Full Throttle Leaders Podcast - Scott Duncan

All right, uh, hello everybody, it's Michael Falato, um, hosting my podcast again, Full Throttle Leaders. And as you know me from Full Throttle Leads, Full Throttle Falato Leads, um, I have that lead gen company and that's kind of how I made this whole podcast. So we got Scott Duncan today from Racing America. Scott, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Tell me a little bit about what's going on. I know you guys just changed your name from Pirelli to Racing America, right?

We did. We did. It's, it's been a long process. At the beginning, Pirelli Motorsports Holdings was acquired by Velocity Capital Management, which is a large private equity group in New York. They invested in an enterprise business that they wanted to not own a team or, or a facility, but they really wanted to own a motorsports series and a promoter. And that's what Pirelli Motorsports Holdings was designed as, is bringing multiple series from vintage to open wheel, formula cars, Trans Am, which is celebrating its 60th year, and international GT, and go to the best tracks within the United States for the exclusive road course racing experience that really covers everything from youth all the way to the most older age group in the vintage side. So we kind of COVID everything, as we say, from lemonade to bourbon in our demographic. And we host anywhere from 300 to 400 competitors for 3-day events, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And like I said, at most at all of the premier tracks across the country, like Indianapolis or Circuit of the Americas, Road Atlanta, Sebring, Lime Rock Park, Road America. I could keep going on, but we have about 17 events a year. And this acquisition took place in the end of '23, first '24. And we've been in a building phase to really rebuild the foundation to put professional racing back into the backyards of all of these different markets where we're bringing Trans Am and building that, but it's still offering a great platform for a lot of different kind of racers. So we purchased a media company called Racing America that was the media division of Race Team Alliance, which owns all of the NASCAR teams. We purchased them and the acquisition was finalized December 13th, 2025. And in 45 days, we've improved our broadcast production and brought a full media vertical into the live events ecosystem that we have.

So if I was a novice in, in racing, which I kind of am with my background in helping NASCAR, and then NASCAR had these series inside of NASCAR, is that what it's equating to, or are you kind of like almost a NASCAR holding company that has all these different types of race cars.

And yeah, we're very similar to what NASCAR is today. The only thing we don't have is we don't own any tracks like they have ISC, International Speedway Corp, but they also own IMSA. They also are promoters on other events. They have their weekly racing series, which is a grassroots program, and then obviously the Cup and the O'Reillys and then the Truck Series, which falls on a national platform. We also have a national program that is called Trans Am, the national. And we have a Western Series. We also have a Sprint Series within under the Trans Am umbrella. And then similar to the O'Reilly Auto Parts Busch Series or Xfinity Series, as it used to be called, we have a TA2, which is a proving grounds for a lot of the younger drivers to go directly from either late model stock or karting in order to get under, get behind the wheel of a, of a massively large horsepower car and see how they perform. And we've had drivers like Connor Zilich or Tanner May or Brennan Jones that are now big stars up in the NASCAR world start in the TA2 Series. And then that's their logical move next is into the NASCAR world. So we've got a lot of young guns right now that are really, really fast and really, really good. And the older guys are starting to complain and say, what do they got we don't? And it's— you can see that difference and it makes for, you We got about 35, 40 cars on an average weekend, which is a substantial car count. Then our big series, which is like our Cup Series with Trans Am, we're starting to see a growth pattern again. We had a decline. Car count was down, but we're starting to see an incline with us merging Western and Cup as well as Trans Am. As you see on the national side with about 30 to 40 cars on an average weekend, at least at Sebring and Road Atlanta, we just ran We've had extremely large car counts all the way through the— all the way through all of our—

Trans Am, the particular thing that I would know from Trans Am is just the name of the series.

Trans Am is the name of the series, different than the car that has the big flaming bird on the hood. Trans Am celebrating its 60th year. What differentiates Trans Am is it's like what NASCAR used to be with a 900-horsepower unlimited car, no driving aids, no traction control. No computers. It is a handful to drive. And the drivers that drive it are probably some of the best in the world because of the tremendous amount of horsepower, the tremendous amount of downforce, and the tremendous amount of speed these cars— at Road Atlanta, we were seeing these cars exceed 180, 182 miles an hour just down the straightaway. Then imagine going hard right, hard left throughout a road course. That is what Trans Am As a series stands for is the only North American pure stock car road racing series in America. There's NASCAR, obviously does ovals and road courses, but we only run on road courses.

And this is in a particular like, like NASCAR, you pretty much have to have the same specs, right? And then is there other racing where you could bring whatever you want and it's best car wins?

We do. We, uh, in the Trans Am series, uh, there are certain regs and specs that you have to run under, uh, various ride heights, various ride— the vehicle weight, um, downforce, different, uh, angles of a lot of things that are more advanced than me, the sales guy, gets into, uh, spindles and suspension and tires and all of that. That has to be within a box, and that is what you compete with. Uh, but if you run— if you, if you want to look at a series that you run what you brung type statement, uh, that is the SVRA, that is the Sports Car Vintage Racing Association, which we also own. And it's a series and it runs around 14 times a year with us where people are bringing 992 Porsches that are anywhere in the '70s, '60s, '70s, '80s range. Then we have an entire historic stock car group that runs that will have 25 or 30. These are original stock cars that were driven by Bill Elliott, Dale Earnhardt, Terry Labonte and on and on and on. And we have drivers like Bill Elliott coming out of semi-retirement. I think he still drives in other things, but he drives with us a lot. Joe Nemechek drives with us a lot. He actually fields a bunch of cars. They have warehouses in North Carolina that these drivers pay them to set up these cars and bring them to these races so they can have run groups on a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with races. That are 35 minutes in time. They're called sprint races and we'll run SVRA. Trans Am will be kind of timed into the 1:00 to 2:00 period where we run a 100-mile race for that. That's our tentpole events. But then there's always racing activity on the track Friday, Saturday, Sunday from 8 a.m. until dark with all of our series kind of packed in together on a race day where we'll be running multiple races. We also have—

I bought a, I bought a 2023 Corvette Stingray.

Okay. Yeah, well, we, we have a place for that. We have big blocks that are in the SVRA groups. We have 10 groups, 10 different run groups. And so everybody slotted a time period throughout each day to where it's qualifying. Well, testing starts, then qualifying, and then races. You'll have race 1, race 2, and race 3. They're called heat races. And then we'll also run the International GT Series, which is late model Porsches, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Maseratis, AMG Mercedes, Audi R10s that are about 45 cars strong. And they also run heat races, but also an enduro every Sunday that starts in the morning, runs from 8 to 9:30. What do you—

what's one car or manufacturer or model that you're like, wow, that's that's some good bang for the buck. It's a great piece of work and you drive it on the street.

Well, if you look at where you can relate directly to a street model and a daily driver to an actual race car, there's not much difference than what you see in the Porsche 911 GT3. It's a GT Cup car. It's got 700 horsepower. It's very, very similar to what you could buy in a GT3 street car. They've just got a little bit wider wheel flarings and some, some wickers on the front for downforce. And you got a diffuser on the back, which the way the car rides so low, you can't really drive it on the street much, but it's not very much different. Now, if you look at a car that you can't drive on the street, that just still amazes me is in our SVRA with our prototype classes. These are cars that run and ran in the ALMS before IMSA. Purchased them or the France family purchased them. These are the cars that ran Le Mans in the late mid-2000s all the way up to 2010, '12, open cockpit, 700-horsepower prototypes that they run on rails. I mean, they are absolutely flying around the track and to watch what they do still. I can remember the days when I was at ALMS back in the mid-2000s. And it's just amazing what those cars can do and how they've advanced over the years. Pure sports car racing. These manufacturers have built these cars for specific road racing and their big kick. The drivers that own them are collectors because these cars have pedigree and a lot of prominence, provenance that, that they either won the 24 Hours of Daytona or the 12 Hours of Sebring or the 10-hour Petit Le Mans or the 24 Hours of Le Mans. So they have a lot of history and the fans that get to come out get to see it kind of history redone.

What do you think the new Corvette ZR1?

The new Corvette ZR1 would be probably fall within one of our SVRA run groups or even in the IGT. And it classifies, I think, with enough horsepower that it has 1000 horsepower? It would, it would fit into one of our Trans Am GT classes. We have 5 classes: XGT, GT, and then GT1. So it would fall in any one of those categories. And that's what we're a benefit of is we have multiple areas. If you're not an experienced driver and you don't want to run 100 miles, we have these 35-minute sprint races where you, you know, when you purchase a race car, where are you going to race it? And, it's kind of being able to offer the variety of places that you can run. We also have a car show that's every single race that we do called— that's a Hagerty Cars and Caffeine, where we'll have 200 or 300 cars and they are on display and car lovers come out and we have a new lounge that we're setting up for the Hagerty Cars and Caffeine. Which will be with our partner, a new partner I can't reveal. We're not yet done, but it's— we're putting in a lounge area that's covered and we're going to have beverages and we're going to have special drivers come out and speak and do podcasts and create an environment that is conducive to just not coming and parking your car and sitting in a lawn chair in front of it and have people come look at it, but more of a festival feeling and theme. That we're really pushing to grow.

Tell me about your role as Chief Partnerships Officer, right?

Yeah, I, I'm the guy that's responsible for the sales, the sales of partnerships, anything that generates and drives revenue coming in. I'm also heavily involved in overseeing a lot of the P&L to make sure not much is going out. We just can't operate without some checks and balances. But we've got a great team. Our, our CEO and leader, Lee Giannoni, has a long history of a vintage racer for 30-some years. He's, he's got it. He's got his finger on the pulse of where we're at and he's giving us all of the direction on what we need to do. So for me, going out and trying to find partners that want to not only target a highly affluent, well-educated and a high disposable income demographic, that's who watches, that's who comes. As our fans, but also who participates. We've also got motorsportsreg.com, which is the largest digital marketplace in the world. We represent about 9,000 events that people register for, either autocross, drag racing, road racing, stock car racing, any form of motorsports. How do you go to market now?

How do you go to market? How do you get leads coming in now, right?

I mean, now, now what we do is we do a, we do a series of outbound efforts with email blasts that are going out through our motorsports reg to target various partners. We have categories. Before I got here, it was kind of no plan. It was kind of a disgruntled mess, to be honest with you. Everybody got what everybody got and it was no contracts and no formal tiers. And so now we've managed to lock down the typical endemics, which is a tire, official tire, which is Pirelli right now for 2026. We've got official fuel with Sunoco. We have Mission Foods as our, as an official consumer packaged good with their tortillas and chips. They actually make chips shaped like a race car, which is pretty cool. We have Garage Living, which is an official partner. They are the official garage remodeler of all of Racing America. They remodel and upgrade garages and Stack Autolift, which also falls into that category as an official product, the official consumer as well as residential and commercial car lift company.

Do you do LinkedIn outreach or podcast or roundtables?

We are also doing LinkedIn series of case studies on really the products and partners that have been involved with our series, what their success has been. We felt a series telling the story will generate more awareness and more direct response from a potential sponsor that shows what other people are doing and utilizing various tools in the Velocity Capital Management landscape and their portfolio businesses. They own agencies. They also invest in our series, but they also have a company called Elevate, which is one of the largest agencies in the country, in the world for that, that have several verticals. Hiring C-suite sports executives is one vertical. They have a creative division that does nothing but creative. They represent the NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball, NHL, as well as motorsports. And they have a group called Video Sites, would just be called Ripple, that we've really taken a deep dive into analytics on social media as well as television. What are the actual sponsors are getting on an ROI from exposure and media value? We've also got a company called Epic that really studies and takes deep dives onto our consumer analytics. And we're utilizing a lot of those tools to broaden that, that message out of here's exactly who you get a chance to talk to. Here's the numbers of people you have. Here's what we're getting from a return on the investment from a media perspective and digital perspective. And then you tie all those in together. Whereas if you want to do something with a race team and a lot of different series, they have the services and things inside their race team. But not these outside agencies that, that specialize in this area. And so we as a series are trying to deliver as much news and as much data as we can because it's all about data now, you know. And, and social media is our number one tool right now to, to generate those, those content stories, real authentic storytelling, short-form, long-form videos, special magazine shows. We have Road to Glory. That's a a weekly special that runs every Thursday night on Racer Media and Racer TV, as well as our own distribution channels on a deep dive into the background of Trans Am and its competitors and its sponsors. We have another one slated to do for our Formula series, which is open wheel, which is FR, F4, and the Junior Ligier series, which is a stepping ladder for Formula 1. And a lot of people How do people get a hold of you?

We're running out of time. I still—

okay.

How do people get a hold of you?

Who's—

brands should be reaching out to you? Who should reach out to you?

They can go— they can email me at sduncan@racingamerica.com. They can go to racingamerica.com website. There's a whole partner section and you can put in contact information as well as 8 of our other websites. SVRA.com, TransAm, GotransAm.com, InternationalGT or IGT.com, FormulaSeries.com, as well as the Racing America entire.com.

What's your email?

My email is S. Duncan. So it's S. Duncan at RacingAmerica.com.

Thanks for your time, Scott. Appreciate you. Thank you.