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 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 often get asked why I started Motorsport Prospects and I started Motorsport Prospects and the Verified by Motorsports Prospects designation after hearing the same question time and again from drivers, aspiring drivers, their families and advisors. And that was, who can I trust?
Who out there can I trust with my money, with my career, in some cases with my life?
Many have struggled to find reliable guidance, so I created Motorsport Prospects to help them make informed decisions. The professionals I feature on this podcast represent that trust. These are truly motorsport professionals. So 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 promises, and genuinely caring about your clients goals makes all the difference. With that in mind, I put together some practical advice in a free white paper called the Three Essentials for Motorsport Business Owners, which share 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 episode or over@motorsport prospects.com so with that said, let's get started.
My guest today is Mike Scudamore. Mike is team principal of Team Brit, the only race team in the world with an all disabled driver lineup. He has extensive experience in the commercial side of motorsport, having spent time working in F1, Formula E and GT racing.
Welcome to the Motorsport Prospects Podcast. Mike, thanks so much for taking the time out to speak to me.
[00:02:13] Mike Scudamore: Thanks very much, Mark. Looking forward to talking to you today.
[00:02:17] Mark Boudreau: Great. Now the podcast is fairly simple in that I ask one question, but as you'll see, it's not necessarily the simplest question, but it is a way for you to basically give us your experience, your feedback in all the years that you've been involved in motorsport. And that one question is based on 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?
[00:02:55] Mike Scudamore: It is a good question, mark. I would have said, from my perspective, you have to have a unique selling point.
Okay, I think from Team Brit obviously has an exceptionally good unique selling point. Yes, and that has helped across the. Across my time in motorsport and it's certainly something I've seen make a huge difference. However, if you're the amount of presentations I've seen from either young aspiring drivers or drivers who've been around a little while, that's full of results, got pages of results.
I came third in this championship, second in this championship. Here I am winning this trophy. Here's my list of results in karting for the last four years.
Most people don't care about that, right? Where it, where what makes you stand out from everybody else. There's lots of people with great results that could reel off, you know, most people that you speak to in app brands, you have to remember that most people don't operate in your world.
So you might, you might be immersed in motor racing, but it doesn't mean everybody else is right. They, they won't know whether you've raced in this championship at this cart track or that championship at that cart track.
Can they see their brand aligning with you? The person.
Can they see maybe what it might bring for their brand?
Success is of course important. You know, you wouldn't send a document that said, I've been running around at the back and, but I'm a really nice guy.
However, there's got to be a balance and I think you've got to be able to position yourself for brands to sit up and go, wow, this guy is different, or this girl stands out, or this is something I haven't seen before because there's loads of good drivers, there's loads of people who's won cups that won karting races that could be really fast with the right equipment.
But what else have you got? What else makes you stand out? And that's, that's the same in any business. And I think you have to treat yourself as a driver as, as a standalone business, right? You've got to be able to sell.
You know, normally if you're in a, if you're a shop, you have to sell goods and services.
You're a racing driver and you're selling yourself.
How are you going to get people to buy what you are selling, right? And you, that can be any number of things.
And what I'll say to the drivers I work with, when you're selling yourself, the most important thing to do is not just blurt out to people how great you are, is listen to them, listen to those people, listen to what they require and then try and sell yourself to them on that basis.
If someone's saying they're really keen on social media content, human stories, Engagements, all those kind of things.
Then don't try and sell them on car branding. Don't try and tell them how many races you've won.
Talk to them about the videos you can help create.
What can you do for them that makes their life easy to say yes to your proposal?
[00:06:17] Mark Boudreau: Right.
[00:06:18] Mike Scudamore: And that's. That I think is really important.
You know, certainly from my perspective is listen to what the brands want.
And sometimes it's hard to get that first meeting. I would have said, even now, you know, I've been doing this job a long time, that first meeting is still the hardest one to get.
So how are you going to manage your approach?
Maybe look and see what they, those brands have been doing, what are they doing in their marketing and whether that's on a local level, whether that's the local realtor speaking American and English language. Now the local estate agent, the local realtor, people that sell houses, for example, where are they doing their marketing?
How are they doing their marketing?
Do you think what you do could enhance what they do?
So sometimes it's not reinventing the wheel, it's looking at someone that's already doing something.
Maybe you think, hang on a second. If they included me or my brand or my car or my cart, whatever it is, in their advertising, here's a great idea. I could do this for you. I could do that for you. And I think that would help you because, okay, you're then clearly showing to them that you've taken an interest in their business.
Because also the amount of like, you know, even though I run a team, people still think I'm going to sponsor them.
So that shows to me a lack of research, lack of personalization.
When you get an email that just says dear or two, they're either not done a very good job of doing the mail merge or they haven't even thought about that.
Right. Don't say I. I would. Personally, I try not to send 500 emails just in a blanket. I'd much rather send four really good ones.
Okay. That I've maybe spent more time thinking about.
If you're going after a really big brand, those are much harder nuts to crack.
You know, if you're a go karter and you think, I wonder if I could go after Shell, for example, argument sake, you're probably going to struggle there because you're not going to be able to get to the right person, even if you do get to the right person.
Is that something that Shell are currently doing? Probably not.
So you need to start a bit smaller, particularly, I mean if we. If we look at, say, carting per se, probably looking at local brands that might want to support somebody local that's doing well, right. And come on a journey, sell them the dream that they could come on that journey with you and you could. You could help their brand grow together, celebrate success together and support each other at grassroots. That's a great place to start.
When you're starting out, even if someone's helping with your crash helmet or set of tires. Makes a big difference, Right. Means you're having to pay that out of your own pocket as you step up and you're going up the ladder and you're going to need significantly more money, then you can start working your network a little bit more. That person that helped you with the tyres, they might have grown, they might be able to give you a bit more, they might be able to lean on some of their customers, they might be able to introduce you to some people so you're not then going at it completely blind.
And I think that's. That's often the hardest thing is knowing. Knowing where to start.
[00:09:53] Mark Boudreau: Right, yeah. That's a question I get all the time.
[00:09:55] Mike Scudamore: Yeah. What do I do? And if you're not that person, I mean, I. We did our team launch this week and I've still got drivers who I'll catch in the corner talking to each other rather than working the floor.
Right. And it's, you know, they are, in the eyes of the people attending that event, the stars.
Yeah, they're the drivers, they're cool. I want to talk to them.
So you need to go up to people, find the guy in the room or the girl in the room who's not talking to anybody and go and introduce yourself.
People will want to talk to you because you're the cool racing driver.
[00:10:34] Mark Boudreau: Right?
[00:10:35] Mike Scudamore: Hi there. Can I introduce myself? Did you. Do you know who I am?
Can ask you any questions? Why are you here? What business are you involved in? So people like to talk about themselves.
So try and encourage people to talk to you about themselves once you've listened. And that's the important bit, not reading off all your results and all that good stuff. Listen to them, maybe ask them what their business challenges are, maybe ask them what they're looking forward to most this year from a business perspective, and then you can mold your responses and conversation to see maybe how you could support them.
Now, whereabouts do you. Whereabouts you market your products?
What kind of advertising campaigns are you involved in? Do you do much social media?
Do you support anybody already? Because quite often there'll be people that already sponsor things.
And those sponsoring things are normally.
Although people will often try and deny it, linked directly to what the boss likes.
[00:11:35] Mark Boudreau: Right.
[00:11:36] Mike Scudamore: So if the boss likes horse racing, you're wasting your time. Yep. Because that's what they'll do. If the boss likes sailing, then that's what they'll do.
[00:11:47] Mark Boudreau: Right.
[00:11:47] Mike Scudamore: But if you're lucky, boss likes cars, you're halfway there. From a motor racing perspective, if it's a Tesla, you could be in, in a spot of bother. But if it isn't, then there's a good chance that they may be interested in motor racing and people like. If you like, if they like cars, they'll like talking about cars.
[00:12:08] Mark Boudreau: Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:09] Mike Scudamore: What car do you drive? Ah, done. Now you ask which one. I've got a selection of cars and as soon as they say that, you know. Right.
This person has got more than five bucks.
Ask them about their cars. Be interested in what's important to them.
Right. Because if they like, you know, people still buy people, even in the world of AI, people are buying people. If you have a good relationship with somebody, you feel, you mentioned it at the start of the podcast, if you trust somebody, the chances of doing business are much, much higher.
[00:12:41] Mark Boudreau: Right.
[00:12:42] Mike Scudamore: Particularly in an area where you're concerned about business. You might have been heard some horror stories.
So.
And that's something else always say to people, if they're concerned about paying money up front, no problem. We can. Why don't you split your payments over several different times during the course of the year?
So for example, if it does go south and you stop racing, they haven't put all their money in at the start of the year and there's no recourse and that's the last thing you want to happen.
So I think open and honest conversations with them. If I do split payments for any sponsors, I always try and front load it. So it might be 60% up front, two payments of 20% throughout the course of the season. Okay. Because traditionally you do have front loaded costs.
[00:13:35] Mark Boudreau: Right.
[00:13:36] Mike Scudamore: I think we mentioned when we spoke before, Mark, that there's some companies, particularly smaller ones, are happy to buy something than they are just to write a check for cash.
[00:13:49] Mark Boudreau: Yeah.
[00:13:50] Mike Scudamore: You know, it may be easier for them to put it through the, the company books. Okay.
[00:13:54] Mark Boudreau: Makes sense.
[00:13:55] Mike Scudamore: Yeah. Yeah. You know, if you're maybe if you have to buy lots of ppe protect personal protective equipment for your workplace, buying a crash helmet or a fireproof something is perfectly normal.
[00:14:09] Mark Boudreau: Right.
[00:14:10] Mike Scudamore: Yeah. It's something you could easily get away with. You could easily speak to the accountant and if they said, what's this? He said, oh, it's just an important safety equipment for work that makes it easier. How can you make it easy for people to give you money?
[00:14:24] Mark Boudreau: And that. And like you said, that really goes down to research and listening because I always say sponsors for the most part really don't care about your racing career and the fact that you want to be a professional race driver. They have a problem which needs a solution.
Your job is to first of all find out what that problem is and then propose a solution that works for them.
[00:14:49] Mike Scudamore: Absolutely. I think that's.
And the more people work in collaboration, the better.
[00:14:55] Mark Boudreau: Yeah.
[00:14:56] Mike Scudamore: Because let's be honest, you're looking to build a long term relationship.
You don't want somebody that's going to give you $5,000 once. You want that person to grow with you as your career grows.
So when you start $5,000, you know, in five years time, you want them to be giving you $50,000, right?
[00:15:14] Mark Boudreau: Yeah.
[00:15:15] Mike Scudamore: And if you've delivered value against what you said you were going to do, makes it much, much easier.
[00:15:21] Mark Boudreau: Yeah. Now Mike, tell me a little bit about Team Brit, the, the, the, the inspiration behind Team Brit.
You know, I think sometimes when it comes to disabled racers and people tend to forget that they're racers through and through and that they're competitive, as competitive as anybody else.
But yeah, tell me a little bit about Team Brit and the philosophy behind it.
[00:15:47] Mike Scudamore: And as you said in the beginning, only team in the world with an all disabled driver lineup. So this year we're running four cars for eight disabled drivers over a number of different championships.
And we use special hand control technology to allow our drivers to compete on a level playing field with able bodied drivers, which is something no other sport can offer. You know, if you're a runner, you have to take part in the Paralympics. In motor racing, the person next to you doesn't care whether your legs work or not, they just want to beat you. That's really empowering for our drivers.
You know, one of my favourite quotes is, you know, when I'm in the race car, it's like I've left my disability behind.
[00:16:27] Mark Boudreau: Wow.
[00:16:27] Mike Scudamore: Yeah. The technology we've been able to develop means our drivers keep their hands on the wheel at all times so they're not disadvantaged by taking their hand off the wheel. And it's all fly by wire technology. Accelerator on the right, paddle behind the steering wheel, brake on the left, paddle, gear up and down with either thumb so you never have to Take your hand off the wheel just like, you know, a normal able body driver wouldn't. So you don't want to lose that competitive edge. You've got your hand on the wheel at all times.
And also if you're a disabled driver, normally if you're going to the shops, for example, in the uk, you'd have what they call a push pull lever.
So automatic car, stick it in drive, press a stick and it pretty much presses your accelerator pedal with a metal rod or the other way around, you pull it presses the accelerator, you push it presses the brake. Okay. So it's very simple, great for driving to the shops, not great coming into a chicane at 100 miles an hour, hard on the brakes, blipping down a couple of gears, balancing the throttle.
Our system allows you to do that.
So we actually came over to the States at the back end of last year. We raced with a charity called Resilience Racing, which is a charity for motorsport veterans or veterans that are taking up motorsport.
We raced an Aston Martin GT4 using that system.
So it was great to bring it across the pond and for people to see how it works. What we do also to spread that message a little bit further.
[00:17:51] Mark Boudreau: Yeah, and I think that's really important that you know what that, what's that saying, if you can't see it, you can't be it.
And I think people seeing that disabled people can race just as much as able bodied, I think maybe a lot of people aren't aware of that. So I think it's really important that, that that message gets out. But at the same time, you guys are a race team, right? These are your, you have, these are racing drivers who want to win.
[00:18:23] Mike Scudamore: That's right. And you know, back in, back in 22, we were the first all disabled team to win a national championship. So we compete, compete at the very front.
This year we're stepping up to GT3 in the UK. We've got a BMW M4 GT3. We also race a couple of GT4 cars and a, and a BMW saloon car as well. So we've got a strong lineup of four cars that we're racing across a number of different champions and we're looking to inspire other disabled people to take up racing as well. You know, there's nothing better than getting out in the winner's circle, seeing our driver hopping into their chair, you know, alongside able bodied people or being the only person on the podium.
It certainly, certainly makes people sit up and take notice.
[00:19:04] Mark Boudreau: Yeah, absolutely. Now for those listening, where can they get more information on Team Brit.
[00:19:11] Mike Scudamore: It's dead straightforward. Team Brit.co.uk and we're also on all the social platforms. I would have said the majority of our contents across Instagram. We're Team Brit Racing on Instagram and then we also have a presence on LinkedIn.
Very, very important, particularly from a business perspective. I think if you're setting yourself out as a, a business proposition, it's an important place to be for your, for your race team or as an individual aspiring driver.
It's important to be on there as well.
And I think it's not always, again, it's not for your results, it's for trying to create a platform that brands can look at and go, hey, that looks quite, that looks quite switched on. I like their design, I like what the content they're posting and there's no need to reinvent the wheel. I always think it's quite good when, you know, I'd say to my social media manager, what are the other teams doing?
What are, what are the current trends? What are the F1 teams doing? What are the NASCAR teams doing? What are the Formula E teams doing?
Are they doing cool stuff that we could be doing? Right? Yes. We like to come up with our own ideas, but if other people have got good ideas, brilliant.
We'll just use them too.
[00:20:27] Mark Boudreau: Absolutely.
[00:20:28] Mike Scudamore: As an aspiring racing driver, you know, who are the drivers you like to follow?
What, what content do they post and how can you post that too? You might struggle a little bit in the beginning if you like, seeing the content of them on a private jet. However, there's certainly lots that they might be doing. They might be focusing on what they're doing in the gym, how they're improving their marketing platform. What are they doing? They're hosting networking events, they're inviting people along to things.
Are there networking events that you can attend?
I remember I was. This was a long time ago, 20 odd years ago. I used to run some carting circuits in the UK and I joined the local Chamber of commerce. Is that the kind of thing you guys have? Chamber of Commerce? Yep, yep.
They're always looking for interesting things, interesting speakers. Why don't you offer to go along?
You know, do you mind if I come to one of your meetings and just talk about what I do? I'm a racing driver or I'm aspiring racing driver. I want to become a racing driver.
I turned up to one of those meetings. Everybody else was in a suit. I was in a suit too, but it was a racing suit.
[00:21:40] Mark Boudreau: Nice.
[00:21:41] Mike Scudamore: Yeah. Nobody else was and everybody went home and probably said, met this crazy guy today in a racing suit. Yeah. Suddenly you've stood out and people have remembered who you are. So if you then email them after that meeting, great to meet you today, etc. Etc. Etc. Love to chat more. They're going to know who you are, you stood out. And if they're looking for their brand to stand out, suddenly you're aligning with what they're thinking.
[00:22:08] Mark Boudreau: Yeah. And that, and you know, that's a, That's a great.
It reminds me of what I always tell drivers, especially young drivers, where you're, you know, if you're traveling, you're in the airport, where you're, you're, you're team polo, wear your team jacket.
Somebody will inevitably ask you about that because you're, you stand out. And who knows where those conversations might end.
[00:22:34] Mike Scudamore: Yeah. When, when I was in F1, we, we had quite subtle branding for travel, for our travel kit. But when we were traveling, you know, whenever you sat down next to somebody on a plane, they were interested. Yeah.
[00:22:46] Mark Boudreau: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:22:47] Mike Scudamore: Even if they weren't a big race fan, they knew what Formula one was and they knew that they was sat next to somebody who's in Formula one and they wanted to know a bit more. Yeah. So I think whenever you're, whenever you have the chance to wear a jacket or chance to wear your team kit. No, it's a conversation starter.
[00:23:04] Mark Boudreau: Yeah, for sure.
Now, I have one final question, and just to let everybody know all the details, the website, the Instagram will be in the show notes, so you can definitely easily connect in that way. But before I let you go, Mike, I have one question, and that is what is your favorite racetrack? Current or historical?
[00:23:28] Mike Scudamore: I think that that's always a challenge because I've been to quite a few racetracks. I would have said I have to be. Two answers here. The first answer is the best place to go for a race, and that would have to be Monaco.
The racing itself is rubbish. You can't overtake. However, the experience is off the charts. You know, amazing razzamataz.
Something truly quite special. And then after the. The race is finished, they open up the roads, you can go down, there's party. They're partying on the track till 2 or 3 in the morning in the harbor. And then as if by magic, in a couple of hours, they turn it back into a racetrack. That's a pretty incredible atmosphere. And then just to make sure I'm not leaving out across the pond, I was lucky enough to go to Talladega last year for the, for the 500. And that was also an incredible experience just for lots of different reasons. You know, it was an exceptionally well put on event.
Europeans have got a lot to learn from entertainment and how to engage with fans.
So yeah, both of those are very, very good, but very, very different.
[00:24:34] Mark Boudreau: Yeah, absolutely. That's, that's great, Mike. Really appreciate you being on the podcast, taking some time to talk about Team Brit and also your insights on sponsorship, which I think are crucial for, you know, a lot of especially young drivers. But actually all drivers. Sponsorship is always an issue, is always a question, it's always a struggle. But I think you give some really good workable advice that people can implement. So I really appreciate that.
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.
