What is your favorite motor sport? Is drag racing your favorite?
FL: It's hard for me to pick a favorite. I enjoy Late Model and Sprint Car dirt track racing too and tractor pulls are a lot of fun. I wouldn't pick one as more favorable than another. On a given day, I like them all.
How has your company’s involvement with NASCAR been?
FL: We chipped away a lot in NASCAR. We started out with a sponsorship of one of NASCARS 4-cylinder cars. We had a team in Daytona that didn't cost much. We were a little company but we had a full sponsorship of a team at Daytona. NASCAR just a few years back was not what it is today. I can remember when they couldn't field a full field or fill the grandstands and Busch was still six cylinders. You see the Busch cars now and they’re a bunch of flaming cars. Back then they were a bunch of junk. We sponsored Morgan-McClure's car last year and Mike Wallace’s team the year before.
Getting back to drag racing then, how did you decide to sponsor the NHRA sportsman program, which is probably the largest number of participates the NHRA has?
FL: Well, we had the title sponsorship rights for a couple or three NHRA national events, then the sponsorship for the sportsman series came available and we thought it was a good way to get involved. There was a pretty good package of benefits that NHRA offered that came with the sponsorship.
So you’re happy with your relationship with NHRA and being the sportsman series sponsor? You feel your company receives good value for that?
FL: Our association with the NHRA has helped the Lucas Oil company grow and helped make us a household name. Our contract with the NHRA sportsman series is up in 2009,
but I think we will be able to negotiate a new contract. NHRA is more interested in the pro series than they are in the sportsman series, but I’m more interested in the sportsman series than the pro series, even though we have Morgan (Lucas) and Larry Morgan in it (pro series). I know there's a large response with the pro series and I know every sportsman out there wants to be a pro someday, but that can't be and I feel like we look out for them the best we can. The sportsman racers are our customers.
All in all, we're making the company grow, we getting what we wanted out of it (sportsman series) -- the household name, the reputation. People buy stuff when they've heard the brand name.
While we're on that subject, give me your opinion on the sale of the professional series and how that will affect the sportsman series and your involvement with the sportsman series. Do you think that will dilute your presence with them separating the professional away from the sportsmen?
FL: I don't see how or unless they have different plans than what I've got. As far as I'm concerned the sportsmen guys pretty much pay the bills over there. They're going to take the pros a whole other direction the way it looks, but they couldn't exist without the sportsmen cars, I don’t see how they could.
