Dinner with Racers Mar 28, 2026

Ep.324 – RE-HEATED: Jim Michaelian

Annotations will appear as you listen

0:00

107:39

Concept

IndyCar

IndyCar is the big open-wheel racing league in the U.S. It’s where drivers race specialized cars on tracks like ovals and road courses.

Term

Engine on!

“Engine on!” is a command used in racing to tell someone the engine should be running. It’s part of the radio communication that keeps everything coordinated during the race.

Concept

Grand Prix of Long Beach

This is a big racing event in Long Beach, California. The race track isn’t a permanent track—it’s built temporarily on city streets and then removed after the event.

Concept

street circuit

A street circuit is a race course made from regular city streets. Because it’s temporary, organizers have to set it up before the race and remove it afterward.

Concept

Long Beach Grand Prix

The Long Beach Grand Prix is a big professional race in Long Beach, California. It’s run on city streets, so the track is tight and the drivers have to be precise.

Concept

Watkins Glen's road race

Watkins Glen is a well-known race track. The point here is that serious crashes can make it harder to run other races because insurers and lawyers get nervous about safety and liability.

Term

K-Rail is a safety barrier you see on race tracks. It’s meant to slow down and redirect a crash, but the barrier has to be installed in a way that matches the track so it can actually keep the car under control.

Concept

sanctioning bodies

Sanctioning bodies are the organizations that officially approve races and set the rules for how events must be run. They typically require specific safety measures, track standards, and event procedures before they’ll sanction a race.

Concept

Formula one

Formula One (F1) is the top tier of open-wheel racing, with strict requirements for circuits, safety systems, and event operations. The speaker notes that F1 wouldn’t come to the circuit until the track had proven itself via a test race.

Concept

Mario Andretti

Mario Andretti is one of the most famous race drivers in American history. Mentioning him is a way of saying the event had major top-tier talent.

Company

CBS

CBS is a major U.S. broadcast network. In this segment, the speaker notes CBS involvement as critical for visibility because the race would be televised.

Concept

marquee

A marquee is the sign structure above a theater entrance, often with illuminated text or a movie title. In this story, the marquee was covered to prevent it from showing up on TV during the race.

Concept

pits

“Pits” are the pit lane and pit area where teams service the cars during a race weekend. Moving the pits changes how cars enter/exit the service area and can affect traffic flow and race logistics.

Company

Citibank

Citibank is a big company that helped pay for the racing event. Big sponsors like that can make it possible to put on a major race.

Company

Toyota

Toyota is mentioned as the main sponsor starting in 1980. When a company like Toyota becomes the title sponsor, it usually means the event is getting bigger and more credible.

Company

Valvoline

Valvoline makes car fluids, especially engine oil. When you see it at a race, it’s usually because they sponsor the event or team.

Company

Bridgestone

Bridgestone is a tire company. In racing, tires are a huge deal, so tire brands often sponsor events.

Brand

Acura

Acura is Honda’s luxury performance brand, and it has a long history of motorsports involvement and sponsorship. When a speaker says “you got Acura,” they’re referring to brand backing that can support an event’s growth and longevity.

Concept

Indy 500

The Indy 500 is a famous race in Indianapolis. It’s a big deal in racing, so people mention it when talking about teams and sponsorships.

Concept

race weekend

A “race weekend” is the whole event period around a race—everything leading up to the actual race day. It’s not just driving; it’s also planning, meetings, and support.

Concept

turn one

Turn one is the first corner on a race track. Because everyone is still getting up to speed and braking hard, it’s a common place for big moments or crashes.

Brand

Honda

They mention Honda as the other automaker they talked to. That usually means a business or racing relationship—like support or sponsorship—rather than something about a specific car part.

Concept

sports car racing

Sports car racing is a type of racing where cars are built for performance and often based on real models. Races can be short or long, and teams usually focus a lot on keeping the car fast for the whole event.

Concept

gamesmanship

Gamesmanship means playing smart and using tactics to get an edge. It’s less about cheating and more about out-thinking the other side.

Concept

grandstand seats

Grandstand seats are the rows of seats where spectators watch from. Counting them gives you a sense of how many people the event can hold.

Concept

permitting standpoint

Permitting is the official permission you need from the city to do something. For a racing event, it usually means meeting safety and rules set by the local government.

Concept

military closures

Sometimes governments shut down military bases and shipyards. When that happens, the local economy can take a big hit because many jobs disappear, so the city has to reinvent itself.

Company

McDonnell Douglas

McDonnell Douglas was a big airplane and defense company. The speaker mentions it to explain that Long Beach had other major employers besides the Navy.

Concept

entertainment weekend

An entertainment weekend means the event is designed to be fun and engaging for fans, not only about who wins. The speaker is saying the races are part of a bigger experience that brings people back.

Concept

refund or a credit

Instead of only refunding, the organizers offered customers a choice: a refund or a credit toward a future race. This kind of policy is common when events are postponed or canceled because it helps preserve cash flow while retaining customer loyalty.

LIVE

The 1984 race was the beginning of a new era.

The first IndyCar race at Long Beach was also the first race of the year,

and veteran Mario Andretti dominated in his ninth appearance at Long Beach,

leading the entire race and securing his second Long Beach victory.

And now for Dinner with Racers, presented by...

Continental Tire.

With your hosts, Ryan Eversly and Sean Heckman.

Please hold your radio sound.

I was driving on very angry.

I was in the sound of a driver on the radio during a race.

What do you think I should do?

Engine on!

And welcome again to another edition of our reheated episodes of Dinner with Racers.

It's Sean here.

Continuing the tradition that we kind of just started,

there's been some feedback that, you know, since we typically don't release all of our new episodes

until the end of the year, why don't we reissue some of our old ones throughout the year

as we lead it up to that.

And that's sort of the new tradition.

We're starting here with some new stories and behind the scenes tales.

So this is an episode, it's literally episode 223 that we issued a few years ago.

And to be honest, this is a reheated episode I'd rather not have to send out in this way

because this is the episode with Jim McAlion,

who unfortunately passed away on Saturday, March 21st.

Jim is basically one of the founding fathers of the Grand Prix of Long Beach

and to the present day was sort of the guy running the day-to-day of it.

Ryan and I were very, very fortunate to do a project with them

for Dinner with Racers called Building Long Beach.

I think on Motor Trend it's called How to Build a Street Circuit

or something stupid like that.

But basically we spent a lot of time with Jim watching how the track got made.

Literally they have about 54 days to get the track going

and of course the event and then just a couple weeks to tear it all down.

And we were there for the whole process and could not be more appreciative

of Jim McAlion and his staff for opening their doors and really giving us a glimpse.

But it started with Jim. Jim on a personal level,

I spent a lot of time with him through this process.

For a guy at the time in his late 70s, he couldn't have been more sharp,

completely understood what storytelling was, what we were trying to do with the show

and for the most part kind of getting what we were doing.

So I'm thankful for the time. I hate that we're putting this episode out

in honor of that though.

But I think the best thing to do before we hit play on the episode

is actually to sample a little clip from our most recent Patreon that Ryan and I did.

Of course we have our dinner club membership and we do sort of a monthly series

but Ryan and I talked quite a bit about Jim McAlion and our experience with him on that

and I figured why not pull that same sample and put it right here

so you guys have some special behind the scenes memories of Jim

and then we'll continue with the episode from there.

So here's a little clip from Ryan and I talked about our memories of Jim

followed by of course Jim McAlion.

Unfortunate news that came out during Sebring, speaking of Long Beach.

Yeah, I just saw that.

Yeah.

You know, Jim McAlion who was one of the staples of the Long Beach Grand Prix

and somebody we spent a fair amount of time with when we did that

documentary a couple of years ago.

Passed away I guess unexpectedly and they talked about the broadcast a bit

but I was curious because we had some fun times on that project.

I guess we could put it that way.

I'm curious what the first thing that you think of when you think of Jim McAlion

because I've got a specific memory.

So first of all, yeah, I only read that light last night.

I had no idea because I hadn't kept up.

And yeah, I don't have words because obviously we spent, I mean,

three, four months with the people at Long Beach getting to know that program

and how that comes together.

And obviously that race very much was under the guise of Jim.

I mean, he was very, very, very involved in the day-to-day.

So it's unfortunate that he's not there for that leadership anymore.

Luckily, I've seen with Penske ownership now

and there's some very good people behind the scenes that the event will continue.

I'm sure just fine.

But you cannot separate Jim McAlion and Long Beach Grand Prix.

So it's a massive loss and it's very, very unfortunate to head into the race

in a few weeks knowing that there's that absence.

But on a very personal level, I spent a lot of time with Jim.

We did a lot of what we call follow-alongs on that project

where he was literally just mic'd up and I was just with him in his office

and doing a couple of days of the tracks and that kind of thing.

I mean, he was very much the honorary mayor of that city.

And so, yeah, I'll obviously miss him quite a bit.

Yeah.

First, like, honestly, the thing I think of the quickest and the most

was actually our interview with him.

That's exactly it.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, you know, I spent a lot of time with him mic'd up and he was one of those

classic examples when he's mic'd up of like, when he's done,

he's not like, hey, can I take this off?

He just takes it off and gives you the mic back and walks away.

Right.

We're done now.

Like, okay, that's fine.

But, you know, Jim has his ways.

He's very proud of the office they have there at the Long Beach Grand Prix.

Like, that office hasn't changed in 35 years, right?

Like, it's in the, it's kind of in like a, I don't want to say a rough area,

but a very mild area of Long Beach.

Sure.

And like the building, it's fine, but it's nothing crazy.

But their conference room, let's just say it's not a video-friendly conference room,

right?

Like, the windows are shit.

There's not a lot of artwork.

It's narrow.

Like, it just looks like an ugly conference room.

Right.

Fine to do real meetings, but he really, really, really wanted his interview there.

He sure did.

Yeah.

And like, he like, basically it was a thing and you and I both looked at it and like,

you've got enough experience to know exactly what makes an interview look good and you're

like, this ain't it.

Yeah.

But yeah, but like, he's effectively like, he's the star.

So we're going to do what he asks.

And so we took the, I'm actually very proud of both of us because we realized like,

okay, if it's going to be shit, let's embrace it.

Exactly right.

Like, let's exaggerate that this is a shit interview.

Yeah.

First thing that comes to mind is that, that shot in the, in the boardroom,

conference room.

And he really wanted to sit where he sits for his meetings and we're like, okay,

well, the way we have to shoot this, we're gonna have to sit at the other end of the

table.

So we shot it as such.

Yeah.

And he was like, what?

It's great.

We're like, if you're happy, we're happy, man.

So, but yeah.

First thing I thought about, you know, when thinking of a positive memory of him was sitting

20 feet away from him, but interviewing with headsets.

So it's kind of a strange feeling when you can hear somebody crystal clear, but they're

so far away.

Yeah.

And like, and if you look at, if you go back to the Long Beach episode on, it's on YouTube

with Motor Trend, the, like we adopted that, we embraced it with the shots, like the shots

are cartoonishly wide and we make it very clear we're a hundred feet away from each other

for no goddamn reason with like a pizza box in the middle.

That's right.

Because there's nothing to make the set.

There was nothing to make that room look good.

So I was very proud that we both said like, well, let's just go ugly then.

Yeah.

Let's make this cartoonishly stupid.

Yeah.

And embrace it.

And actually the interview was good.

My favorite story with, my favorite story that came out of that interview was him basically

admitting that they got investors on a con and he would not admit it.

That's right.

But it was clear as day they were lying about how much the value of that race was going to

have.

Yeah.

And yeah, I was, I was very proud of us, but yeah, yeah, it's, he's going to be, and

it's a force of that race is only a few weeks away because he's, you know, that's going

to, that's going to sting.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

But neat that we got to spend some time with him and get to know him.

So I'm happy that we were able to, you know, kind of celebrate what he's done with that,

that, that event and that town and everything.

And he'll be missed greatly.

Yeah.

All right.

We're going to start in five, four, three, two.

So 1973, there's this English travel agent by the name of Chris Pooke who has this idea

and somehow you get sorted into this.

How does all of this work?

Well, first of all, you have to understand what the climate situation was in Long Beach

at that time.

All right.

Long Beach always had a tendency to strive for big events that would mark them as a sophisticated

progressive, dynamic city.

Even in the seventies.

And, and as a result of that, they engaged in a variety of different special events,

some successful, some not so successful, but the Miss Universe pageant was here for a number

of years, way back when it carried a certain amount of cash with it.

That was followed, but that went away.

And then that was followed by the acquisition of the Queen Mary.

So the Queen Mary came in in 68 and went, you know, over to the other side, if you would,

on the other side of Rainbow Harbor.

And that was going to be the, the, the magnet to draw people and notoriety and prestige for

the city.

Well, that started to go away when, when people began to realize won the cost.

I think they required it for like $2 million.

And then they were required to put about a hundred million in to like restoring.

Just to make it, just to make it as a viable hotel and, and reinforcing.

So that, you know, that was a big spin.

Now all of a sudden the public is looking going, wow, you know, what's the ROI on that?

So then about like racing.

Chris had come along with the idea that why don't we look at doing an international street

race, a la Monaco, which would bring some of the attributes that could be assigned to

a special event, but we could do it in a successful manner.

Keep in mind that in 1974, 75, when the concept was first being discussed, there were no street

races in America.

Right.

Okay.

None.

No Detroit, no Vegas, no anything.

There's nothing.

Yeah.

The reason was, if you remember historically, way back when they had some fatalities associated

with Watkins Glen's road race.

And after that, none of those, none of those type of events were insurable.

So there was no way you were going to conduct those in a modern city that was going to require

some assurance about safety and insurance and all the things.

So even in the 70s, the lawyers and insurance screwed it up.

Exactly.

So that's, that's where we were at.

So one, some of the hurdles that needed to be overcome was one, selling the concept to

the city that it could in fact accomplish a number of these goals, which they were anxious

to do and had attempted to do in the past.

And the other thing was how do you do it so that we, the city who hosts this event can

be assured that it's going to be done safely.

It's going to be done in a manner that doesn't impact negatively on the downtown area.

And two, and three, produces the effects that you claim you're going to be able to do.

So that was, that was a challenge to a multitude of different facts, facets there.

Okay.

Whether it was the city itself or talking to the state commissioner about authorization

to do it, whether it was going out raising money, because we basically went out and sold

stock on the original, the original offering we went out and sold $600,000 worth of stock

to our friends, you know, to all of us, right.

And as a consequence of that, we had originally filed for a million dollars and it was called,

in those days it was called an interest state offering, interest state.

It had to be people in California.

They had to have a certain level of income.

So they were like qualified investors and that's, I think, even what they call it today.

And they had to have a quote, interest in motor racing, unquote.

Those are the criteria.

So we went out to raise a million dollars, fell short of that skepticism.

We'd love to see one happen, but why don't you go run one and then we'll see where it goes.

So we took $600,000 and went back and convinced the state commissioner that, you know, we can

make it work at that.

We don't need to hit that million dollar mark right now.

And took that money and built a safety system.

Safety system had to be designed so that it would fit into the criteria that could be

insurable as far as a certain concern.

You couldn't just take, for example, K-Rail.

Or just take, you know, they've got K-Rail all over, just put it on the circuit.

Well, K-Rail doesn't work because it doesn't have a flat edge.

Right.

Okay.

It takes the car and rolls it up and then rolls it right back into everything else is going.

You want a flat edge, dissipates the energy and more importantly keeps the car contained.

Okay.

So we went to a gentleman named Dr. Peter Talbot out of San Francisco, the California

Sports Car Club up there and he designed the system that still exists today.

Flat edge on one side, tapered on the other side.

And then it was enhanced so that it could accommodate the poles, the fence and the cable.

All critical factors in terms of providing the level of security and safety that insurance

guys were looking for, the city was looking for, the sanctioning bodies were looking for

everybody.

So that was our first real challenge, raising the money, getting the system and then putting

it in place.

And all that happened in the summer of 1975, summer.

So what we were doing is, it was a very small group, there was only four or five of us.

Okay.

And we had a little office downtown up on the 600, top of the 600 building in the penthouse

up there.

And we were doing, you know, all of the different functions are spread out amongst everybody.

We all did virtually everything.

Okay.

We put that race on in September 28, 1975.

It was a four or five thousand race.

Four or five thousand was required because the formula one wouldn't come to a circuit

in those days until there had been some kind of a test race run.

Like a proof of concept.

Yeah.

And for us, by the way, if you ever have a chance to go back and look at the entry list

for the four or five thousand race at Long Beach in 1975, it is awesome.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't think people really appreciated the star power that was there.

I mean, Mario Andretti was there.

Brian Redman was there.

David Hobbs.

I mean, it was, because formula five thousand in those days was a pretty spectacular series.

Yeah.

It was, you know, the sort of the road racing version of Indy cars in those days.

So it was, it was pretty spectacular.

So we put that race on form of a thousand.

We had a couple of other secondary races and nice sunny day.

We went out and got television with CBS.

So CBS came in.

They broadcast it on a week delayed basis, but that was really critical because the criteria

that we used in order to justify the city giving us those streets was one, economic impact.

Two, the visibility they came about because the race was going to be televised and keep

in mind, when you televised a street race, it's different than a permanent circuit and

certainly different than if you're doing a stadium event, because the stadium event,

you guys are in production business.

It focuses in on the playing field.

So where's the playing field for a street race?

It's a huge part of land.

And the backdrop, which you can't miss because you're focusing on cars going down shoreline

drive.

And what do you see in the background?

Rainbow Harbor, the Port of Long Beach, the Queen Mary, you turned around the other way

for when they were going up on Ocean Boulevard, which we were in those days.

And you got the skyline of the city.

Now, now in those days, that quote, picturesque view was barren sand.

Right.

Out on shoreline drive.

And when you flipped it over the other way and you looked at the skyline of Long Beach,

it was flop houses and X-rated movie theaters on Ocean Boulevard.

Literally.

And we got pictures of it.

In fact, there's an old story, which is true, that before the Formula One race, back in

1977, I think it was, we went and covered up the marquee on the movie theater, the XXX

rated movie theater that was right at the start finish line on Ocean Boulevard so that it

wouldn't appear on television.

True story.

So you literally had to drape it over because.

Exactly.

Because nobody wanted to see that as a sort of epitomizing what, you know, this is what

Long Beach is about.

Right.

But I say that because that was the genesis behind all of the growth and the development,

all the things that have taken place.

In 1975, that hadn't even started yet.

Right.

And it took a number of years.

This world class race took place, or started with taking a right turn around Bodacious Tatas.

Yeah.

I mean, we, when we came down and did the old loop, we went up on Ocean Boulevard and

came around, which added, you know, a certain amount of flair, even though there was nothing

on Ocean Boulevard you wanted to look at.

And it wasn't, it wasn't until Ocean Boulevard began a real strong development phase that

we took, we took the racetrack off Ocean, brought down on Seaside Way.

And we did that one because we knew that the complaints and all of the logistical issues

that would arise when you got a Renaissance, you got a Weston at the time it was actually

Sheraton, now it's Weston, but all those hotels and the breaker was there.

So we took that, moved it down, moved the pits over on Shoreline Drive.

But that happened in 81, 82-ish, okay.

What happened in the interim there was the beginning was, was really tough, really tough.

We got through the 75 race and we turned around and did another, we did the Formula One race

in 76 in March 28, which ironically enough, nobody around here remembered that until they

reminded of the fact that this year, with the sequence that we have doing a race in September,

oh my God, can you do another race in, back in April?

I said, man, we did back in 75 when we had no money.

We had a staff of five people and we turned around and ran a Formula One race.

And everything is your first time, right?

So don't worry about it.

It's going to happen.

Yeah.

But, but when we came out of that, that Formula One and then Bernie was here and there were

some big numbers involved in those days.

And we didn't have Toyota as a title sponsor yet.

Toyota was just the automotive sponsor.

So we got through the 76 race and then we had a year to the 77 race.

And that's when it really got tough.

77 was our toughest year by far.

We had the mechanics of running the race down, but the resources had just, you know,

it didn't span that period of time.

Keep in mind that when you're running a special event, the advantage you have is most of the

revenue is paid in advance and the invoices and for expenses are coming in post-race.

But when you get down into May, June, July and August, because it got really dry.

Yeah.

So 77 was our toughest year just from a financial standpoint.

We were off of that initial investment.

You know, we were going around.

Yeah.

And so we had a board here.

We were going around making subsequent donations and, and contributions to how, you know, how

were we going to get through this phase?

Bernie came out in 77.

We didn't have the money to pay him.

Oh, wow.

Made a deal with him.

We'd pay him so much and then we'd pay him afterwards.

Right.

He was good about it.

Yeah.

He was here and he, you know, he recognized the fact that it would have been a black eye

for anybody.

He didn't say, oh.

And he's probably saw the value of the market.

Yeah.

The market.

It's on the California F1 back there.

And so we worked with him.

I remember, you know, there's some famous stories about, you know, on Friday morning, Friday

morning, before the cars went out, we had a meeting.

We had a meeting with the board, collected money from all of us.

Oh, wow.

Like everybody's like pulling their wallets.

Like passing around the collection trail.

There was an old saying for a while.

I hate to go to board meetings because every time I do, I end up getting hit up for some

more money.

And it was true.

But we got through 77 and that was the year that Mario won.

And that changed the complexity of our whole entire operation.

Suddenly, there was a perception that this is a big time event.

And when Mario Andretti wins a Formula One race in Long Beach, that sort of solidified

our position in terms of the racing hierarchy and validating the concept of running street

race in America.

Okay.

So those things all sort of came together.

And starting in 78, we still incurred some smaller losses, but they weren't, you know,

in those days, you know, seven figure loss was huge.

Yeah.

Right.

Wipe you out.

I mean, in those days.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I've lost a few dollars.

And then as time went along, we started to track more sponsors, which is key.

You know, Citibank came on board in 78 and 79.

We had additional sponsors.

And then in 80, Toyota came on board as a title sponsor.

And that also was one of those tent poles, one of those milestones that say, you know

what, if Toyota's invested, then I can go to the valvelines.

I can go to the, the, the, the various beverage companies and others and sell the idea that

this is a long-term commitment.

This is something that's going to last.

So you landed it.

You landed a big title sponsor and then you got a valveline.

Yeah.

Yep.

Same thing.

Right.

So, so, and, and, you know, at that time we had Bridgestone.

It's a tire company.

I know that's not part of your sponsor space.

How dare you, sir.

I mean, it's enough that you got Acura.

We'll take Acura, right?

You can't win them all.

There's a whole other story behind that.

But anyway, so, so it was, so as time progressed and as the event became more popular and when

you get into the 80s, you know, we were drawing, we were drawing huge crowds here, over 200,000

people.

There's, there are some pictures.

In fact, there's some down, I don't know if you caught them, there's some down in the

marketing department of those grandstands that were down there toward, were turned, just

before you got to turn one, keeping in mind that turn one was a right-hander, not a left-hander.

But when the Ferrari Club came down there, they took, they brought 6,000 people.

The Ferrari Club sat in one grandstand with their red hats on, 6,000.

We had over 200,000 people for Formula One, you know.

And, and in those days, that was just toward the end of Formula One at Watkins Glen.

And it was before the start of additional Formula One races here, Las Vegas, Detroit.

If you remember, they ran an Aborted Temp in Phoenix.

They ran 1984.

They ran one in Dallas, Texas, some of which we had some involvement with, some of which

didn't, but, but the concept was starting to catch on.

And what was the concept?

The concept was a lot of city leaders look to us and said, wow, okay, all those deliverables

you guys were talking about, when my constituents or my management team look up and see, there's

Long Beach, April, look at the backdrop, look at the beauty.

And by then, some of the elements that you see now were beginning to come into place.

Shoreline Village had been developed.

More importantly, Aaron Pritzker, the Pritzker family, Pritzker's own Hyatt Hotel chain,

amongst a lot of other things, was here in 1982.

And, and Aaron Pritzker said having, we took him, he gave him a pace car ride.

He was first for the duration of the race.

He said, if this city can host an event like this with 200,000 plus people here, then it

deserves our attention in terms of having a presence here.

And that was the genesis behind the appearance of what is now the Hyatt Regency, which was

the very first major hotel development.

Long before they appeared up on, yeah, the only hotel that was in downtown was across

the water where the Maya is now is called the Hilton.

Other than that, there was nothing here.

So the race was a dud.

There's a good chance that, you know, a lot of this now, now I've always said, we don't

take all the credit for what's happened downtown.

There's a lot of people who have been a part of that process, but you have to think that

the ability to showcase the assets of the city at least once a year has had an instrumental

effect in terms of, in terms of what's happened.

So, so that's where, you know, so as time went along and you began to see this development

and we, you know, we, in 82, 83, we ran Formula One here.

And then in 83, Bernie came back to us and said, I need more money to come back in 84

because our contract was up.

And at the time, he was looking at a sanction fee of about $2.5 million, which not chump

change even, you know, now, but a little on those days back then for sure.

And that was, that was our challenge.

Okay.

And we had a revenue share or anything like this straight up.

You write us a check and the challenge we had honestly was we were putting over 200,000

people in here, never had rain on any of, any Sunday.

In fact, virtually any of the race days had major sponsorship with Toyota and a lot of

ancillary sponsors and we weren't making any money.

Yeah.

I mean, minuscule amount.

Mm hmm.

And so that's a $2 million check on top of that.

Well, yeah, but it wasn't, it wasn't two and a half on top, but it was, it went from

like 1.75 up to two and a half.

So it was another.

But if you're just barely breaking even.

And this, you know, and quite frankly, there was a fairly astute city manager in there

in those days, John Deaver, you know, and we were talking to him about where the race

was going.

You know, he, he, he says, looked at it and said, guys, you're doing, you're doing all

of that and you're not realizing anything measurable in terms of financial success.

So you've got to re, you've got to rethink where you're at.

Because as we all said, one rainy day bingo, you know, you're right back where you were

in 77.

Right.

I don't want to be there anymore.

Don't want to be back.

So that was sort of the genesis behind looking at Bernie and Chris and I, if we flew to New

York, met with Bernie had dinner with him and, and told him, you know, the numbers just

don't work.

And he was pretty adamant.

That was what he was looking for.

And so at the same time, like you had said, street race is now seeing the success along

with start popping up in the U.S.

So now there becomes options in Detroit, options in Las Vegas.

You know, it's, it's weird when you start the foundational event and then a bunch of

other ones start popping up left and right.

But you know, success has many fathers.

Right.

The way it always works.

Yeah.

The reputation is the finest father.

Same way.

Have you had coffee with Kyle?

Huh?

Nothing.

Yeah.

So it was a consequence that that on that same trip we called to IndyCar and asked them

with, you know, what the situation was like and whether there was a chance to put something

together.

And after some discussions, not, not too long because we obviously were looking at a 1980

four race and we had to have some verification of where we're going to be at.

And so we switched to IndyCar 1984.

They came here for the first time.

Mario won again, which is hell of a good start.

But the backstory to that was our sanction fee in those days was $600,000.

So we actually reduced our expense and, and understood there was going to be a challenge.

You know, does it work for our sponsors?

Does it work for our fans?

The series and the different profile changes and all that.

Does it work for our fans too?

You know, so we anticipated a bit of a delusion, which there was, but then having Mario come

back and win that first race was really another one of those real critical things because

now suddenly people are looking at the viability of it and going.

So what's the difference?

Really?

Well, we went through the 80s and the 90s success with the, you know, the number of

large teams.

That was the days when, you know, Target was here, Sonari was here, Montoya was here.

Alan Jardin Jr. won six times here.

Mario's won four times here.

Tracy four times, you know, so it built a certain historical background to get to this.

Then we get to the 90s and everybody knows what happened when he got to the 90s.

What do you mean?

The bifurcation, as they say, off it went.

So we went through that and there were some adjustments he made.

I mean, Toyota was involved in the series and then all of a sudden they were on the other

side, Honda on the other side, Penske on the other side.

And then Ganassi was one of the first ones to go over and run in the in the 500 when it

was supposed to be, you know, exclusively top 25.

Yeah.

Involved with the with the Indie IRL in those days.

So we went through that and and change of ownership.

Our company originally, like I say, we went public in 96, 98.

We were bought by Dover Motorsports, who obviously run the Dover race.

And at the time we're in the process of developing Nashville, the super speedway.

And in 2005, sort of toward the end of when this whole battle between IRL and then cart and

you know, champ going there turned into a champ car and where are we going to go with the series.

And obviously Long Beach was a target for for both side.

One wanted to keep it and one wanted to obtain it.

Right.

And then, as you said, in 08, why the death knell told and, you know, everything evolved into

into one, which is now the the Indie Racing series.

And we switched over actually we ran the last we ran the last champ car race here in 09 in

April.

And that was that was it from then on.

Everything shifted over.

That was a challenging time just because of the duality.

And you know, is that the same cars that run now?

It's similar.

They look the same, but they're kind of different.

And the drivers, where are they?

Where are they running at?

Do I see, you know, it was a mess and sponsors quite frankly, you know, had the challenge

of trying to sort it all out.

And when you guys go out and solicit sponsorship, right?

When there's confusion in the marketplace, it's so hard to overcome that.

And if if there's confusion at your level, when you're presenting it, you can imagine

how it's heightened when it gets way upstairs and somebody looks at it goes.

So what?

Yeah.

Why are we doing this?

Explain to me again.

You know, there's two groups and they're fighting and and somehow the Indy 500, you

know, it goes nowhere.

Why do I want to do that?

Right.

So once there was clarity with regard to where they were going, that was a big assistant

to us in terms and that's 2010 virtually, you know, on down the road.

And so we started to really started to accelerate.

Then Toyota got to the point where they announced that they were going to Plano, which was a

significant development for us.

They were with us 40 for 43 years, 40 years as the title sponsor.

So when that announcement first came out, we had a long term deal, which we generally

did.

It didn't affect us immediately.

But the problem was is that the corporate Toyota was helping sponsor a lot of stuff,

which at the other the other regional areas, they would leave it to the regional dealer

group.

Right.

Make up your mind.

I mean here, right?

Yeah.

Toyota sponsors the Lakers.

Toyota sponsors the Angels or whatever it is.

Local money.

But that's Southern California Toyota dealers association, right?

That's not Toyota Motor Sales USA.

Here they were substantial participants in that thing.

So as a consequence of that, once that announcement was made, you could sort of see a handwriting

on the wall.

They got to the 40th, they got to the 39th year of the celebrity race, which started back

in 77, 78.

We first started that and they took it over.

And then they said, we're, you know, it was another one of those kind of things where everybody

was participating in it until we got to the recession.

Right after the recession, they were like everybody else went through all the books and went.

Yeah.

What are we doing?

Does anybody, because they were, those guys are really astute.

Yeah, right.

You know, motorsports had a chunk, PR had a chunk, branding had a chunk.

They were all contributing to it.

And then somebody said, what if we had all these chunks together?

And then they went, holy smokes.

It's expensive.

Right.

It was expensive.

We didn't, we quite frankly didn't realize how expensive it was until they came to us

and said, guys, if we want to continue doing this, we need some help from you.

Right.

And when you start adding up all of the various aspects of that, flights, hotel rooms, what

you need to do in terms of training, the cars, the maintenance.

Yeah.

And then, and then you get to race weekend and you got all the hospitality and you got

to get all the, and you got, everybody's got agents and people.

And the reason you have to take care of them is the agent says to you, to his star, he

says, so tell me again, you want to go do a celebrity race, right?

This Toyota celebrity race thing?

Yeah.

Okay.

And it takes 10 day, a 10 day commitment.

What are we getting for that?

Yeah.

And you're getting how much?

Yeah.

And if you tell me it's zero.

Yeah.

And my percentage of that is the same number.

That's 10 days you could be making money for both of us.

You got it.

And you're going to, and more importantly, you're going to turn down this gig that I got

for you to go race a car in the streets.

Yeah.

Tell me how that's going to work.

Break your neck and now I'm out of a job.

Yeah.

Donnie Osmond going upside down in turn one, that famous picture, you know.

Hero.

You know.

And we actually had a couple of people come down who were, I can't remember his name right

now, but they practiced on Friday and they actually sat on the pole for the Toyota pro

celebrity race.

And we announced it in the press room and not a half hour after that, the head of the

studio that he was.

Wasn't that the lead in Troublet?

Yeah.

Said, no, I don't think so.

I thought it was the same story.

Yeah.

But he called up and said, it's not happening.

Yeah.

Not happening.

They pulled them.

They pulled them on a Friday night.

They literally just didn't know he was running.

They obviously, somebody up there hadn't told them and all of a sudden it was like, our

star is going to be in it.

There hadn't been any incidents or anything.

But to him, non racing guy, racing, race cars, my star, get out of here.

Not going to happen.

Was that Adrian Brody or did he?

No, Adrian Brody actually ran.

He ran.

He did.

He did pretty good.

Patrick started there.

There are a number of guys that came out of that, you know, came out of that series.

It got the racing bug.

Frankie Munoz.

Yeah.

And then you realize that it's an expensive racing bug.

Yeah.

Talent matters.

I want to start my team.

I want to do this.

Yeah.

This is the whole life.

I want to do that.

I want to be a musician, too.

I want to be in a band, too.

Yeah.

So it's, so that, you know, so in 19, I mean, in 2018, that was the end of the end of the

relationship.

And they had, by then they had transitioned to Plano and God bless them.

They were great partners.

I got absolutely nothing negative to say about that.

How many other brands can you think of that are a title sponsor to an event that that's

that big and expensive for that long?

None.

That's impressive.

None.

That's like one of the longest.

We did the research on that.

And that was the longest running title sponsor of a singular event in motorsports.

Yeah.

45 years.

Yeah.

44, really.

Yeah.

And 40 of those, they were the title sponsor.

That's incredible.

Nobody has it.

Yeah.

And it won't happen anymore because nobody has that kind of longevity to it.

So then the challenge became, who are you going to replace it with?

Right.

You know, not an easy thing, quite frankly, just based on the heritage that was there

that was left from Toyota.

And that was, quite frankly, it was one of the things was people said, man, that's the

Toyota Grand Prix.

Right.

Well, they had the flow so well down.

Yeah.

Exactly.

You know what?

That's the Toyota Grand Prix.

And they're still going to call it the Toyota Grand Prix for how long, you know?

So, we had to get to the point where we said, time to make a clear distinction here.

Okay.

It's going to go to something else.

And that's when I went down to Honda and talked to John and actually talked to Honda

originally and then it, for a variety of reasons up there.

Yeah.

And I'm sure they could explain it a lot better than I can.

We got to go.

You know, it was a good fit for them.

You know, it's quite frankly, it turned out to be a good fit for us, to be honest with

you.

They're young.

You know, that whole group, very aggressive, proactive in market.

And that's what we were looking for because in all honesty, as much as we love Toyota,

when you do anything for that long, it gets to be a little bit commonplace.

The diametrically opposed to that was John and Greg DeWine and that group over there

were small, but we want to make the, you know, the accurate name and they're doing it.

So, Long Beach Grand Prix is closely affiliated with two key names, getting it going.

Jim McHaley and Chris Pooke.

And Chris Pooke, as we understand with the travel agent, how do you guys even meet?

Well, actually, Chris had the idea and took it to the city and was in the process of selling

them on the concept.

I lived in Long Beach.

I had graduated from UCLA and with my MBA and had been involved in a couple of companies.

But I lived in Long Beach and I heard about this guy who intended to start a motor race,

street race.

And where are you?

My city.

Oh, I've been a fan ever since I heard the sounds of sea-bring with Corvettes back in,

you know, before you guys were born.

And it's been a very expensive, but very fuel, kind of a vocation.

So, there was an appearance before the Coastal Commission at the Port of Long Beach office

back in early 75.

I went to it.

And you didn't know Chris at all?

I didn't know Chris at all.

Okay.

But I went there as a proponent, okay?

Long Beach guy and I would be very interested in having this happen.

I met Chris at the time and, you know, I said, I'm available to be involved.

I obviously knew the sport because I've been following it for forever.

I went out the Riverside, watched sports car racing out there.

I'm sort of a sports car guy.

And you're like mid-late 20s at this point?

I was early, just at 30.

Okay.

So, when I, when I did, he was just putting together his staff.

He didn't really have, he had, you know, he'd been talking to Gurney and to Phil Hill,

but we had a PR guy who's Pete Byro, who's well known for his photography efforts.

We had a marketing guy, Brian Turner, and we had a assistant and myself.

And that was about it.

And then we brought an operations guy, Senator Oldfield on.

What was your first exchange with Chris?

I introduced myself and said that, you know, I was in Long Beach and I was a big supporter

and wanted to see about a way to be involved.

So, you didn't show up as like the cocky kid with an MBA like, hey, I'm going to help you run this.

You know what you need to do.

No, no. In fact, at the time, I was interested in being an investor in the enterprise.

So, I didn't come as a necessary as an employee.

You came with money.

Yeah.

I had a little bit of money.

I practiced last year.

Definitely got it.

See you right here at the table.

That's right.

Yeah.

So, that was the idea behind it.

And I went to work.

Actually, my first job was primarily involved in the financial area and the promotional area.

Okay.

And so, I came on board like in early in 1975.

Right.

And did Chris have any reputation prior to this or is he just some random guy that wanted to get this going

and somehow knew how to get through the city?

Well, he had met some individuals in town here, primary through his business.

And there were a couple of stockbrokers, Jack Queen and Stu Elner, who were instrumental in raising the funds.

And then I obviously got introduced to them and Jim wants to be involved.

And so, we were involved in the recruitment of funds for that.

Okay.

So, that's how, that was the start.

It was a very small, utilitarian group that put the first race together.

And quite frankly, to be honest with you, and I think it's part of the record,

we didn't even get paid for a good nine, almost a year.

Yeah.

Sounds like it was a great way to, like any racing venture was a good way to lose money.

Yeah.

I mean, it's typical, right?

You know, we were all scrambling and seeing what we could do.

Critical question because this is true for any racing venture we know.

So, you had, you've been a lifelong race fan, been involved in different capacities,

even prior to Long Beach.

How many of the investment group were race fans?

About half of them.

Okay.

Some of them followed the sport.

Some of them were engaged in, one of them had an auto repair shop.

One of them had a loom arable sold Jaguars and Lotus and whatever.

So, you know he's shady.

There were some affiliations there and others were friends of friends that, you know, hey

buddy, come on in.

Okay.

So, if we go, if we call it 50-50, 50% is an easy sell.

They love racing.

They love cars.

Yeah.

The Monaco of California sold.

We've learned in our assorted meals that the key to starting as a driver, as a team owner,

as any sort of racing entrepreneur is to lie and just con your way through it.

Yep.

Was there any gamesmanship for, let's say, the other half of the investment group?

There was a...

Look at that pause.

Yeah.

There was a story being told about the potential for this event.

And, and...

He did not agree to this interview.

And it was up to them, you know, to see that there was some kind of a future payoff for

it.

It was easy.

I mean, quite frankly...

It was easy.

Quite frankly, the group that we were talking to were pretty, you know, money guys, and

to them, the minimum investment at that time was $5,000.

Oh, okay.

That was 20 shares, you know.

So, to them, you know, hey, I'll throw in 5, 10, 15.

And, and I'll tell you, in the, once we went, issued stock, did all of that, you know, for

years, that stock was declared in their minds, and ours to a certain degree, being valuable.

Right.

It was a penny stock.

Yeah.

They were giving it their family here, take this.

It was an old investment I made.

So, was there, you know, some fabrications?

It was the bitcoin of bad investments.

Yeah.

Could have been, you know.

And at the time, until we went, until we went public, and then all of a sudden, everybody

was running around, where are my stocks?

Yeah.

I didn't realize they were going to worth anything.

Yeah.

My kids got them.

I got to get them back.

Kids traded it for something called an apple or something.

Yeah, exactly.

So, was there, was there an attempt to, to fabricate something?

Not really, but we embellished the vision.

That's called a con.

Yeah.

I'm pretty sure that's fraud.

So, not if you, not if you deliver.

There he is.

Not if you deliver.

That's why you're still here, sir.

That's why you're still here.

Okay.

What did you do before any of this to have some, some finances available to invest?

Well, I, actually, I got out of college.

I got my MBA from UCLA, and I looked around.

In those days, there was something called an MBA program with most major industries.

You know, they were always anxious to get young people in.

Yeah, right.

So, I went around and interviewed.

I got, you know, some offers from like Proctor and Gamble.

For like junior executive kind of programs.

Yeah.

You know, and I ended up working for Bore Warner.

And one of the reasons I worked for Bore Warner was the obvious one.

Yeah, my mind.

But the challenge you had with Bore Warner was where it's located.

You know where that is, don't you?

Chicago, Illinois.

Yeah.

Chicago, Illinois.

Southern California kid.

Yeah.

All his life.

Yeah.

I worked, when I, when I went to work for, for Bore Warner, they took me back to Chicago

in November.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Hello.

Yeah.

You're looking up at the buildings there and you see the temperature sign minus eight.

Here I am freezing to death.

Yeah.

So, already I'm thinking this ain't going to work too well.

Yeah.

But fortunately, I went to work for them on some of their local in, in Southern California,

because they had a couple of plants out here.

And then, then I had to make a decision after about a year, go back or stay here.

So, I stayed here and then I joined up with a buddy of mine, a graduate student and who

was interested in, and we were interested in some entrepreneurship and we opened a chain

of bookstores.

Oh, okay.

And did pretty well with them.

In those days, bookstores actually meant something.

Yeah.

I don't know what does, what does he mean by this?

And so, and then we've got an offer to somebody who wanted to buy them because they wanted

to integrate them into a bigger chain.

Yeah.

So, we sold it.

So, I got a reasonable return off of that and that's, you know, it was that, at that

particular phase of my life when I had, you know, I had a family and whatever, but we

had some money and a little bit and I wanted an opportunity.

So, all of a sudden, all of a sudden when somebody came along and said, hey, you know

what, here's a chance to invest it, but when it comes the opportunity to be involved.

So, you got conned.

Yeah, right.

But you were self-determined to prove you weren't conned.

Now, we're still here.

No, no, because my first job was in the financial department.

Remember that.

Right.

So, it was pretty hard to con the finance guy.

It was a clip of Chris Pooke with a fishing rod.

Just like, mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So, Southern California guy, right?

Yeah.

You grew up.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Alhambra, California.

Oh.

I went to Alhambra High School.

I guess where our offices are.

Where?

Atlantic Boulevard, right there.

Oh, really?

Yeah, Monterey Park will sell it.

Yeah, Monterey Park.

We're literally on the other side of the 10.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, that's my old stuff.

I went to Alhambra High School.

Too bad.

That's literally on my way to get to the work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

On Main Street, right?

I'll be like, Jim says what's up?

I used to run these streets.

Yeah.

And they're like, McKaylee, and he's not from Glendale.

But...

I know that joke.

Yeah.

Now you know the joke.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's very specific to people who live in Burbank, Glendale.

All right.

But so you grew up in the, let's call it the Pasadena area.

But Southern California got your whole life.

Long Beach in the 1960s and 1970s was maybe not the Hollywood image of what a Southern

California beach community looks like.

Why there?

Why Long Beach?

Yeah.

Why not Newport?

Why not Huntington, Venice?

All these, like, what you see in the movies was not what Long Beach looked like at the

No, it wasn't.

But I wasn't attracted to those venues.

I was a, you know, I come from a very middle-class family.

We didn't have major research.

I had two brothers, and my dad was a civil servant.

So we had very limited resources.

So I never was induced to go into areas where there was some degree of fame or infamy or

anything.

Right.

And I had relatives that lived in Long Beach.

My uncle was here.

He had a garage here.

He was in the garage business.

So I came down here.

I used to come down and work in his garage on cars just as a navigational thing.

Right.

So, and then what happened was to put myself through school, I got a job working on the

Harbor Beltline Railroad, which serves the port.

That sounds like labor, sir.

Yeah.

It was, we hustled all night to get cars, you know, spotted in the canneries down here.

So I lived in Long Beach because I was working here and I drove up to UCLA when I completed

my master's degree.

So I was here and I stayed here.

And yeah, you know, Long Beach is still a very attractive place for a person like myself

who didn't have huge social aspirations, whatever.

So I enjoyed it here.

Then the opportunity came along to get involved and I just solidified my justification for

staying here in Long Beach.

So you've been here your whole life.

And the picture that we've been painting about Long Beach initially is that it was pretty

rough.

Can you, could you imagine that it would look the way it does today when you're just showing

up here for the first time?

Not really.

I mean, you can say that was our aspirational goals and whatever.

But you know, honestly, how the city has grown.

I mean, there's a Navy town.

There's a Navy town.

Okay.

With all the attributes that come with a Navy operation down there.

What do you mean?

And I don't have to go into details.

I know you know all that stuff.

Put our audience doesn't.

Like work hard, play hard.

But I already explained.

I already explained to you that Ocean Boulevard had flop houses, X-rated movie theaters, and

assorted other.

Okay.

Assorted other.

Living at that, right?

Things that sailors would like for a day of leave.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Exactly.

And it had the pike in those days.

The pike with the big roller coaster, which I think you've seen pictures of.

And you know, and those are the attractions of the city at those times.

Would it have evolved into something that turns out to be like you see today?

You know, the potential was there, but nobody could talk about that at those days with any

degree of confidence.

But as time moved along, you had some smart leadership here in this town.

And as a consequence of that, they had the motivation to direct the city in the direction

it has gone in now and you're seeing the result of it.

You have your first race here in 75.

How many people show up?

That's a whole other story.

Do you want a short version or a long version?

Let's start short and then we'll ask questions.

All right.

Well, as you can see, we pick up on little details that we can explain and then we'll

Here's the detail for you.

Very good question.

Okay.

We set the parameters for where we were going to be for that first race with a guess of

how many people would come.

We put 40,000 grandstand seats in, 40,000 pretty good size.

We ran the race, September 28, 1975.

This facility was packed with people.

Every one of those grandstands were full and we had general mission people lining all of

the shoreline drive and up in front of the, on Ocean Boulevard.

Must have been at least 60 to 62,000 people here.

Your first race.

First race.

What a success.

Yeah.

Wow.

I remember we went up and saw the city officials.

Some of them had been very skeptical about, you know, this isn't going to work, right?

And they were up on the hospitality village up on the bluff, looking down, seeing this

mass congregation of people here.

I did too.

I went down to the box office, which was in the arena.

There was a gentleman down there named Stan Mack.

I walked in, he was a ticket manager.

I walked in and I said, Stan, can you imagine how we attracted all of these people to this

event?

He didn't even acknowledge me.

He was sitting there with one of those old fashioned calculators, you know, the kind

with the handle.

Mm hmm.

And he just kept looking at these little scripts of paper and pulling the handle.

Yeah.

That's what he did.

And then he turned around to me and he said, young man, which in those days, I guess I

qualified as.

He tore that little piece of paper off that adding machine and he handed it to me and

he said, I don't know how many people you saw out there, but this is the number of people

that paid.

And I looked at that and it was 37,909.

That number is embossed in my brain forever.

37,909 and now and now we're going to have to go out and explain to all of the various

constituents.

Wow.

The press, the city officials, our investors and the fans, right?

What happened?

So the con.

What happened?

Yeah.

And you know what happened?

What happened was we were so rushed to get this thing done that we thought, well, we'll

just put a fence there.

But he just put a fence.

That'll keep people out, right?

So you definitely were a 30 year old with an MPA like, oh, people will just behave.

Yeah.

I went to UCLA.

The door is closed.

No one's going to try to open it.

It's closed.

If there's one thing I know about UCLA people is that they're grounded in reality.

You must have been there a different era than I was there that's for sure.

But that's a true story.

And that's amazing.

And there's a headline in the press telegram with the next day saying 60,000 people attend

event, which they've kept just in May.

One third of the way.

Yeah.

Half lost.

Half of the way.

And that was a hard thing for us to try to, you know, so what happened to the money?

Right.

I mean, there were a few people thought we'd have scouted.

Out of here, right?

So true story.

That's what happened.

I don't know the political culture of Long Beach in the 1970s.

I'm sure some of the issues in the 70s are different than they are today, but politics

are politics.

They're going to have somebody who will see a racing opportunity as something as a positive.

And then there's always an opportunity to grandstand and posture and say, I'm against

this.

I have to think in the 1970s, it was no different.

What were some of the obstacles you guys really faced from just a permitting standpoint?

Well, the big concern was specifically the council people who represented the downtown

area.

Right.

Okay.

Was this more posh or genuine concern?

Well, I think to a certain degree, don't forget, there was a very old populace down

here, very old.

So a lot of the reaction to it was, how do I get around?

How do I go to church on Sunday?

I can't go over the bridge.

How do we facilitate getting my friends and activities associated with the event into

the place?

And they reacted to it, you know, and given a first time event that had ever taken place.

So there's no historical reference.

There's no legacy.

There's nothing.

It's very easy to be skeptical about, you know, so why was this going to be a success?

You know, nobody's ever done it.

Why, you know, why would that be the opportunity for somebody to come along and do that in

our city?

The counter to that was we need something like this because as I, you know, there have

been so many other attempts and they had all basically turned out to be failures.

So here's a chance for us to redeem ourselves in terms of being able to produce an event

that city can be proud of.

Because Long Beach had had other attempts at world-class events that maybe hadn't been

a success.

They had Miss Universe.

Right.

They had Miss Universe contest.

They had the Queen Mary, which even at that time was indicating that it was going to take

a number of...

Cut too?

Yeah.

Financial infusions to get the thing, yeah, exactly.

And to this day, I go to events and every once in a while, and there's not many left,

but I hear people say, you know, I was at the very first race.

You know what's the first question I ask them?

You pay?

You pay to get in here or not.

You can't let it go.

It's been so long.

So throughout this 1970s, 1980s history of Long Beach as the city develops, it's still

a naval shipyard town and the majority of businesses are built around it.

In the 1990s, not just Long Beach, but across America, there was a string of military closures,

bases, shipyards everywhere, and Long Beach was one of them.

What was the picture painted for you guys as that starts to happen?

Well, at the time, the mayor was Beverly O'Neill, and very fortunately for the city, she was

very astute in terms of the relationships she had either created or was going to create

that afforded the city the opportunity to transition from being a Navy town, which it

primarily was, although keep in mind, at the same time, you had McDonnell Douglas,

major aircraft manufacturer up in the middle of town, not insignificant in terms of employment

and functioning as a major business partner to the city in those days.

So this wasn't strictly a Navy town.

I think that Ms. Nomer's out there and a lot of people say that, but it did contribute,

but simultaneous to that, the port was beginning to really grow as a vital component.

So you had other economic factors in play, but losing the naval presence

and doing it fairly quickly, it didn't extend out for a number of years,

was a major financial blow to the city. But the mayor was very astute in terms of cultivating

relationships, both in Washington, some in Sacramento, but more important in Washington,

that afforded the city the opportunity to transition from being a Navy town to being

more economically driven by other endeavors that were equally important or in some cases more

important. So during the 90s, a lot of things popped up here. It was kind of like a complete

reinvention of the city. So the course has changed quite a bit over time because of that.

Is that a problem when a new building gets popped up or proposed?

Well, the course has had a number of iterations to it. Actually, some major, some minor,

there's been about eight of them since we had the original construction that

included Ocean Boulevard and Shoreland Drive. But in 2000, which was sort of the culmination

of some of these activities that you were referencing in the term of the 90s,

when the occurring was built, when the pike was starting to get developed, when all of the

activity on the south side of Shoreline, we had to make a major decision with regard to rerouting

the course. So we did that. We did that with the idea that there was going to be subsequent

development in and around some of the areas on the west side. So we put the course in a position

where that development could take place and we wouldn't need to change the actual circuit itself

from that point on. Because there are some challenges every time you make a course change,

if it's substantial, if it's minor moving a certain runoff area back or something like that,

it's not a big deal. But in 2000, we made a major change. Instead of going down Shoreline Drive

and making a right-hander and coming through the parking lot and coming back on seaside,

we now turned left and went in front of the aquarium, came double back down on Shoreline

and went up Pine Avenue. So that was a big change and it was accompanied by some of the

conversations we had with those developments, whether it was aquarium, whether it was restaurants,

whether it was a pike, in terms of how we were going to be able to conduct the race and yet

facilitate what their intentions were in terms of their operation of their various facilities.

Now you have a responsibility to create a cool event and obviously that is navigating the city,

but you're a racer and you also understand having to put on a good race and you can't expect

everybody in the city to understand what a good race layout is. When somebody says like, oh,

just make this left over here and make this right over here, you may look at that as a racer and go,

oh, he just lost a passing zone or, you know, now it's going to be a procession if we do this.

Does that become a real fear? Oh, let me tell you something. That point is very cogent here,

because, for example, when we went down and first began to take a look at going down shoreline

drive and making a left-hander on to Quaremoy, one of the challenges you have is you're,

by necessity, you're confined to whatever the parameters are with the street where you're

transitioning. Is it concrete to asphalt or vice versa? So those are things you've got to take

in mind. So when we first went down there and I went down and took a look at turn one,

they were just constructing the final configuration for turn one. And we went back to them and we

said turn one's 30 feet. It won't work because you're coming off shoreline drive, which is three

lanes wide into a confined space. Right. That is potential. This race might have a living

avarade. Your race is going to end in turn one is what's going to happen. Yeah. Okay. So we were

fortunate. We went to them and before you guys complete anything here, put a right turn lane

in and give us 40, almost 45. Oh, so they literally were going to cut it off at the like left hand

or left side of the road with the lanes and not the two lane road that it is now in turn one.

Exactly. And you as a racer went, oh, God, that's a bad idea. Because you've been funneling everybody.

Well, you know what it's like, right? The first guy in, the other guy's going to get shoved in

the tire period. And then it's going to happen. And now your race stops. Bingo. Pretty soon you

get a reputation for what's going to happen down in turn one. Yeah, start of the race.

Yeah, it's going to funnel everything really. So that was a that that's an example of where

being cognizant of those kind of idiosyncrasies helped us because if we had tried to go down

and do that after that street had been completed, it would cost us they told us that it was going

to cost somewhere on 350,000. Jesus Christ. We got it done. We got it done basically as they

You need a right hand turn lane. You really do. Yeah.

We go for that. I didn't tell them why. I just told them they needed one.

Right, right. It will really be good for everybody getting the Starbucks.

Let's talk about just some just some quick facts and figures on the operational side because we

don't have a ton of cover or we have a lot of footage. We don't necessarily have a lot of

people talking about how it actually works. You could get Dwight to come and talk to you.

One of the reasons we wanted to do this is that we just don't know how this event happened. It's

not a permanent course like Laguna Seca up the road or or Fontana. You know, you have to rebuild

this every year. What is your agreement with the city just in terms of how long you can be shut down?

So currently our agreement is that we have a stipulated time to set up and tear down 53 days

to the start of the race and 21 days afterwards. That's always a topic of discussion when we go

back for renewals. Yeah, right. Cut this down. Cut that down. And that's 53 days for walls, fencing,

jumbotron, electronics, all things. All of the physical elements that are necessary to conduct

this race have to be in place with between 53 days because their insurance guy is going to walk

around on Thursday or race weekend. He's either going to sign off on the course or he isn't.

So that is the pivotal point. And so there is no, there cannot be any reason for a delay or

countering any. What if it rains for a week? You can put it off, right? Well, yeah, right. Sure.

Unfortunately, they'll be racing in barbering that next week. That's the criteria that the city

and we have agreed upon in terms of the setup and the tear down portion of the race. Right.

How many streets are compromised by the course layout? Well, ironically enough, during the

time frame that we're set up, the streets are basically open until we get to Wednesday of

race week. And then we cut them. We close them down in some sequence, depending on, you know,

in the morning you close them down all the way in the afternoon. So 24 hours after the race is over,

the streets are open. So from a physical standpoint, the impact is really very limited.

Granted, you got to put grandstands up. You have to put up bridges. You have to put up all of the

circuit modifications in a necessary block, fence, cable, everything else. And that can,

that takes time to do. But once you get to the point where you have all of that stuff aggregated

together, it's much simpler to take it down than to put it up literally half or less than the

amount of time. So we're about five weeks out right now from the race. The track is half built

already. We've been following it this whole time. But it's literally not until days before the race

that you actually completely close it off. And there's a reason for that. One of the things

that we have agreed to do is to hold off on installing some of the circuit systems in front of

in front of very specific areas, the aquarium, the restaurants that sit down at the end of

shoreline drive, the pike itself, all of the idea that when you put a when you put up concrete block

and then you put up concrete, I mean, then you put fence on top of the concrete, cable, grandstand,

it does obliterate the view of the restaurants right out of the aquarium. Plus people can't drive

in now. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So we tend to hold off on that. So a lot of that work is

completed on a very tight timeframe, just because we've agreed that we wouldn't go in there and

put that construction in place during that earlier than that time. Right. So you have 53 days to

build up the track. The consequences are obvious if for some reason there's a construction delay

and the track's not ready in time. We understand that. Yeah, we understand that. Right. What are

21 day cleanup? What are the consequences if it goes into day 22 for whatever reason? Well,

we never have faced those consequences. We would we have a provision that says if there are contingencies

that we would have a more time to get something crazy. Right. But you know,

look, one of the things that's important here is understand that this really is a partnership

between the whole city and the event. If that partnership isn't there, then there's going

to be substantial problems that are going to rise on a continuing basis that could well be,

you know, very deleterious to the to the event itself. Okay. But if you do have a relationship,

then people say, okay, we understand some of the contingency arises. We will try to do what we can

accommodate and vice versa. Okay. I don't know. One of the things that you might not have been

advised that, you know, our, our operations department is involved in a number of other

activities other than what we do here at the Grand Prix. For example, just this weekend, we built

the facility out here in Manhattan Beach, where the AVP is playing their volleyball

term. We built all those structures, grandstand, staging, all that. Okay. One of the things we've

done here in this town is we've contributed often to activities that take place here. This weekend,

there's a trust that we put up for nothing. Right. So that a councilman up in the ninth

district can hold a jazz festival. Okay. Those are the kind of the, the, the, the quid pro

codes that go on with between an event and the whole city. And as long as the good will is there,

right, then there's an opportunity should some emergency arise, there would, you know, hopefully

be an understanding that, you know, we're going to do the best we can on the circumstance. If we're

just late because we're late, right, then that requires some kind of a justification. And fortunately,

we've never been in that position before. Like the grandstand, the grandstands, I'm assuming

the hospitality locations, anything that's being built for, you know, fans to stand on or be sheltered

by have to be OSHA certified, I'm assuming. They have to pass the, not right that, but they have

to pass the inspection of the city inspector. Yeah. Okay. Who looks at it from an engineering and

a safety standpoint. So then adding in all the different forms and approvals and, you know,

anything that it requires to be able to run an event like this from insurance and liability,

et cetera, the amount of paperwork alone to do something like this has to be just tremendous.

It is, but once you've done it and have a certain routine established and you've got

plans that have been approved by the engineers and signed off by the city and keep in mind that we own

virtually all of those assets, okay, grandstands, sweet materials, bridges, concrete, all of that.

So it's all under our domain. So we understand if there were to be any changes at all, we would

immediately notify the responsible parties, but where there isn't, there's a continuity there.

It's not like we're depending on a third party who well could have changed the design or the

product itself, which could cause this problem. So is that common for people that put on events

like this, especially in motorsports, to own all the assets like fencing materials and building

blocks and grandstands? What's common is to own the circuit safety system because it's unique.

Nobody's going to come in and give you 2000 cement blocks that have a flat edge

because there's only one use for it. That's the use for a motor racing event,

where it could differ would be grandstands, which there's a huge rental business for

grandstands, so you don't have to buy those if you don't want to. Bridges can actually be fabricated

on a rental basis, so they're available. Sweets material is really a lot of what constitutes a

suite really is the same construct that's involved with the grandstands because it's the base that

you build off of. So those are all variables and in our case we acquired those items as time went

along and now we have a complete dossier of all of those circuit constructs. So we've learned

that not only do you have full-time staff, you have a ton of volunteers, but just nuts and bolts.

How many full-time staff do you have working on the Grand Prix? 16, including operations.

How many volunteers do you have approximately? During the weekend we'll have up to 1500 volunteers.

Jesus Christ. That includes the stewards that operate the event, in this case the

Cal Club. They bring 350-400 people here and we have a variety of, we have committee 300 group,

we have race management group, and then we have those who are engaged in with some of our

sub-vendors in activities for them. So that number starts to mount fairly quickly when you get into

exactly how many people. Some people work all three days, some people work one day, two days,

three days. But I think what's equally significant is the fact that a lot of these people

actually schedule their vacation days and their activities based around when the Grand Prix is

date equity and why date equity in my mind is so important because you need to establish and

other people's schedules when your event is and what they need to do to be able to come and

participate. And that's one thing you lose if your date bounces all over the place and they

don't have a unique identifying time for it. So some of your volunteers actually

commit their vacation time to come be a part of this event where they're working?

Yes. That's incredible. Yeah. That actually happens and they find a way to justify that.

By yelling at the racers. Yeah. It's like today's the day I get to tell Scott Dixon to shut the

fuck, what? They're never yelling. You didn't give him a reason to. No, I just keep my mouth shut

because I know you'll find me. I know that guy. I know that guy. I'm very trackable.

I know generally people are avoiding of attendance figures, but what is the largest

attendance you've ever had here? Here? Yeah. In excess of 200,000. That's a big number.

We run and lately, the last few years, we've been running in the 180 to 185. Last 2019,

we had 187,000 people here. Three days. Three days. That's the reason I wanted to come do this

story because Sean's been coming to this race for his whole life. The first time I came was to

race in World Challenge 2015. The thing I've blown away by was the amount of people. I was like,

this is the most people that ever seen me drive a race car. This is incredible. Sean literally was

there and he's like, oh, this is a good turnout. That's Long Beach. I was like, this is incredible.

But your paddock was located inside the convention center. When you looked around in the convention

center, when you could hear Indy cars outside LMS and then on the IMSA outside racing activity and

you looked around 10, 15,000 people inside the convention center and you asked yourself,

why are those people in here? If they paid all that money to be watching races and you know what?

To them, they wanted to be in an air conditioned environment in the convention center with their

kids driving a simulator and it didn't matter to them who was outside. And you know what? God

bless them. And it does feel like a car show too in that sense. People pay to go to car shows and

there's a lot of stuff on it. The thing I'm taking away from this entire adventure on our side is

that it's not as much of a race as it is an event and a party. It's an entertainment weekend. That's

what we do. We put on an entertainment vehicle here. Happens to feature six races, but if you're

family will all find something that's enjoyable and at the end of the day, even if they don't

remember who won any of the races, if they give you a thumbs up as they're leaving the facility and

say, Jim had a great time, the odds are we're going to get them back subsequent years. That turns

out to be the key. If we don't focus on the idea that entertainment is our business, then we lose

track of what our real function is. And that's the reason why, as a die hard race guy from way

back when, I can't let that be the dominating factor in terms of the decision making process.

You got to think along the lines of what do our customers want. They want more of this, less of

that, different type of entertainment. What do they want? What's going to keep them coming back?

And if you're successful at that, you can divorce yourself from, gee, I always wanted to see this

or I always wanted to run this. You can't do that for very long because you're playing to one

person, to one audience. You can't do that. Is it crazy that with 200,000 people, they are single

handedly there because of Robbie Gordon? Well, that's what Robbie says. I mean, I have no way to

disprove it either. Well, it's logic and reason. Yeah, right. So the just the business of how it

runs here. So we are sitting in a conference room provided by the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach,

the GP ALP. And you guys are a private company. We're an LLC, which is owned by

another LLC, Aquarium Holdings. And that's owned by two individuals, Kevin Calcoven and Jerry

Forsythe, who are 50% partners in terms of the enterprise. Do you still answer to them?

Do you have to answer to them still? Yeah, but they're they're pretty good guys.

I wasn't spying or anything, but there's a letter on the front desk that says Jerry Forsythe. And I was

like, Oh, all right. Yeah. You know what that is? You know what that is? No clue. That's just monthly

financials that we send. And Jerry doesn't do email. Oh, we send like a good efficient businessman.

Yeah, exactly. Jerry's Jerry. Time is money. Where's my postal letter? Where's my print out?

Jerry's that that's where Jerry is. But I give him credit, you know, they're good guys to work

for because they they come out to the race. Kevin comes every year, Jerry came the last time.

And, you know, what you're achieving is is perceptible to everybody that comes to the event.

I mean, you can't create the people, you can't create the environment, they walk away, they say,

this is a good deal or it is. Go from there. So so technically, as the you are the promoters,

organizers of the operators of the events. But it is, it is technically an event that is sort of

renting the venue from the city of Long Beach. Yes, it is. And to the extent that we provide,

we operate this event on the city domain. Okay, through an agreement with the city

that provides us with the the opportunity to conduct this event on city streets and with

the public development that's downtown, including the convention center as a part and parcel of

the infrastructure of the event. So technically, you guys have this contract with the city if

they wanted to keep the race going, it could be open to somebody else to take from you.

No, that's not true. No, okay, I don't know. That's true. No, we have provisions in our agreement

whereby we have a singular rights to run this race in this town. Okay, so it is your event.

The only thing that kills it is the event going away. Exactly. Exactly. So you do in fact run

this town. No, no, because let me tear the counter argument to that. Okay, by those who are not

exactly great supporters of ours, this race comes into town, provides all the benefits that we talked

about, we talked about $33 million worth of economic impact, $700,000 of direct tax into the

coffers of this city, 300 equivalent of 351 full time jobs, just the city of Long Beach,

it's twice that in the region. All right, but there's something who would say, you know what,

that's a three day event. Right. Okay, three days takes up a lot of room and space and time with

the 53 day setup, 20 days after, is that the best use for that property? Yeah. And sometimes that,

you know, depending on what they're advocating, that can be a that can be a tough argument. Yeah,

right. Because someone can say, if I could get that space with ocean frontage, and I could develop it,

I can put those dollars in your pocket city. Yeah. And you avoid the inconvenience of all

the things that come about because we're running a race. Right, right. It's an argument. Yeah.

You know, now nobody's come up with something that's an adequate replacement for that. Right.

Could that happen in the future? Who knows? Look at all the other developments taking place. Don't

know. Yeah. It's Robbie. It's Robbie Gordon. I could do this.

All right. So the event does legitimately have detractors. There are people on on a on a,

there are people on a political level, there are people on a community level who feel like this

event gets in the way. What are the biggest complaints that you face? Well, it's a variety

to the people right downtown. It's the inconvenience to their driveways are blocked or no, no, no,

it's that there is, you know, the we talked about construction, the narrowing of the roads,

the backing up the traffic, what happens during race time? We've got all these people coming into

town. And if they leave litter and trash, and we try to clean up for it. But if you're looking for

some excuse to justify your position, opposition to the race, you know, you can find it, you know,

that you can't put on an event of this magnitude and not incur some inconvenience for some people.

There are some merchants that don't benefit from this race. Okay. There's a hat guy that's down in

Shoreline Village, let's say. His business doesn't work well during race weekend. Okay. We're selling

hats. We're selling hats to race fans. Right. He sells different hats. How many people are wandering

down in the Shoreline Village when the cars are going, zooming down Shoreline? I mean,

all of those things are factors that people take into consideration when they say what impact does

it have on me and my return and my quality of life, et cetera. And the other thing taken into

consideration is that you got a lot of new people that have moved into town in the last decade,

let's say, to whom the legacy, the contribution, all of the various facets of this event. Okay.

You run the event. You know, there's less than overly impressed. Let's just put it that way.

And to them, to a lot of them, they're just neutral. It happens as part of the, it's part

of the landscape and get on with it. But you're going to find a few people who say, you know,

why are we running a race? And more, you know, and equally important, what is the

environmental impact this race? Which is obviously a relatively new cultural factor.

Never was, never was an issue. But now you start to hear a little bit about, so

how much, what fuel do you use? And is this carbon plus and not carbon neutral?

And, you know, and the irony, the whole thing is, you know, in 16 and 17, we ran formulae here.

We ran a formulae race here. And a lot of those people weren't buying tickets. They were excited

about coming to a formulae race either. You're saying to yourself, how much more, you know,

how much more purity could you have? Plus, if you want to see environmental impact, walk one

mile to the 710 freeway. What do you mean? Hey, there's tussles out there. So with the detractors,

whether they're residents or local businesses, how many of them are the proverbial person who moves

next to an airport? How many of these people came after the race had already existed? The

vast majority of them. I mean, been just for 45 years. Right. Keep in mind, I don't know if you

heard this before, but back in 1975, when we first started here, there were people who were

very concerned about the impact of the race on their health, noise, pollution, right? Right. So

what we did was we agreed to the city that we would transport those people out of town

on race day, Saturday and some trucker ride. The hater bus? So we did it. We took like 400 people

out. Wow. Put them on buses. You had like a hater bus? Yeah. No, we took them out of, you know,

slow buses and we took them down and we'd go to various attractions and whatever. Really? Yeah. So

we did that. Yeah. Where did you send them? Well, we took them to like, we go to a museum or we'd

go to a desert. You know, no. Actually, California. Don't say that. We took, we took them to Palm

Springs once and one guy got off the bus and never got back on and he had to, to get a taxi

to bring him back there. That's a whole nother story. That's on him. I was going to say, wait,

you're bringing him back? Yeah. Yeah, the buses all broke down. So, but as a result of that, why,

we had, you know, this substantial migration out of town and back. As the years have gone by,

we have retained that philosophy, except it only applies to, to facilities that were built

at the time the race started. So, it answers this question about, you know, I moved in afterwards.

So, if you're like a grandfathered building, you're allowed to be part of the 8 bus. So,

if you're in the building, you're going to have the opportunity to participate. Do you know where

we're at now? 45 years later, we order one 15 person bus. Oh, like a van? And that's more than,

yeah, exactly. And that's more than enough. We don't even get a bus anymore. We just get a,

but you still, so you've still, we still do it. And you know why we do it? Why we do it?

Because it alleviates any of the pressure from people saying, I can't tolerate this.

You're in that building over there, getting a free ride. We're going. Yeah. And in my mind,

and we've had discussions here from people, the newer people going, why are we spending on here?

Do it. Yeah. Do it. Yeah. Eliminate that whole potential for aggravation. Yeah. And we live with

it. What also gives you the opportunity to say, well, we did something. Yeah, absolutely. We're

not, we're not, we're not turning a blind eye. Yeah. We're continuing the philosophy they had

before. It's just that nobody wants to take advantage of it. Right. Here's an interesting

story. When we first started that first year, a lot of the, you know, the residents in

downtown area was very gentrified, you know, very, you know, they were older people. That's why

they came here, you know, from Iowa or wherever they came from. There it is. The Iowa by the sea.

It's what it was called. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So they left town. A lot of them left town.

Do you know the second year, the second year we ran 1976, the, the children and the grandchildren

of grandma, who had a apartment overlook on the course said, grandma, you can't leave town anymore.

And grandma says, I'm not leaving town because it's the only time I can get my

grandkids and my kids to come down and visit me because the race is here. Yeah. Right. They want

to come see grandma. So all of a sudden it was like, you turn from a negative to a positive.

From all the, you know, the, the, the grandmas and grandpas who were excited about the fact that

their family was paying attention to them. Oh, by the way, your apartment fronts on

ocean boulevard. You get to see the race. Yeah. True story. Yeah. They love field mileage.

That's awesome. Okay. Just a couple, a couple more things and then we'll wrap this up.

March, 2020. Track is well underway as far as construction. Tickets are already starting to

go out. I assume a large majority of your marketing budget is spent. And this COVID-19

starts making headlines. And then the city of Long Beach is one of the first cities to really

have an outbreak. And eventually that hits the city in a hard way. What was that month like for

you? Well, the actual date was March the 12th. That's the date that the governor evoked a shutdown

of the state. And immediately we had to react to that. So we were 70% built out, 70% at that time.

We had a month to go. So we stopped. We had to talk to our customers. What are we going to do?

Okay. So immediately we communicated with them. Really important. What's going on? It could never

have happened before. Never happened in our country's time, but never in conjunction with the race.

So we crafted up, communicated and got to all of them and gave them the option. We offered them a

refund or a credit to the 21 race. Okay. And with the credit policy we put in place, what I

guaranteed them was not only would the price stay the same for 21 as a credit, but we also extend

that to 22, which we will. So they'll have the same price even though the price pricing will

probably go up for the 22 race. So that's where we're at. A lot of people took advantage of the

credit. Morat wanted a refund, but we still had a huge substantial portion of our revenue

strain that was tied up in credits, which afforded us the opportunity to exist for the time, the

interim time, plus some PPP loans that we went out and got. But now the bill is due.

You got to run an event. You have to run an event or you can't get rid of, get those creditors

off your rolls. Yeah, for sure. Okay. So that's why this event here in September is so important.

And that's why some of these encumbrances that are coming up now, to the extent that they threaten

that, the overall success of the event, is something that we got to take a good hard look at.

And this issue today with regard to the... Let me stop you there. Let me stop you there. It's

very wisely delayed the race from its normal April date, just knowing that California would

probably need a few more months to get things completely in order to make sure you put on a

race that was to the standards you wanted to keep. And here we are just a few weeks out,

and things are still changing. Literally, you were a little behind getting here.

Why we were setting up? Because you're putting out a statement that there's a new mandate here

in California, and we're just a few weeks out. Right. Keep in mind, keep in mind that

we have committed to following the mandates as dictated by the state. And more importantly,

since Long Beach has its own health department, what ultimately comes out of the health department.

That's what was the source last night for the health order that stipulated that the event

here at the Acro Grand Prix Long Beach in September will require proof of vaccination or

having had a COVID test that was negative in the last 72 hours. And that just came out today.

That's what came out last night, and that's what we have spent a good portion of the day

structuring the response and what we're going to do. And it isn't just

sending a letter and email out to our customers. That's part of it. What do you do with social

media? You got to be really careful with that. Because if you don't get out in front of that,

what's going to happen is social media is going to say, well, we don't know what's

happened with the Grand Prix, and we don't think they're going to have refunds. And it looks like

some of us are going to get screwed. All of that stuff, you've got to tamp down like now. So we

sent that out tonight, today. We sent our social media advisory out tonight. So it would counter

any of this overstatement or misstatement or whatever you want to call it, which can happen.

And once it rolls, you can't get that stuff back. You can't get the back. So

it was a challenge for us to get this date, because you had to put all the pieces together.

Convention Center, Availability, City Hotels, Availability, IMSA, Availability, IndyCar,

Availability, Robbie Gordon, Drifting, all of those pieces had to come back together all in

the same date, September 26, 2021. We got it all back together. And quite frankly, we thought we

had escaped from the really difficult time. The worst of the time. And then the Delta variant

came along. And here we are. So we'll see what happens. But we need to run this event.

Now, you're not just selling to race fans. You are selling an experience in an event.

And if people, without getting into politics or viewpoints, generally speaking, people either

don't want to wear masks or they don't want to have to show up and show a test result or a

vaccination proof or anything like that. Does that compromise your ability to put on an event?

The way it's set up now, it won't compromise our ability to conduct the event. What it will,

hopefully, is have a minimal impact in terms of the people coming and joining themselves.

If I got to wear a mask all day in September, you live here.

It's hot.

September is hot. Yeah.

Okay. People don't think that way. September is hot here.

Yep.

It's one of the hottest months of the year.

Oh, yeah.

All day. I'm just thinking, maybe I go, or maybe you got another race in April, right?

Yeah, I got you.

It's not too far away. I missed 18 months already. That's the kind of thought process we are trying

to alleviate, right? If you read the, the, the release that went out, it reiterated the point,

you know, fun and excitement and all of the elements are still here. Come on out and have

a good time. You know, honestly, wearing a mask, I'm not excited about wearing a mask either all

day long. But under the circumstances, it really isn't one of those things where you have much of

a choice.

No, you have to do what you are told. Is that, is that a challenge of being accountable to

something that's kind of out of your control?

Say that again.

You are, you're, you're accountable to your fan base.

Yeah.

But the health department says you have to do this. There's nothing you can do.

But that same fan base is experiencing a similar kind of circumstance when they go

into Dodger Stadium or going to SoFi. The only difference is, as of now,

this event is requiring vaccination proof, whereas that's not required at those other

facilities. So there's a, that's a, that's a bit of a dichotomy there that we're going to have to,

you know, we're going to process, explain to people and who knows, but at times September

comes along, maybe that'll be something that other people are going to have to adopt too.

We're just, we just got there a little early. And that was a little bit irritating to the

extent that as long as everybody is experienced, you got to wear a mask and everywhere you go,

right? You go to a restaurant, you're going to bar, most places, LA County for sure,

not Orange County, but LA County. So it is an uncommon for people to, to bring their face mask

with them. I don't think so. You go, that's sort of your paraphernalia now, right?

Right. So things are changing so quickly even right now. I mean, we literally were setting

up these lights when you told us about the new, you know, rules put in place for the event.

And when I went to go grab dinner, I saw your press release come out, which is after we had

said hello to you to set up. So it's like really happening right now. And we're, you know, six

weeks out from the race, roughly, if the race goes off, the fans come out, support the event,

and everything kind of goes to where you're hoping. Is Long Beach back?

Sure. Absolutely. As long as we meet the expectation levels of our fans, our sponsors,

our hospitality clients, with the understanding that they have that these are challenging times

and that there are some things they're going to need to do that we are required to do,

that deviate from the norm. But that, that's not an unusual phenomena right now. It's,

it's what we all, we all encounter when we go out and engage in the marketplace. Now, can we do

things that help to minimize the impact? Absolutely. You know, one of the things, one of the keys is

communication, let people know what they can expect when they come. No surprises. So when you

walk up to the gate, you know, what's required of you, what we're going to do to help assist you,

whether it's sanitation or whether it's an opportunity for you to engage in some things

that, for example, we're going heavily towards doing as much of a cashless operation as we can.

We will go all cashless in 22. So all of those things are items that people have an expectation

level for because we communicated them before they got here. How long are your terms normally with

the city? They usually go five years, in some cases, six. We're actually in the process of

talking to them right now about extending the contract because we have a couple years left.

Through 23. And then we were talking about extending to 28. So it may be five years,

but it's probably never ends in the sense that you're always setting up your next five years.

Well, no, it, we, we have gotten into the five year timeframe. But what we have agreed with the

city is that there would always be a minimum of two years. We would initiate talks of extension

prior to the two year anniversary so that, you know, if the rare case came along where all of a

sudden we couldn't agree, at least we've got two years to go out. Otherwise, what I don't want to

do is get in a situation where we get there at the end and all of a sudden they say, you know what,

whatever. Yeah, right. What? No, we were done. No, no, I got no time to do anything. Yeah,

no, I hear you. That's a problem. Again, we don't have to cover anything you don't want to cover,

but in 2017, your old business partner, Chris Pooke, put in a bid making a promise to have

a similar event that effectively would have taken years away. That can't have felt good.

Well, he was in the impression that Formula One wanted to come here. The question was,

was Formula One desirous of coming here? Who answered that? Did anybody validate that claim?

So he said, I can bring F1 and no one was like, page on tote. Right, right, yeah.

That was my response to the city. You have an event, it's very successful. If somebody is indicating

that another event, i.e. Formula One wants to come here, call Formula One, confirm it. Right.

Never did. Nobody ever did. And to the very day we went to the council and we succeeded in

retaining the position here as a man. Nobody, there was no representative Formula One,

there was no letter from Formula One. There was nothing indicating that they had an interest.

Anything more? I talked to Sean Bratches. Sean Bratches was the work for ESPN and then went

to work for Formula One as their commercial director. Sean Bratches, I talked to him. I said,

did you afterwards? Did you guys ever have any intention to come to Formula One? He said,

none. And I'll tell you why, because from their perspective, if they're going to run in the United

States, they're going to run in the Eastern time zone or no later than the Central time.

Something good for Europe. Exactly. They've run their whole market. He said, to us, the West Coast

is not a viable market for that reason alone, let alone all the other concerns. And the city of

Long Beach was not going to be in a position to afford to help pay for, like Texas does with their

$25 million a year allocation. So yes, we went through a lot of effort. We spent a lot of money

just preparing documentation and getting people involved. But in the end, there was nothing of

substance there. Nothing of substance. You have a relationship with Chris Pooke that goes back

almost 50 years. Did this strain at all? Well, it certainly wasn't advantageous, but he comes to

race. He gets sweet passes and he's here. And that's just prerogative. Would we have preferred

that it didn't happen? Sure, but it did. And in the end, the decision was, in our minds,

obviously, the correct one. And we've gone on from then. So it's a dim memory in the past.

This race first started in 1975 with Formula 5,000. You joined as a kid with a little bit of

cash and an ability to con half-year investors. That's your description.

You didn't say no. Not mine. You didn't say no. Not mine. We didn't con anybody. We enticed people

to come in and participate in what had a very promising future at that time. Right. Look at that,

when some new podcast shows up in 30 years. Whatever the next, whatever streaming becomes.

It's a good question, because is the sport going to be here? Okay, think about it. Think about it.

Where is the sport headed? With all of the technological changes, with all the environmental

issues that are rising now, can the support survive that? Support for our environmental

management. Is the cacophony a sound and all that visceral effect that you get from cars now?

If that goes away, does it still attract people? Do we consider Formula E a success now? Mercedes

apparently doesn't. Yeah, right. And Audi. Yeah, Audi. And Porsche. Yeah. Right. No, and

believe me, I got nothing against Formula E. They were good guys to work with. But

for our generation, that's a challenge. But think about the other. Think about it in reverse.

You got 20 or 30 year old guys to whom noise, sound, reverberations and stuff,

maybe that's not a good thing. Maybe it isn't. Maybe they'd rather have quiet.

All right. And if they do, and then you come along with electric vehicles, electric racing

skirries and all that stuff, maybe that has appeal to them. Because what's going to happen,

could happen, is that racing sounds could become something that's a negative in people's minds,

is an environmental element that people don't want to engage in. Could happen. And who knows?

We're racers. The Long Beach Grand Prix and the city of Long Beach to us are one in the same.

Is there a Long Beach without Long Beach Grand Prix?

Yes. You're the most negative. Everyone else has been like, they're all joined in the world.

No, of course not. The future is bright. The guy in charge is like, I don't know.

Yeah, no. Could the city survive? Could the city survive without us?

I'm zero four to be here after. Could the city survive without us?

I'm in charge. Either way, I don't care. I have a Corvette.

It's like anything else. Could you make it work? Would it be the same? That's not the question you

ask. Would the city survive without it? Sure.

Do you want to change that to be without us? Nothing would be here.

If you could describe Long Beach in one word, what would it be?

I would say Long Beach is inviting.

I'm finished.

We're back, we're not living like this. The way you do what you do, I think you're something brand new.

Everybody spends their life trying to keep on getting back. Searching but don't know just what we hope to find.

I've been over seven seas hoping I can find some peace.

Tell me where's this love? I hear it's so divine.

Well, I could never have been ready for, been ready for this. I think I should start but letting you, letting you win.

I'm starting to lose my balance. What am I falling into? This feels like something new.

We're back, we're not living like this. The way you do what you do, I think you're something brand new.

What am I falling into? This feels like something new.

The way you do what you do, I think you're looking you're starting to lose my balance.

What am I falling into? This feels like something new.

I'm starting to lose my balance. What am I falling into? This feels like something new.

About this episode

Jim McAlion’s legacy anchors this “re-heated” Long Beach Grand Prix story, released after his unexpected passing. The hosts revisit their documentary work with McAlion and then dive into how the race was created and survived: early street-racing insurance hurdles, a custom safety barrier design, and the first 1975 event that drew far more paying fans than expected. The discussion covers decades of financial and logistical challenges, sponsor milestones (including Toyota’s long run), city-course evolution, COVID-era refunds and mandates, and the ongoing debate over noise, traffic, and environmental impact.

Acura Bridgestone CBS Citibank Engine on! entertainment weekend Formula One gamesmanship Grand Prix of Long Beach grandstand seats

Original notes

The latest of our RE-HEATED series, where we re-issue episodes that might share something with racing stories in the news… Episode 223 featuring Jim Michaelian. One of the pioneers behind the Grand Prix of Long Beach, Jim unfortunately passed on Saturday, March 21, but we were fortunate to spend an extended amount of time with him in 2021 in our “Building Long Beach” video and podcast series. One of the key members since Year One, Jim Michaelian went from a kid with an MBA helping out in finance, to the current President and CEO of the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach. From boots on the ground at the beginning, to steering the ship today, Jim is uniquely qualified to know both the history of the event and the challenges that face the Grand Prix today. This is of course a complimentary episode to our “Dinner with Racers” video series on MotorTrend’s YouTube, where you can see the story unfold in a two-part special. Dinner was served via pizza we ordered into the Grand Prix offices in Long Beach, CA, with the song “Something New” by Castle Heist taking us out. Thanks again to Continental Tire and Acura for making it all happen.

Dinner with Racers

View classic page →

0:00

107:39