Family Jewels
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Spring Ahead Fall Back
Ed Donath Commentary
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January 30, 2001
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It would be wonderful if having a "talent" for stirring up the pot could be nearly as profitable as it is entertaining and self-satisfying but that's a whole `nother story. Sure…nasty and hypercritical e-mails and forum posts irk me for a minute sometimes but I truly believe that everyone is entitled to his opinion. In a January 19, 2001 column entitled "Bullhorn Stories" that I penned for this website (which, incidentally, received more than its fair share of criticism from the Family all the way up to the "patriarchal" level, thank you) exaggeration and satire were the methods I selected to make the point that CART President/CEO Joseph Heitzler was out in left field with the material he opted to discuss during his public debut at the so-called Sneak Preview at California Speedway in Fontana.
Ken Baser, a journalist who writes for OnTrackonline.com, covered Sneak Preview for that e-zine. He filed his own "SWOT" commentary on January 20, 2001, the day after mine was published. Here's a link to the Ken Baser commentary:
Perhaps I inspired him? His commentary was the inspiration for this follow-up piece.
Of course, Baser stuck to the Magazine Journalists' Stylebook in his editorial remarks about the Sneak Preview concept in general and, more specifically, about Joe Heitzler's somewhat unusual comments. But essentially, although my own commentary was a bit less conventional, we both seem to agree that more substantive and CART-specific technical and marketing issues really should have been aired at Heitzler's Sneak Preview press conference.
Mr. Baser and I are also in agreement that Sneak Preview is, by comparison to CART Spring Training, a much less important, less edifying and less fan and media-friendly event than was its predecessor.
My own suspicion is that Joe Heitzler and the CART brain trust chose to distance themselves from the proven Spring Training format not simply because there is no longer a Homestead race on the schedule but because the whole Spring Training concept was originally the brainchild of then-CEO Andrew Craig.
In four of the five years of CART Spring Training in Florida there was no Pat Leahy at the marketing helm of Championship Auto Racing Teams. Certainly, there was no President/CEO named Joseph Heitzler anywhere in the picture. If my suspicion proves correct, the marketing of Champ Car racing has suffered a major setback -- something that CART can ill afford in light of its already severely under-marketed status -- as a result of this shortsightedness.
Spring Training -- and subsequent driver autograph-signing and fan chat sessions during regular CART race weekends -- has been one of the most proactive marketing concepts that ever came out of Big Beaver Road. It is a shame and a genuine waste that the successful Spring Training format was not salvaged for use at Fontana.
If Joe Heitzler is as sincere as he has "professed" to be about Champ Car pilots' personalities being the centerpiece of future marketing and advertising efforts of the FedEx Championship Series then he really blew it by not sticking to the successful CART Spring Training script.
Heitzler, himself, could have been the heroic emcee and PR Hero of traditional Spring Training festivities. Instead, Joseph Heitzler has begun his term in office as the butt of jokes and criticisms resulting from his pronouncements about a sophomoric SWOT management strategy.
e-mail Ed Donath: speedwriter@hotmail.com
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