See below for an excerpt from my new book Branding Speed: How To Market Your Club Racing Team and Create the Image You Want. <- click this for more information on Branding Speed on Amazon.
It’s 1992 and I’ve just moved to Minneapolis after graduating from
Drake University.
I didn’t know anyone but my girlfriend. I was trying to find a way into
racing. I had very little money, and I discovered that autocross was an
inexpensive way into the sport. I could use a car I already had, entry fees
were $20, and it was just show up and run.
At my first event, I met Mark and Mary Utecht and their great group of
friends. Mark and Mary were autocrossing their Dodge Omni GLH-S
(Goes Like Hell, S’more).
I soon learned Mark and Mary ran Mayhem Racing—a great team name!
Back in 1992, Mayhem Racing was a club road racing team. They fielded
a road racing Dodge Omni in the Sports Car Club of America’s (SCCA)
Improved Touring B (ITB) class for Mark. He was a multi-time Central
Division and Land O’ Lakes Region Champion in SCCA. Alongside
Mark, Tom Schabel ran an identically prepared Ford Fiesta in Improved
Touring C (ITC). The SCCA classes cars by speed. In the Improved Touring
Class, ITA was fastest, ITB was the middle, and ITC was the slowest.
Mark’s personal brand prioritized doing what’s right followed closely by
his driving talent, fierce competitiveness, and keen mechanical knowledge.
He cut his teeth as a service station technician during college, so
he’d seen and repaired just about everything. This experience came in
super handy when things went wrong. Mark was always the first one to
dive in and figure out how to get back on track.
He’s a larger-than-life character who brings fun with him wherever he goes.
Mark’s personal brand drove the personality of Mayhem Racing. One of
the things Mark said to me early on is that once the race car goes out onto
the track, consider it lost; whatever you bring back is a bonus. There are
no certainties in racing. Mark’s fierce, competitive spirit was always there.
One of the first things I noticed about Mayhem Racing was the consistency
of the car and the team’s preparation. When I joined, there was the
Ford Fiesta and Dodge Omni. Both were painted in the same refrigerator
white with black lettering in the same font and large NASCAR-style
numbers on the doors. Everybody on the team knew each other well and
had a similar sense of humor, giving each other grief and laughing often.
I helped at several events in 1992 and got to know everybody during
autocrosses and subsequent Minnesota Autocross Club meetings. In the
summer of 1992, I crewed for Mark and the team up at Brainerd International
Raceway. We raced hard during the day on Saturday, ate well,
and sat around the campfire telling stories until late at night, only to be
up early and doing it all over again on Sunday.
Mayhem Racing was the first branded road racing team I was a part of,
and it was the team that shaped my racing experience for years to come.
FROM PERCEPTION TO REALITY
First and foremost, this is a book by a club racer for club racers. With this
as my focus, I want to avoid a boring textbook definition of branding wordsmithed
by a dozen staffers. For us racers, branding is about giving our audience,
partners, and fans a reason to choose us over our competitors.
You and your club team are either actively or passively branding yourself
with each action, each event, each social media post, and each fan interaction.
Branding is much more than your logo or paint scheme, though these are
important elements of every good club racing brand. A brand is made up of
character and…