A New CART Form

Andretti and Unser are synonymous with auto racing in America, but one driver who will be peeling down Shoreline Drive in Long Beach today at 190 mph is synonymous with racing in Mexico.

And that’s important, because Adrian Fernandez may well be the man who saves CART.

Chris Pook, president of Championship Auto Racing Teams Inc., will get the credit if the Champ Car World Series defies recent death knells. But of the 19 cars competing this weekend at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, five of them -- more than 25% of the field -- will carry the sponsorship of corporate Mexico.

Four cars will be driven by Mexican drivers. Three of them will have Mexican owners, including Fernandez.

And organizers say about 25% of those attending race weekend are likely to be Latino.

Fernandez’s legacy as a pioneer in Mexican racing has been galvanized by his role in helping mold CART in ways not usually shaped by drivers.

It was Fernandez who worked hard to get a race in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2001, where more than 318,000 attended during the race weekend, 116,000 on race day.

Success in Monterrey spawned a race in Mexico City in 2002, and now two other Mexican cities -- Cancun is said to be one of them -- have requested a third race.

The CART series, prematurely written off after the exodus of owners and manufacturers to the Indy Racing League, now has Mexico written all over it.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that if Adrian hadn’t been there, there would be zero Mexican cars, sponsors and drivers in the series,” said Bobby Rahal, who owns a car sponsored by Mexican supermarket chain Gigante and driven by Mexico City native Michel Jordain Jr. “As an ambassador, as an influencer in racing and particularly in the Spanish communities in the future ... he can be as big as he wants to be.

“His role and his impact on racing in North America will go far beyond the Mexican borders.”

Although Fernandez has won only seven times in 11 seasons, in Mexico he casts a shadow similar to those of John Force and Richard Petty in the U.S. Fernandez’s car -- painted in the red, white and green of Mexico -- carries the longest-running primary sponsorship in CART, 11 years with Tecate beer. Quaker State, an associate sponsor, has been with him for 17 years, and Grupo Carso -- the umbrella company of Telmex -- has been with him for eight.

“In the modern-day world of marketing, Adrian led the way,” Pook said. “He wrote the book on how to do it.”

Nobody is calling Fernandez the most influential driver in CART’s history -- that honor probably belongs to Mario Andretti -- but Jordain credits Fernandez for steadying CART in its darkest hour.

“Hopefully we can say 20 years from now that CART survived because of what Adrian started,” Jordain said.

Keith Wiggins, minority owner of the Mexican-owned Herdez Competition, said CART “wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Mexican support.” And that support, he added, wouldn’t be in CART if it weren’t for Fernandez.

The ties are obvious at Long Beach, the signature event in the Champ Car World Series.

Four years ago, Grand Prix Assn. of Long Beach President Jim Michaelian noticed that 4% of those who purchased tickets from his organization had Spanish surnames.

“We began to involve Adrian in a number of in-person promotions, began advertising substantially in the Hispanic media, and over four years, [24.5%] of our ticket buyers have a Hispanic surname, which is a phenomenal growth pattern,” Michaelian said.

The byproduct is that Mexican sponsors can target the Latino market, as well as a large non-Latino market, especially as it branches into the U.S., Canada and Europe. Tecate is locked in an international beer war with Corona that rivals the Budweiser-Miller rivalry. Tecate this year became the Grand Prix’s official beer. Corona sponsors the car driven by Rodolfo Lavin. Herdez, a maker of canned goods, is also international in scope and sponsors two cars.

Gigante, Mexico’s third-largest supermarket chain with 270 stores, became a full-time sponsor of Jordain’s car last season. Its first foray into the U.S. is in Los Angeles, where there are four stores with another four on the way. Its long-term goal is to service the Latino community in the U.S.

Latinos are 13.2% of the U.S. population, a segment growing at four times the national average that has surpassed African Americans (12.7%) as the largest minority group in the U.S. -- one with more than $452 billion in disposable income.

“It’s a vibrant economy, extremely closely tied to the U.S. socially, financially and culturally,” Rahal said. “It’s the second-largest population by group -- how can you ignore that?

“This is not some second-rate effort. It’s no different than working with well-known American companies like Miller [which sponsors Rahal’s IRL car driven by Kenny Brack]. In some ways, I think they’re much more imaginative about how to derive value from the [racing] program than some U.S.-based companies we’ve had in the past.”

That value is likely to expand. “We’re getting back more than that just in media presence,” said Jorge Quintanilla, director of Gigante Racing, which spends between $10 million and $15 million annually. “Michel [Jordain] is becoming an idol in Mexico. Every time his name is mentioned, we’re leveraging from it.

Pook’s corporate marketing model for the series is deeply entrenched in the North American Free Trade Agreement concept, and it’s likely to be milked for all it’s worth.

“I’m sure sponsorship involvement of Mexican companies is going to increase,” Quintanilla said, noting that even in a flat economy Gigante is getting a great return on its dollar, and that racing and CART have “become a great media for us.”

Fernandez, who will be 40 on April 20, is the racing icon of Mexico, and Jordain Jr., 26, appears to be his successor. Mario Dominguez, 27, and Lavin, 25, are also in the mix. Luis Diaz, 24, is waiting in the wings in the Toyota Atlantics, a junior series that races on Sunday mornings. There are no fewer than five Mexicans in one of CART’s other junior formulas, the Barber Dodge series.

“He is my inspiration,” Diaz said of Fernandez. “He’s the one who opened the doors for other Mexican drivers. He’s a great example to follow, not only a good driver but great as a person, working with sponsors and media. All the young drivers, not just Mexicans, need to follow Adrian’s example. He’s a professional.”

But it hasn’t been easy for Fernandez, who didn’t come from wealth like some of the Mexican racers who preceded him, brothers Pedro and Ricardo Rodriguez in the 1960s, and Hector Rebaque and Josele Garza in the 1980s.

Fernandez went to Europe in 1987 with a dream and $5,000. He spent it on a team test, and lost it when it snowed on the day of the test.

He said he lived out of a camper shell, took one shower a week and bathed daily from a soda bottle filled with water. He refused to ask his father for money on principle because it would have symbolized failure.

He beat the bushes for sponsorship and raced in the British RAC Formula 1600 series when he could. He returned to Mexico in 1989 and won the Formula 3 series title in 1991. With his father hounding him to get a real job, Fernandez came to America in 1992 with enough funding for two races in the Indy Lights series, which was a feeder for the Champ Cars.

“When he arrived with that hot pink car and the Amway sponsorship and started blowing the doors off everyone ... marketing and PR, that’s what he was about, and what he’s still about,” said Pook, who has called CART a marketing company that uses racing as a platform. “He hustled and pushed and had a determination he wanted to get there.”

Fernandez won his debut in Phoenix and Amway stayed with him for the full season.

He has won more than $6.6 million since joining CART in 1993, finished second in the championship in 2000, and became a team owner/driver in 2001. With co-owner Tom Anderson, he also owns an IRL team with driver Roger Yasukawa. The operations have a combined budget of about $18 million.

“I have everything it takes to win races like I did with Patrick Racing [from 1998 to 2000], and I’m sure I will do that very soon,” Fernandez said. “I want to prove it to myself, because that’s why I built the team, to be more competitive and have more control of the future, and prove that I did the right thing.

“Everyone thought we were crazy with what we were trying to do. Now there is a road, and our marketing strategy has proven it can work. We have never had so many drivers and sponsors from Mexico, and the popularity we have achieved racing in Mexico is tremendous.”

Fernandez says he has at least two or three more years in him as a driver. When he retires, he anticipates broadening his scope of influence among younger drivers in the junior formulas. As a team owner, his goal is to make things easier for those who follow his tracks.

“I’m here to make sure that other kids are successful,” Fernandez said. “That’s what I’d be happiest with. I’m here to help the next generation.

“I’m not here to say that I’m the guy who saved CART.”