CHEVY NSCS AT HOMESTEAD: Jim Campbell Press Conf. Transcript

KERRY THARP:  Jim, now that the Chevrolet SS has been on the track for two seasons, maybe you can talk about how perhaps it has bolstered brand identity and fan affinity, and how has your new race car validated the very reasons why you race?

JIM CAMPBELL:  Well, it’s been great to have the Chevrolet SS on the track here for the last couple years.  The whole development of the Gen‑6 was done with NASCAR and the three OEMs here plus Dodge at the time.  It was a collaborative effort, but I think the result was pretty fantastic in terms of improving relevance from what we race on the track to the connection to the showroom, and for us, Chevrolet SS, V‑8, fuel injected, rear‑wheel drive in the showroom floor as it is on the track.

So we like that genuine connection from track to the showroom, and we see it in the numbers.  The research numbers show that fans are relating to the car and making it more relevant to what they see on the track to what they see in the showroom and on the street.  We love that, and really that’s one of the reasons why we race is to make that connection of relevance.

The other thing is we want to help our teams and drivers, give them the best opportunity to win races and championships, and it’s been a great for that for Chevrolet with 18 poles and 19 wins and a couple guys here in the final race.  It’s been a great year so far.

KERRY THARP:  Let’s take questions now for Jamie, Jim or David.

Q.  How important and how much of a boost would it give you for your driver to win the championship tomorrow?

JIM CAMPBELL:  Yep.  For Chevrolet that’s one of our goals every year is to help our teams win a driver’s championship and collectively giving our teams the best opportunity to win enough races for us to win the manufacturer’s championship.  We have two opportunities out of the four tomorrow, and if you look over the past number of years, about eight of the last nine driver’s champions have been Chevrolet drivers.  We do see a lift in opinion, and when you get a lift of opinion on a brand, great things happen.  Customers put you on their shopping list more quickly.  It’s a fact.  So that’s big.

And then on top of that, we start six drivers in the race tomorrow, which we’re optimistic we’ll do, with the green flag Chevrolet will wrap up its 38th manufacturer’s championship.  So the combination is powerful, and customers put you on their shopping list more quickly.

The other thing we do all season long, whether it’s in midways or it’s online in the social space, we’re interfacing with our fans and prospective fans, our customers, prospective customers, and when we get a lead, we work that lead hard, all the way to a point where we sell a car, truck or part, and that’s what our focus is at the lower end of the funnel, purchase funnel, if you will.

Q.  Jim, you sort of talked a bit about this a moment ago.  A finish of 38th or better, basically start the race and Chevrolet has won another manufacturer’s championship.  I think that’s now 12 in a row.  Just how big a deal is that among the three of you guys to have that kind of bragging right?

JIM CAMPBELL:  Well, at the beginning of the year, as we set our objectives, that’s one of the first objectives we put down along with supporting our teams to win a driver’s championship.  The combination for us really caps off what we would say would be a successful season.  One without the other is good, but both of them together is really the goal, every single year, every single series.

In Nationwide, Chase Elliott last race obviously clinched the championship.  If we start 15 Camaros today, we’ll clinch the Nationwide manufacturer’s championship.  So that would be an exciting thing to get both of those.  But Cup, there’s work to be done.  But again, the combination together elevates the brand, and that’s what you want to do.  You want to improve the brand opinion.  You think about the brands that you love.  When you have a high opinion, what do you do?  You keep them on your shopping list, and when you’re in the market for that product or service, you put them on the shopping list and you shop them.  That’s important for us.

And also we just love racing.  We love racing.  It’s part of our history and heritage for Chevrolet.  It goes back to our co‑founder Louis Chevrolet.  The guy was a racer, he was a car guy, he used the racetrack as his proving ground.  Here we are over 100 years later, and the focus is still the same.  Focus on winning and then learning on the track.

Q.  Your companies did an incredible job of agreeing on many issues with your cars when the Gen‑6 came out.  There’s going to be some small modifications.  Is there anything on your Christmas list for next year’s car?

JIM CAMPBELL:  I would echo what the guys said.  When we went through the recession in ’08, ’09, we had a chance to sit down with NASCAR and just almost do a bit of a reset, and we laid out the three things we were looking for.  We wanted to run on a biofuel mix, we wanted relevant technologies, we wanted the car we raced on the track to be relevant to what we sold in the showroom.  ’11, ’12, ’13 was the sequence when they delivered:  Biofuels in ’11, fuel injection in ’12, and then the Gen‑6, in our case, Chevrolet SS in ’13.

That quest goes on.  We continue to be talking with NASCAR, all three of us, and the NASCAR team about relevance and what else can we do and what’s next.

On the fan relevance piece, NASCAR provides incredible skill and reach on a marketing basis compared to other platforms, whether they’re racing or otherwise, other sports platforms, so we love NASCAR for that, and also because our car is the stick and ball of the sport.  In other words, if you’re in football and you’re a sponsor or baseball, you’re a sponsor.  When you’re racing, we’re the stick and ball of the sport, and we love that.

Q.  Each of you gentlemen have someone in the championship obviously tomorrow.  I don’t know that it’s possible, but with that being the case, have you been able to provide any additional either technological or engineering focus for those specific teams, or is it just ‑‑ are you just proceeding as you would any other week?

JIM CAMPBELL:  For us, we use a key partners approach, and we work on common issues together, and then we let the teams focus on their points of difference.  18 poles, 19 wins, on the cusp of a 38th manufacturer’s championship.  We’re not going to change in the last minute here.  Stick to the fundamentals in terms of providing the right parts, the right engineering people and the right engineering tools and then follow through.

Q.  Jim, kind of an offbeat question, but I’ve got to ask you, what was your reaction to “technology and stuff,” and was there any sort of consideration to maybe trying to market that for the motorsports side?

JIM CAMPBELL:  You know what, that was a moment in time where you leverage social media to kind of turn the conversation.  It turned it in a matter of four or five hours, and it’s something that we leveraged for about a week, and we’re done now.  So we’re going to move on.

Q.  For all three of you, when NASCAR announced the new format, did you expect the intensity that happened throughout the season, and did you expect that all three manufacturers would be among the final contenders?

JIM CAMPBELL:  Well, when they announced the change, basically it’s something I think that was on their mind for a while.  It was really to put the focus on winning versus points racing.  They accomplished it.  The whole focus and conversation turned to winning, and that was your ticket to the Chase for the Championship.  So it was very exciting.

And then to have the grid was equally exciting with obviously eliminating four drivers in the first three rounds.  It was very exciting, and I think people are still learning how it works, but I think they’re learning very quickly, and the excitement and enthusiasm has been high.  When you do that, you keep the conversation about racing front and center versus other topics that are out there.  We like it.

When we got into the Chase, we had half the field in the first round, half in the second, three of eight in the third, and now half in this fourth round.  My preference would be four for four, but it didn’t happen.

JIM CAMPBELL:  Just add one thing.  Obviously a lot of discussion around TV ratings.  Some are up, some are down, some are flat.  The other thing that’s happening below the sight line, and many of you in this room get this because you’re active in it, is all the social media discussion, especially at those transfer races, at the end of the three races in the grid.  The social media discussion goes on and on, morning, noon, night, before the race, during, after.  It’s been fantastic, and that’s opportunity for us as manufacturers to continue to interact with our customers and fans and prospective customers and prospective fans.

Q.  I hear all three of you talk about the importance of winning to your brand and how big it is.  Do you think to be one of the final four contestants you should have to win a race?

JIM CAMPBELL:  Yeah, what I would say to that, listen, winning and consistency are both important, and that’s what you have here.  You have guys that have won races, and that’s how they got here.  You have other guys like Ryan Newman that got here on consistent performance.  We’re involved in five major manufacturing series.  Consistency gets rewarded.  In this case the way it’s set up, you can advance by winning, you can advance by being highly consistent.  I’m supportive of a champion that can come at it either way, winning or high consistency.  Who knows, we’ll see what happens on Sunday.

Q.  Just wanted to ask a quick question about what this all boils down to really is just the raw emotion of competition and how it kind of rises, especially gets ratcheted up in something like this, but seeing you all interact with each other is interesting because it’s juxtaposed with the interaction that your drivers had on Wednesday.  Do you look at that and try and gauge how the race might come out for them or for you and for your teams, because I know that you’ve invested so much in terms of resources and technology, but at the end of it, it’s going to be the human element that will have to determine the outcome.  You try and gauge the emotion of your driver when you see Kevin Harvick kind of needling Joey Logano.  What do you derive from that?

JIM CAMPBELL:  I would just say that it’s three things:  One, it’s the human element of the driver.  It’s the human element of the teamwork, and it’s the technology, the reliability, the performance, the durability of the machine.  It’s both of those.  So for us, we’re as focused on the driver, the team and the car and the engine.  They all have to come together at the right moment to win a championship.  So that’s what we’re focused on with the two guys that are in the Chase here, in the championship run from Chevy.

KERRY THARP:  Jim, you have two drivers in, obviously, Kevin Harvick and Ryan Newman.  Maybe just talk briefly about those two and why you think they’re special and how they got here.

JIM CAMPBELL:  Well, Ryan Newman just keeps coming.  He keeps getting stronger race after race, and that team has just gotten in a great rhythm and stronger every single race.  So I think that they have momentum because of that.  Now, they haven’t won a race yet, but they are charging.

I think with Kevin Harvick, he’s focused, he’s mentally tough, and he’s a leader from the cockpit of the car.  And when I think about the last time Stewart‑Haas won the championship with Tony in ’11, Tony had a lot of those same attributes:  Focused, mentally tough, and he led from the cockpit.  And so we’ll see where these two guys net out.  The competition is tough.  Anything can happen, and we expect there’s going to be some curveballs and surprises in how the teams react.  Same focus, calm, and the guys leading from the cockpit with the team is going to have the best chance to win.

KERRY THARP:  Gentlemen, I can’t thank you enough.  Jamie, Jim and David, for a great season already and all the support and just being great partners to NASCAR.  Thank you for being here today, and good luck the rest of this weekend.

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