Main image courtesy of Rick Ware Racing.
The upcoming FIM World Supercross Championship is featuring some teams that we know well (ClubMX, MotoConcepts), some from other countries (BUD Racing, CDR, etc.) and then there is the American based team Rick Ware Racing. A lot of people were like “Huh?” when that dropped but Rick’s got a long history in racing a lot of things in the USA including being part of our sport a while back. I called up Rick Ware to get his thoughts on the new series and more.
Racer X Online: What’s going on, man? Thanks for doing this.
Rick Ware: Great to be on. Huge fan. Huge fan of the industry. You’ve always got exciting stuff going on, as well. We’re here right in Indianapolis. We’re having a double-header for the Indy cars and the cup cars and NASCAR. Just pedaling as hard as we can.
I saw that. It’s going to be really cool, in your four-wheel world. Listeners of the show, they may think, “Who’s Rick Ware, and the world supercross and all that?” But you’ve got a history in our sport. You’ve sponsored and helped riders before.
Yeah. You’ve got to remember, we’re all getting old, right? A lot of these guys are younger. We were involved before the social media was so popular. Quick story – I grew up racing motocross. Loved motocross. Had aspirations of being a professional motocrosser. Got to the local pro level, growing up in Texas. Bottom line is, I just wasn’t good enough to make it. But I had a love for it, and I’ve gotten to compete in Superdome and Astrodome. I raced at Rio Bravo, Rio Grande, Lake Whitney, Oak Hill… All these places that are cool in Texas. Back in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s I would say California and Texas were probably two of the bigger states at the time. There weren't quite as many people out of Florida. So, Texas was kind of a hot bed there for a while. So, I loved it. I got involved in motorsports and cars as a driver and then into ownership.
We did our first full season of supercross in 2007, 2008, full-time. We did it out of our race shop in North Carolina. We were hands-on to the point where we built all our motors in-house. We built our own shocks in-house. We built a fork dyno. We dove all in and built the bikes. So, the business model at the time, we had a mortgage company and an energy drink. This is back in the day like Michael Holigan, Holmes were involved for a while. A lot of the energy drinks were new. We had Bad Boy power drink at the time, which was getting to be a national scenario. So, we did a lot of stuff for them, both on the outdoor and supercross. We were one of the handful of teams that qualified for every main event. So, we did it at a high level with a tractor-trailer and all the bells and whistles to keep people happy. It’s a tough business to sustain in that obviously like anything, it requires sponsorship, but unlike car motorsports, it’s very rider centric. I always refer to my riders as my drivers, but they’re a key part of it, but on motorcycles, we built some trick stuff in house but at the end of the day, it’s like 70-80% all rider. A rider can overcome. Why that makes it tough is that to justify sponsors, you have to make the main event. There’s 20 riders and there’s 70 guys showing up. And these guys are the best athletes in motorsports in the world.
So, it’s tough to build that business model. But we did it. We loved it, invested in it. I had Vicky Golden riding for me. I think it was 2012 and got the X Games gold medal riding for our NASCAR sponsor. That was really cool. Before then, Jessica Patterson won her first national championship. We built part of that bike in our shop in North Carolina. She dominated the women’s side, right after Ashley Fiolek came in. She was the real phenom as well. But love motorcycles. I’ve always been involved in motorcycles. This whole platform is a true business platform, so to have a franchise or a charter or however you want to work it, to be one of ten in the world, I think it’s truly unique. But it’s very similar to what other motorsports are doing. MotoGP, Formula 1, in those levels…
You just can’t show up and race.
Correct. The other problem, too, is that typically in supercross these riders require a salary, and they deserve it. They’re all underpaid. They take so many risks. Even if you give them all a prize bike, it doesn’t equate too much. So, it’s hard as an independent to go move the needle and be able to spend money on riders, and even be close to what they deserve. So, this format, knowing that we’re in the main event, how can you justify going across to the world to Australia and not even know if you’re getting in? What sponsor is going to do that? The social media aspect has grown, so that’s where it’s important for our brand to grow our footprint. Even if we finish on the podium or we finish fifth, now it’s just as much about the story. I would say motocross as a whole does that as good as anybody does. Starting from the extreme portion of that into the actual racing. So, that’s as important in motorsports now as anything.
It really is. I think more so in our sport, it’s a younger demographic and personalities and all that kind of stuff can sell outside of your results. Results are important, but I feel like in our sport, and maybe in all other motorsports, a rider’s social media following, and personality can really deliver, more so than results.
Absolutely. If you build your business all around results, then I guess you’d better win. If you don’t, you’re going to lose your program. In reality, whether it's NASCAR or it’s supercross, if you can’t have all of the pieces of the puzzle, the reality is you’re probably not going to win. So, what you need to make sure that you do is for the money that your sponsor spends, they are getting their return. That’s what we’ve been really good about on our side. We’ve got some drivers that have won the 8500 and 24-hours and different scenarios. So, you have to create relevance, and you better pedal really hard and have a social media platform. Which is why I’m excited to finally get back into the two-wheel world, because I follow it. I love it. Some of my best friends are deeply involved. My best friends have piston companies that build pistons for probably 90% of all the motorcycles racing in this world. So, I love it. But it needs a business venture, and now we’re allowed to go back into that. We’re going to grow our sponsor base. I’m excited to bring some of our NASCAR and Indy Car sponsors over to the two-wheel world. It’s going to be better for everybody.
Also what I notice, you’re one of those teams, and there’s a few of them doing this series, that you’re like, “If you want to ride a Kawasaki, no problem. If you want to ride a Yamaha, no problem.” You’re not dependent on the OEM’s for support, bikes, and parts. You’re figuring that out again. That also gives you some flexibility as a program.
Yes, it absolutely does. I foresee as this grows; it’s going to probably be more important at some point to have more synergy. Right now with as quick as we’re ramping into these three races for this year before next year, a lot of riders already have gear deals. For me, it’s pretty simple. Everybody kind of looks the same in all these scenarios, which they still got to do for us, but somebody’s got a gear deal with X. Somebody’s got a helmet deal with X. They all need that for their income, so we have to kind of work through and around that. Same thing on the motorcycle side. I would hope that as we grow, we could get to a single manufacturer, just because that’s probably how you’re going to get your support. You’re never going to get any next-level support being with two or three different brands because of obvious reasons.
For me, over on the NASCAR side, we’re supported by Ford. It would be really hard for me to tag Ford and Toyota and Chevrolet, and have everybody roll their eyes and go, “Well, that’s not going to get forwarded on.” But there’s little idiosyncrasies that are different in all these different sports, and that’s one of them. But I’m a big advocate on trying to figure a way to give these guys opportunities and to get paid because having done it at a lower level, the shape, the risk of these guys… They’re all in, 110%, 24 hours a day. I think it’s slowly coming to where the monetary return is going to start creeping into these guys, across the board. Obviously, there’s ten guys up top making the bulk of the pay, but it’s all these other people that put on a show. You can’t have three guys going really fast on a 40-man gate on an outdoor motocross. You need all of them.
Did you see the announcement and approach the world supercross guys, or did Adam Bailey and those guys reach out to you? How did that contact happen? Was it the simple fact that this made more business sense, that made you want to get involved?
Again, the business side obviously allows you to stop and consider it. How I got involved, actually I never even talked with these guys. Being in the vast, different things we are, different series and whatever, we’ve got great friends in the media. Ralph Sheheen has been around forever. A great friend of mine. His main office is there. It’s probably a couple miles from one of our shops. We run into each other all the time. He knows I’m a die-hard racing fanatic to where I’m always thinking about things. We almost did a speedway program this year out on the west coast with the speedway rider, just because I love to compete. If there’s a race going on somewhere, I want to be involved in it. We were just talking. I was asking him what he had going on. He’s announcing different things. We started talking about the supercross. He’s like, “Man, you need to get back in it.” I’m like, “I would love it.” Immediately, the first thing I think of is, can we even get riders? We need to get riders that are relevant. He’s like, “There’s this opportunity. I really think you need to give some time thinking about it. Here’s the scenario.” So, I thought really long and hard about it, and at the end, I said, you know what? I think I might be able to make it work. I have to be a little bit careful because my wife wants to strangle me sometimes. We need a race team. I’ve got her convinced. I can’t go to all of them anyway, so it’s not like it’s going to take even more away from me. It makes sense for a long-term plan because I know there’s a little bit of turmoil between different series and things, but I truly believe it should be good for everybody.
I believe that from a standpoint of if I invested in Chad Reed launching a team, it’s got to be like this back to ground zero every single year, which was the problem I had. Somebody gets offered $5,000 more dollars, or a better opportunity, and they’re gone. Who’s going to be at Anaheim 1 this year? That’s the part I hated. So, this aspect, we know there’s set income, whether it’s profitable or not because initially it’s not going to be profitable, but it still makes business sense and it’s part of the format to grow to. So, I’m like, I can invest in that because this isn’t a one-and-done. This will work well with what we’re trying to do to get to a bigger footprint. We won the world championship in ’20, and then the end of ’19, the beginning of ’20, and then COVID hit. Everything stopped. So, we were already trying to get abroad. This was just the perfect timing of we can now expand. This year we’re going to run – we already run in Canada, but we’re going to run in five different countries. Next year with what we’re doing with Indy Car and NASCAR and stuff and IMSA, we’re going to be in 13 or 14 different countries. That’s pretty interesting, from a big picture standpoint.
How did you come together with Dave Antolak? He’s run race teams before. He’s been in the industry forever. How did you and Dave hook up, and how’s that going?
When we were in 2007, 2008, I ran the supercross team out of my shop in North Carolina and did the outdoor. At the same time, I wanted to go run arenacross. Sitting down thinking about it, how do we advertise the overheads and the bikes and the people? So, to a certain degree, the more racing you can do, the more you can offset all this stuff. Well, I got hooked up with Dave through an associate. I’m like, “Look, here’s what I want to do. I can support you with the management and bringing the sponsors over, but I need to run in conjunction with my supercross.” So, we hit it off. Dave is one of those guys. He’s getting old like us. He’s been around 30 years. He’s raced overseas. He’s run supercross. He’s run arenacross.
We won a championship and half the races. We did it with two of our NASCAR sponsors. We did it twice with Jeff Gibson and once with Josh Demuth. So, it was great. That really helped me grow. We actually extended that after we stopped the supercross, because they got to be to where we just didn’t have the funding. It was getting to be pretty financially draining. But we still extended the arenacross. One of my first thoughts was, who can help me make phone calls? Because I’m extremely hands-on, and working with the riders, the parts guys, et cetera. I got to where I just couldn’t field all the calls. I was like, “Dave, I know you’re kind of semi-retired…” He’s been involved with UFO and dealerships. I’m like, “Look. I need to ramp up here. I’ve got 80% of this done, but the last 20% is going to be as much work as the 80%.” I sucked him back into the mob. He’s a general manager for the supercross program. I know for sure I’ve got him for two years before he gets back on the rocking chair. I’m really excited. This is all about people, and I for sure want to have fun, but I told Dave that we’re putting this together not to try to derive an income right now. Right now we’re going to try to build an extremely strong team and to go try to win a world championship for our sponsors.
Savatgy, Breece, Shane McElrath. Some of the names I’ve heard. I don't know if you want to confirm them?
Those are some of the names that I’ve heard, too. There’s an official announcement coming out soon. Obviously, you’re way deeper into the rumor mill even than I am. You got good intel. Everything is coming out here really quickly. I kind of wanted the correlation with the series and some of our sponsors. Racer X and Pulp, you’re the two big ones, so if I can have you guys on board, it’s as good as anything.
There’s some rumblings. We know Ken Roczen is committed to the series. He’s paid by the promoters to come out and race. I’m of two minds of this. It’s a great name. Kenny is a great ambassador to show up and race this series. It’s cool and it’s great and it gives prestige to the series, but there are some rumblings of other teams being a little upset, because they have to place Kenny with a team. Somebody is going to get Ken Roczen, who is an amazing rider. Maybe it’s Rick Ware. Maybe it’s Mike Genova, MotoConcepts. Maybe it’s Firepower Honda guys. How do you feel about that as a team owner? Are you okay with this? Are you fine with it? Are you a little bit taken aback by the series doing that? What’s your thoughts on that?
If he ends up riding for Rick Ware, I think it’s a great idea. In all fairness, I do understand bringing Eli in, for one race as a wild card. At the end of the day, it’s all about providing entertainment and people getting to get his autograph and get to see him. I get all that. So, to answer your question, it’s a little tough because right now, I’m going to say most of the teams, myself included, could not afford to pay Ken what they think he should be getting for those three races. I’m not saying he’s not worth it, but from a business standpoint, it would be pretty crazy. Obviously, there’s reasons to have him out there. To me, it makes sense to have him be out there for an event as a wild card. Unless everything gets situated I think with the manufacturers, I’m not sure that he’s even going to be riding for the whole season, unless that all gets solved. As of right now, I don't know who you’re going to place him with if everybody is full. I would sure hate to have to have somebody sit back.
Obviously, we’ve still got openings, and we’re doing it not necessarily for Ken Roczen, but from the standpoint of in the 11th hour, you don’t know what opportunity is there. At some point, manufacturers are already committed financially through 2022 and this really wasn’t on the radar at the beginning or middle of 2021, but there’s going to be some opportunities, I believe, out there. If you don’t have the opportunity to place somebody with a quality program, then you may be losing out. So, I agree with you.
It’s touchy.
It’s touchy because of the expense of having him. Maybe he is or he’s not subsidized. I’m not sure. It’s a little bit of a gray area there. I will say the series is really trying to do it right on every aspect. I sure hope that as it grows, which I’m confident that it will, that it’s kind of the rising tides raise all ships. I’m involved in some major sit-downs in NASCAR and Indy Car and IMSA, and everybody has these different agendas and different markets and pros and cons. At the end of the day, America is fortunate that we’re sort of past COVID, in a way. The economy is not perfect, but it is pretty strong. The manufacturers can’t get parts to build bikes fast enough, and side-by-sides. Racing as a whole is wide open, and that’s great for everybody. I just hope and pray that it continues to be an addition and not “us versus them.” We need the outdoors. We need a US supercross. Frankly, we need a global supercross. We have global racing in everything in this world, whether it’s offshore boats or cars, but we need it in motocross and in a supercross genre, as well.