Craig Dack on Racing WSX, Running a Team in Motocross

Depending on how old you are, you either know Craig Dack as one of the very best Australian dirt bikes racers ever or you know him as one of the very best Australian team owners ever, via his CDR (Craig Dack Racing) Yamaha team. In addition to being involved in the sport Down Under, Dack’s even worked in the USA as team manager of Yamaha of Troy for a couple of years. Now he’s expanded CDR into the FIM WSX series. I caught up to Craig to talk about all of this and more in a podcast a little while ago. Here’s an excerpt of that.

Racer X Online: I know you're super busy. CDR (Craig Dack Racing) wide open as usual, so I have a lot of questions to get to you. Let's start with this. You have had a legendary team down under. You've won a bunch of championships. You've had some really great riders ride for you, from (Chad) Reedy to (Josh) Coppins to (Luke) Clout and (Aaron) Tanti and all these guys. How's it going? How is team ownership life down under?
Craig Dack: It sort of gets like a nice bottle of red wine. It gets better every year, I think. We're actually celebrating our 30th year with CDR [Craig Dack Racing] this year. I retired as a racer at the end of 1992, and then that sort of morphed into team ownership and team managership into CDR. People from time to time will ask me, “Are you still doing this? Do you still love it?” And I love every minute of it. It gets better every year. The commercial side of things gets more and more intense, I guess, trying to raise the money as costs keep escalating and finding money is much harder than it was back in the day. You know, when I first started running this team, you'd get 20 bucks for a sticker on your bike, but it's a lot more than that now. You have to do the social media stuff. You have to get involved in activations. So, the complexity of raising the money needed is much more, plus these companies, whether it's a Monster or Coca-Cola, whoever it may be, have so many different, more ways they can spend their money now. So instead of giving one entity one chunk of money, they can spread that money around a lot more. So, you have to keep learning all the time. And also, then the technical side of things, the sporting side of the team with the generation, with young male athletes. People change over time, just the way they think and how you have to conduct yourself is a lot different than back in the day. Then the bikes get more technical and that’s really good fun too. So, it keeps you interested.

Have you always been Yamaha since you started?
CDR has always been Yamaha. I ran away from home in 1986, [laughs], so in 1987 I rode for Honda. I pretty much started with Suzuki as a kid, then went to Yamaha and then Honda had a pretty strong program in Australia in the mid ‘80s, so I sort of took over Jeff Leisk’s ride. Jeff first came to America in 1986, after he was winning everything here in Australia on the Honda. Then he went to the US for Honda, and then I took over his ride for ’86, ’87, and then after that I ended up back at Yamaha from 1988 till now.

CDR team lineup Josh Hill, Luke Clout, Aaron Tanti, and Grant Harlan. WSX

Wow, that's, that's pretty cool for sure. So, I imagine the support's been there for a long time. Obviously, I'm Canadian and the Canadian nationals really hurt from COVID and shutting them down. The Canadian government took it pretty seriously. I understand the Australian government was the same way. The series was kind of the same way, and a couple of Australians I talked to are like, “Yeah, man, it's never come back yet all the way to where it was.” Pre-COVID levels, support, rides, money, scheduling, that kind of stuff. Is that accurate, would you say?
Sort of. We got locked down pretty strongly in Australia. I think we had three or four lockdowns, and one was for several months. But the Australian government supported small business and people quite well. Without the government's support, a lot of a lot of businesses would have gone under but they were propped up by the government. So, Australia did a really good job like that. However, the sad thing about it is with a lot of athletes, including Aaron Tanti and Luke Clout, they were sort of right in the prime of their career, you know about that 25-year age. That's when you have, I believe that's when, around that 24, 25, 23 is about when you physically mature as a man, and you've got a bit of smarts about you. So, they missed out on those couple of years and we didn't hardly race at all in 18 months. It's getting back on track now. I think the moneys back there. The sport is starting to thrive again. So yeah, we're back in town.

And then you guys have of course the supercross series as well that we've seen JB (Justin Brayton) go down to. That looks like it's been a successful thing for you guys as well.
Probably supercross has struggled more than motocross in recovering and coming back. And then we've had sort of the guys that were the commercial rights to the supercross in Australia, Adam Bailey and his crew. I've also got a major interest in the World Supercross. It's been a messy few years, but I feel that all the balls are starting to drop on the ground now. We can sort of take-off.

Rinaldi still has a hand in the Yamaha MXGP efforts over there. They're long partners and you have Star Racing here, and before that the Factory Yamaha team with Keith McCarty and those guys. How much do you lean on them, pick their brains? How much information is shared and all of that?
Surprisingly, very little. So, I went to the San Diego supercross earlier in the year for the launch of the new sort of Monster Yamaha collaboration look. I hung out with all the Yamaha guys there. I met a few of the sales guys and marketing people that I hadn't met before. All the racing guys I know quite well. Jim Roach, we talk from time to time, just to communicate. Rinaldi and I are really good friends, but we used to have a lot more to do with him when he was actually in the front line of Yamaha Racing. As you probably know, it's quite a lot different now. Yamaha has got the Wilvo team that heads it up as the race team, and then Rinaldi comes underneath that as the technical support. So, he does most of the development both engine and suspension chassis. And I think Michele [Rinaldi] is very, very well linked to Yamaha Japan. So I think that's the little triangle there, sort of Wilvo, Rinaldi, Yamaha Japan.

So, if you have an issue though, you can fire off an email and ask?
Absolutely, yeah. We can all share information openly and honestly and trust one another. It seems to be as it's developed over the years, you've got the Rinaldi slash European program. You’ve got the American slash Star, and then you have CDR in Australia. They seem to be the three Yamaha motocross/supercross racing teams that are kind of recognized by Japan. So, it's a feather in my cap to be so far away in a small country. We pack quite a big punch for the for the size of what we do, and just to be part of those other sort of influences is quite nice.

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Are you required by Yamaha to run both 250 and 450? Can you do one or the other?
So now, apart from the World Supercross where we have to have two 250 guys and two 450 guys, the Australian program is just 450. They contract the 250 program out to Serco Yamaha, because Serco is an importation/distribution company with motorcycle accessories. A little bit like how Yamaha of Troy was back in the day. They can bring a fair bit of funding to it. Things just got so costly over the years. We used to do two 250 two-stroke guys and one 125 two-stroke guy. That seemed to be kind of the normal back then how you would structure things. But then once the bikes became four-strokes, the costs got bigger. Then Yamaha wanted two 250 guys or two 125 guys, not just the one. It made more sense cost-wise to split it in half and have us focus on the main class and then have Serco do the 250.

So, you're a little bit like Mitch Payton, you don't make aftermarket pipes and things like that like he does, but you’re a private team owner, racing a series, trying to turn a profit to keep yourself and your family going and all that. How is that going? How is it that are you able to do that? Personally, has that been a successful venture for you?
Yeah, it has, [but] only because if you tried to start a race team up now, or if I tried to start a race team up now to get to the level that we're at, you'd never be able to do it. You wouldn’t. You wouldn't be able to justify it unless you're a mega rich guy and you just did it for a bit of fun. And there are a few of those type of teams around these days around the world: the rich guy has made all his money. He's passionate about motocross and he comes in just doing it for fun. But if we weren't a factory-supported team, you'd have no hope. Because I pretty much own everything now and everything's been set up for a long time, it’s nice.

And like anything, I've got other interests outside of the race team itself with investments in other things. But no one ever gets super rich out of running a race team because your eyes are bigger than your belly! By that I mean, should we buy that extra shock for another 15 grand? Well, we need two of them! Okay, let's get them. Then straightaway you start to lose your profit, right? But the main thing is, mate, it feels like I've never worked a day in my life, and I'm privileged to be still here 30 years later and won over 50 championships in that time as a team. I’m still very happy doing it.

The World Supercross, you field riders in that team. Adam Bailey is Australian, and you've probably known him for a long time. What appealed to you about doing this series and signing up for it? I mean, as if you weren't busy enough! What did you like about it?
There's a few things. The concept of doing like an international program where you put everything that you've got into sort of three or four containers and that gets freighted to different corners of the world. And you fly over there and turn up at a venue that you've never been to in a foreign country and unpack your crate and then deal with all the sort of complexities of being outside your comfort zone of your own country and being a world championship. To compete in a world championship. That was the first thing that sort of appealed to me.

Then when we sort of got the contracts or the agreements and looked at it all, the way it's structured, it’s sort of the way contemporary sports should be run now, like a franchise where each team is a license holder. There are only ten teams in the series. There can't be an 11th team. If you want to come in, you have to obtain one of the current licenses. So, it all sort of made sense. However, in saying that, it hasn't been as easy for those guys, I don't think they thought it was going to be easy, but it hasn't gone as smooth as they thought. There's a lot of reasons for that. Some good, some bad. And I think there's a lot of political part to it as well. Maybe the US saw this at the beginning or maybe sees it as a bit of a threat to what they're doing. I'm not sure. I think it just needs a little time. A lot of the partners and people that I'm negotiating with and talking with are interested and like it. Not bagging it or against it, but there's very much we want to wait and see what happens down the track. We need to see how far this can go.

Well, I've said this a few times, thanks to Adam Bailey, the Feld guys and the MX Sports guys over here started talking and got together and threw a bunch of money in the purse and created these races. Thank you, Adam Bailey, for this. There is that component to it, too, isn't it? I believe that this was sort of this super motocross concept. I know it’s been in the pipeline for a little while, but what happened with Bailey coming in and doing what they're doing is maybe just to speed things up a bit.

No, absolutely right. I think it was in the works, but I think nothing like some competition to tighten things up. It makes everybody a little better, right?
And I think I think as time goes on and the dust settles, I think we'll see. I'm only surmising here, I don't have a crystal ball, but I think once the dust settles, people can calm down and we can all maybe coexist in a way that, like America is America. You're never going to outdo the States and what they do, of course. Supercross is as traditional for Americans as gridiron [NFL football] and basketball and baseball.

You've been all over the world racing and as a team owner and I think when Adam says that the rest of the world wants to see this great sport and these riders, he's absolutely correct because I've gone to Paris and Bercy and Geneva and all over the world to watch races and the fans love it and there's a market there. I believe there is an audience.
And there's little pockets of the world. When they started doing the analytics or all their research on certain countries, which they have done a hell of a lot of. There are little pockets of the world like South America, Argentina and Brazil. Asia is a market that is becoming huge. India, for example, because a lot of those countries like Asia, India that were, or in our lifetime have once been, third world countries, now a lot of those countries there is a strong middle class there. So middle class people like to buy TVs and like to buy motorbikes. Our industry is driven by middle class people, right? So, getting to a few of those markets that are sort of… MotoGP now has four or five races in Asia where it never used to go there before. So, there's some markets around the world that that are begging for this sort of stuff and time will tell. But this seems to make sense to me. But we just need to grind away for another couple of years until it settles.

Let me ask you something, though, and you can put on your political hat or you could just speak your mind or whatever you think. So, I kind of heard - and it wasn't you, but I've heard about a couple of teams. I've talked to a couple riders over here in the US that are talking to some teams and like these guys are privateers and they're just like, dude, the deal sucks. Like one rider I talked to said the team said we’ll pay travel and you get half the purse money and that's it. The purse money is paid to the teams. Another rider's like, “Yeah, I got offered purse minus 10%.”
They don't want to go, and it's crazy because they're starting to get lower and lower on the speed totem pole to get guys. I’ve said, these teams, they're getting a lot of money from the world supercross guys for travel and for salaries and all of that. But at some point, like if I'm Adam and the WSX guys, I'm like saying, hey man, you guys can make some money on this, but you can't just take all the money. Hire some riders! I think for 2023, we're going to see a big gap from the front to the lower end guys. So, I don't know how you feel about that.
I agree with all that. And I'm in the same boat. So, the prize money comes directly to the teams and then how you distribute that money back to the rider is a point of negotiation. I would imagine the teams are trying to withhold some of that money or keep a percentage because they need to get money back for the budget. So, I'm probably in the most difficult situation than every other team because of how far away I am. So, we're flying from Australia to Germany, Australia to France…those teams in Europe, their costs are one-tenth of our costs in travel basically, and the American teams are probably half of our costs. So, this is the problem that we've got at the moment, but we’ve had discussions about it.

And we had some other outside industry partners talking to us. Fox clothing, for instance. All our partners are all very much, “Yes, yes. We like it. It looks good. All the facts and stats look great on paper, but we just want to wait and see. We need to see how this is going to go.” So, that's the problem that we've got. The money we're getting off world supercross isn't enough to do it without finding funding outside of that. So, we still have to find quite a bit of money because you're moving four riders, four mechanics, and some other technical people. So, you're moving up to 14 people around the world. I would think all the other teams are very similar to us in that they're struggling to make ends meet at the moment. This year was always going to be our most difficult year, I felt, because we had some funding last year that was enough to sort of get us going like some startup money. But this year there is quite a big gap between what you get from world series and what you need. We have to try and survive this year to prove the product to the industry and outside the industry, and then hopefully 2024 we start to make some leeway.

Yeah, fair enough. On the flip side, how do you feel about fielding some riders but then the WSX guys pay Kenny [Roczen] to do the series and they pay Eli to do the series at the first round? The series will tell you, “Look, this gets eyeballs, this gets attention, this gets people talking about our stuff. Literally two of the best riders in the world here.” So, I see both sides, but how do you feel as an owner?
Like you. I see both sides. So, if I was the one that they were able to help fund to get a top-name right and end up on my team, I'd be happy! However, on the other side of that, if another team gets a Ken Roczen or another rider, straightaway we're behind the eight ball. The only way I can look at that is basically it's a startup. It's a startup sport. It's a startup business. So maybe there's a couple of years where we have to eat humble pie and get it recognized and get it moving. You won't want to see that happen long-term because that won't legitimize a true world championship, will it? So, at the moment, I guess I'm willing to just accept it if it's in the best interest of the series.

Where Are They Now: Craig Dack