Boudreau: I believe so.
[00:02:47] Mac Clark: Time ago now. No, we go, we go way back. So it's great to connect again.
[00:02:52] Mark Boudreau: Yeah. Now I mentioned you are a driver. You're racing USF Pro 2000. My question to everybody on the podcast is the same and because. And you are literally in the wars right now, so I think it's pretty appropriate based on your experience.
What would be the one piece of advice you would give current or aspiring race drivers?
[00:03:18] Mac Clark: That is a very loaded question, but I will answer it to the best of my ability.
Like you said, as someone who's kind of living that life right now, as someone that's in the wars fighting, as an aspiring driver, I like to keep it simple. And my word of advice as a headline would be to treat your racing brand as a driver, as a startup. I don't think a lot of drivers realize how much work you have to put in outside of the car.
More on the business side, you know, whether that be promotion of yourself and your branding, you know, B2B connections, chasing corporate sponsorship, it's really almost 80, 20.
You have to spend a lot of time working on yourself outside of the race car if you want to have a professional career in motorsport.
[00:04:12] Mark Boudreau: Right? Yeah, you know, and I agree people underestimate the amount of work involved. They assume all you got to do is be fast on the track, which obviously that is an important component of it, but yeah, the business part of it. And like I said, I, I remember when we did the driver suit contract, your dad Stu was there, and when we introduced you to the, to the, to the manufacturer, the importer of those driver suits, he, you know, he, Stu, actually, your dad actually encouraged him and you to go off and talk on your own without him kind of hovering over.
And I think that's something that parents have to be very careful about, that they don't take control of their child's career in that way. Because at, at some, unless you're a billionaire, at some point, you're going to have to kind of, you know, go off and fly on your own. And, you know, if your mom did all your negotiation for you, you're really behind the eight ball.
[00:05:26] Mac Clark: I think people often say in motorsport know, drivers grow up fast. You have teenagers turning into adults very quickly. And a lot of the time that's the result of, you know, this business world that we live in. I started presenting myself to corporate sponsors as early as, you know, 14, 15 years old, and, and that forces you to mature quickly. And now I'm 21 and I'm chasing sponsorship every day and working on my brand as a whole, kind of as an independent company. And I, I treat myself like the CEO of MA Clark Racing, and I'm Trying to build something, you know, that's going to hopefully take me all the way to the top, to, to IndyCar Indy 500. So it's definitely a, a business first mindset.
When I'm not at the racetrack, when I am at the racetrack, I'm still very focused on the task at hand. I don't like to think about, you know, that stuff obviously when I have my helmet on.
But it's all part of this, this big machine to hopefully carry myself forward.
[00:06:28] Mark Boudreau: Now you mentioned B2B business to business.
That is something I think a lot of drivers, certainly in, in the development series are potentially unaware of.
Maybe if you can just give me a little crib note on, on what is B2B?
Why is it important? And, and, and essentially, you know, why drivers should be looking into that.
[00:06:53] Mac Clark: So B2B, for anyone who doesn't know, stands for big business to business.
And I stumbled across this model when I was kind of, you know, peeking behind the curtain at what the top teams in motorsport do and how they generate sponsorship dollars. So the big teams in IndyCar and IMSA and Formula One, how do they generate sponsorship money and retain it and make it sustainable?
And a lot of it is done through B2B.
So in the easiest form, you as a driver are almost like a connector. You know, if you have one corporate sponsor that's already a part of your program, you know, say they sell paper and you know, another company, they use a lot of paper, you get them to write a business deal and then you take X percentage and bring it back to the racing program. I think that's the simplest way of kind of explaining it. But it's almost like a triple win. It's easier than selling a corporate sponsorship that's more traditional, where it's like, hey, give me X amount of money. Let me, you know, stick your name on the fire suit and the race car and you know, we'll talk about you on tv.
It's actual business being done between two corporations. The racing program takes a piece of it and you're kind of creating this ecosystem, you know, around the race car and the racing driver where everyone wins and hopefully makes money. And that's what makes it more sustainable than say, traditional sponsorship.
[00:08:24] Mark Boudreau: Yeah, I agree. And I've always said, quite honestly, businesses, you know, unless the, the CEO is an absolute motorsport fanatic, but for the most part, businesses don't care about your dream to race an Indy 500. What they care about is solving a problem that they might have and using a B2B situation.
That goes towards helping them solve that problem. And on top of that, in a very cool environment, you know, I mean, let's not, let's not kid ourselves. Being in a paddock at the Indy 500 or an IndyCar race or a USF Pro 2000 race, it is a cool environment. I mean it's, it's adrenaline, it's, you know, a lot of alpha people and yeah, it's, it's cool. And if you can turn that into a business opportunity, you know, it's like you said, it's a win, win, win for everybody.
[00:09:21] Mac Clark: It's, it's game on. And it just provides so much more value than a traditional corporate sponsorship because they're actually seeing revenue from it. Right. They can, they can justify the motorsport spend or peeling off X percentage. And what I always like to say is, especially when I'm speaking to, to my father is, you know, we just got to get these people to the racetrack because once we get them to the racetrack, you know, the deal is going to come together. They see it all for the first time if they've never been. And like you said, it's, it's an incredible environment. You know, we're lucky to be on the calendar with IndyCar so we get to travel to a lot of cool venues and in lots of places coast to coast in the United States. So that kind of gives us the ability to, to wine and dine a little bit at the racetrack and put some business deals together.
[00:10:02] Mark Boudreau: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. The, There is an article that's out there about how the paddock is becoming a place to conduct business. You know, everybody, the typical, you know, the golf courses where you, where you conduct business, but the paddock is becoming, you know, the same idea.
So tell me a little bit about what you. Now you're racing USF Pro 2000, but you, outside of racing, you had mentioned that you are also doing some coaching.
[00:10:33] Mac Clark: I am, yeah. So along with the racing program that's, that's my main focus.
I've also started coaching young drivers. So this started, you know, three to four years ago in karting, just giving back to my old carding team that I raced with in Canada. And I really kind of found this passion for helping out young drivers and kind of passing along my experience because I've learned, you know, so much from the time I started in go karting to where I am now on the open wheel ladder. And it's, it's blossomed to me coaching in USF4, helping out some of the guys in the USF Pro Championships and just traveling around offering my services to drivers young and old and helping them better themselves.
By no means do I know it all. I'm still learning every time I strap in that race car. But I do feel like now I have the ability to kind of pass on some of my knowledge and help people get better.
[00:11:27] Mark Boudreau: Perfect. And if people want to get a hold of you, Mac, to engage you in those services or to sponsor your racing season, how did they get a hold of you?
[00:11:40] Mac Clark: I'm big on social media. On Instagram, at Underscore, Matt Clark or my website, matt clarkracing.com that's another big one for us. So those are kind of my, my two main mediums where I have people
[00:11:51] Mark Boudreau: contact me and I'll post all those links in the show notes so that everybody will have, will be able to connect with you through there.
Okay, before we go, here's always a fun question.
Favorite racetrack, current or historical?
[00:12:09] Mac Clark: Can I kind of answer this twice? Is that allowed?
[00:12:12] Mark Boudreau: Everybody, everybody does that.
[00:12:15] Mac Clark: Okay. No, there's, I feel like there's, there's two things at play here. So favorite racetrack is different than like most special in my opinion. So most special for me is, is Le Mans. I was, you know, very lucky to get to drive the short form Bugatti circuit out of Le Mans when I did the Richard Mille Young Talent Academy.
And you walk in that place and you can feel the history. So special. Really, really cool place, awesome track. Getting to go through the first chicane under the Dunlop Bridge. Just incredible. So that's, that's my kind of like, you know, special factor. Favorite racetrack in terms of doing a lap right in our backyard. Man, ctmp. Every time that I go back to that place, I'm reminded how lucky we are to have that racetrack in Canada. It's, it's so fast, it's blind, it's challenging.
If you are fast at ctmp, I believe you can be fast anywhere.
[00:13:16] Mark Boudreau: You know, it's interesting. You're not the, you're not the first person that has mentioned that.
I, I, I've heard that from more than one guest who said the same thing in if you can, you know, if you can make it at, you know, as some of us call still call Mossport. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.
[00:13:34] Mac Clark: Absolutely, 100% agreed. I'm glad I'm not the first one with that answer. I have people to back me up on that.
[00:13:39] Mark Boudreau: Oh yeah, absolutely. Well, it was really great having you on the podcast, Mac. Really appreciate it, you know, by all means.
Like I said, I'll put all the information that you can get a hold of. Mac, you can follow mack racing in USF Pro 2000.
And yeah, it's been great. It's been a. It's been a while since we chatted and it was. It was really nice to catch up, really. Thanks so much for being on the show and thank you. That's it for this week. This is Mark from Motorsport 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 motorsportprospects.com.
