You sponsor a lot of racing series and sports teams including the LA Dodgers and the Anaheim Ducks hockey team. You have the title rights to the new dome being built for the Indianapolis Colts and according to your folks sponsor 200 individual racers with either money, product or both. Could you give me a ballpark number of your approximate sponsorship investment for all your motor sports commitments?
FL: No, I wouldn't want to go into that with you.
Well, it certainly must be a significant amount of money.
FL: It is, but not as much as people might think. We’ve found that we are pretty good and working good deals with racers and teams that are good for both of us. Sponsorship dollars in racing aren’t always what they might seem.
Tell me how you became involved in motor racing. I mean, Lucas Oil is everywhere in racing now. Your company supports motor racing series and racers of all kinds…
FL: We've brought a lot to racing, a lot of money to it, a lot of recognition. There's a lot of people trying to do what we've done. I think we've done a lot for the industry.
How did you make the decision to use auto racing and racers to advertise your company and product?
FL: When we started out, we couldn't afford TV ads. We had to bring some recognition to the product. I got to thinking that everybody relates to racecars so we went out and sponsored some Saturday night racers. {Note: Forrest Lucas himself was a street stock racer at California’s Ventura Speedway.] Most people don't know the difference between a Saturday night racer and a professional racer so we put our name on some of these cars and we put pictures of their cars on some of our products, and our company letterhead had pictures of racecars. As a result we made more money and sponsored more racers. Then we started doing bigger and better things like TV ads because by then we were selling enough product. Thanks to our racer sponsorships we could afford it.
What was your first major involvement with racing as a sponsor? Was it a racer or series?
FL: The first big sponsorship was an NHRA division 7 Alcohol Funny Car owned by Jason Rupert, and Morgan (Lucas) was on that team. What we were trying to do was reach the eyes of the auto parts dealerships.
How did that work out?
FL: We started out putting Lucas Oil products at truck stops and we tried to go up the chain to the oil stores. CARQUEST was our first chain warehouse customer. Everybody in the area that warehouse served bought our products, so we got another CARQUEST (warehouse) and some others auto parts stores bought and we started moving slowly. All the auto parts chains were involved with NHRA, not NASCAR or any of the other racing, just NHRA. At the time, the Auto Zone had the Winternationals sponsorship and I wanted to reach those guys because they had to be watching the races. At the time, the NHRA couldn't sell sponsorships for all their races so we got a deal on one, the Chicago Route 66 Raceway second event, and that really got everyone's attention. It had a big impact for Lucas Oil.