Latest news with #carRacing
The Drive
16 hours ago
- Automotive
- The Drive
F1 Is So American Now It Even Has Its Own KFC Meal
The latest car news, reviews, and features. I remember people asking me about my favorite sport when I was a kid. I'd just say 'car racing,' never bothering to specify it was Formula 1 because no one in the U.S. knew what the hell that was back then. Nine out of 10 times, people would say, 'Oh, you like NASCAR!' That's not the case anymore, as F1 has officially broken into American culture. The Liberty Media-owned racing series is as recognizable across the country as the NFL, and I don't need any silly studies or viewership statistics to prove this. All I need to validate this theory is the KFC commercial embedded below, promoting the KFC Fill Up Box Box Box. Get it? Box box box. What's more American than KFC? Oh, what's that—McDonald's, you say? Well, rumor has it the Golden Arches is also coming out with an F1-themed Happy Meal. I know what you're thinking: the KFC commercial is promoting the F1 movie and not exactly the F1 series. Okay, sure, but that's pretty much the same thing, given that the film was intended to serve as a marketing tool for the series from day one. The Joseph Kosinski-directed movie features Brad Pitt and Damson Idris as headliners, and took two years to finish, while an '11th F1 team' traveled the world for 16 months filming real on-track scenes during actual racing weekends. Some reports peg the total cost of the movie at around $300 million. As someone who grew up with F1 since the late '80s and has witnessed its incredible growth in the U.S. thanks to Netflix's Drive to Survive, these advertisements are a finish line of sorts. F1 has made it into mainstream media, and now into the marketing-hungry fast food industry. It simply doesn't get more American than that. F1, you've arrived. Got a tip? Email us at tips@
Entrepreneur
5 days ago
- Automotive
- Entrepreneur
What Race Car Drivers Know That Most Entrepreneurs Don't
From having the right pit crew members to proper pacing, many strategies deployed by race car drivers on the track can be used by aspiring entrepreneurs to drive growth. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Living a full life outside of our careers gives us many opportunities to continue growing. Outside interests beyond family and friends can expand our horizons and ideas of what's possible. For me, that's studying the art of car racing. I appreciate how drivers are prepared from every angle, like prepping the car, assessing the competition and determining where and when to take risks. And I've found that the strategies deployed on the track translate well to running a successful business. Race car drivers and entrepreneurs all want to move fast and win. Beating your business competition and other cars on the racetrack both require accelerating at the perfect time. Case in point: Labor Day is now known as the time when Starbucks brings back its Pumpkin Spice latte. While that might feel early, Starbucks benefits from holiday weekend spending and while also tapping into the anticipation of the fall season. Putting the right foundation in place Pit Crew: Few things define teamwork as well as a pit crew. From the tactical direction of the crew chief to the strength of the tire changer and jack man, to the communication skills of the spotter, pit crews work seamlessly at remarkable speeds to prepare their car for the next lap and eventually the finish line. Your job is to be an agile crew chief. This could mean empowering mid-level managers to make operational calls, much like a pit crew places trust in their jackman. Or giving your marketing team the ability to practice flexible spending so they can quickly capitalize on new opportunities. It's also your job to set the tone, communicate objectives clearly and ensure everyone is aligned when it comes to roles, tactics, timelines and outcomes. Tire Pressure: Tires are a foundational element of a car, much like a strategic plan is the foundation of a viable business. Tire pressure allows drivers to optimize their handling and achieve faster lap times — it's all about the contact patch between the tires and the road. If you don't have the tire pressure right, you risk losing control during turns. Likewise, a strategic business plan gives you the ability to create alignment and achieve faster results without losing control when the unexpected happens. It gives you control and speed, and a clear view of what's working and what's not. Competitive Intel: Successfully competing means knowing who or what you are up against. Each of your competitors has some advantage. Like race car teams, you need to know the track record of your competitors — where they have succeeded and faltered, the strengths and weaknesses of team members, the amount of fuel/capital they have — and use that intel to your advantage. Get educated. Tools like Crayon share real-time insights gleaned from your competitors' digital footprints, while social listening platforms like Sprout Social offer competitor reports and performance tracking across social networks. It's not just about driving fast but driving smart. When you know the track inside out, you can clearly visualize winning the race. Related: How to Gain a Competitive Edge: 4 Key Questions to Ask When Analyzing Your Competitors Driving growth Fuel Level: Think of motor fuel as your sales and marketing expenditures. You need to know how much fuel you have left in the tank. Do you front-load your pitstops (and sales/marketing expenditures) to start out strong and then conserve for the rest of the race? Or do you make more pit stops toward the end of the race (and end of the year), so you have enough fuel to get across the finish line? A SaaS company might invest heavily in Q1 ad spend to acquire annual subscribers early. There's no right answer here, as it depends on your revenue model and resources. But knowing what works best for your venture is critical for a successful year-end. Related: 5 Strategies to Know As You Scale Your Business Pacing: Perhaps one of the most important elements of car racing and running a business is determining your pace. As a track has different sections that require different speeds, so does the growth trajectory of your business. In racing, drivers often start at a moderate pace to preserve fuel and tire life on long races to avoid unnecessary wear and tear in those initial laps. Running a business is a long race, so you need to balance moderate pacing with those "push to pass" moments, when you strategically fuel a burst of acceleration to overtake your competitors. This could mean launching a feature during a competitor's PR crisis or offering limited-time pricing in a peak demand season. Other pacing factors can include funding levels, product/market fit, cost of customer acquisition, market timing, scalability and more. This is where you lean on your business strategy as a guide in determining your business's optimal pacing. Related: Delegating Doesn't Mean You Lose Control — It Means You Maximize Your Impact. Here's How to Do It Effectively. Crossing the finish line When you're racing a car, crossing the finish line is the end of the race. In running a business, it means achieving sustainable, profitable growth. That feat takes all of the above strategies, combined with your leadership skills in risk management, adaptability and innovation. And most importantly, vision and conviction. As racer Dale Earnhardt once said, "The winner ain't the one with the fastest car. It's the one who refuses to lose."
CBS News
27-05-2025
- Automotive
- CBS News
Bandimere eyes property in northeast Colorado for new speedway
A new era of racing cars at a speedway in Colorado may be just down the road. John Bandimere Jr. told CBS News Colorado last week, "We also promised you that when we had news, we would share it with you. Well, we have some news." Bandimere Speedway CBS Bandimere Jr. said that the organization, with partners, closed on the first parcel of land near Hudson in Weld County. He said this is the first piece of a "complex puzzle" that would also include acquiring property around it. Bandimere Jr. did not give the exact location of the property. "Zoning and annexation will now be taking place, with the exact timing not really sure, and we're not really clear as to how that will all work out," Bandimere Jr. said. "I know, most of you understand ... we've been working to continue the automobile legacy," John Bandimere Jr. said in a YouTube video. Bandimere Speedway stopped 65 years of drag racing on Hogback Mountain in October 2024. Bandimere Speedway regularly hosted nearly 130 events each year and had more than 1,700 registered races each season. Since leaving the location in Morrison next to C470, the family said it would continue to look for a new location. Bandimere said his parents started the car racing facility back in 1958.
The Guardian
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Motorheads review – Amazon's teen racing soap goes nowhere slowly
Like the quickly forgotten Panic before it, Motorheads, Amazon's latest 10-episode attempt at a teen soap, takes as a given an improbable premise – in this case, that a group of American teens in Ironwood, Pennsylvania, a fictional town an hour's drive from Pittsburgh, are primarily preoccupied not with the internet or football or parties, but with building and racing cars. Cars are, of course, a pivotal part of many an American coming of age; routine drag-racing, not so much. The idea of Fast & Furious as odd local tradition, instead of a bunch of teens raised on the Fast & Furious movies, is the most charming, if far-fetched and unexplained, aspect of Motorheads, which you can easily imagine being pitched as Dom Toretto & Co but make it gen Z kids in a dead-end Rust belt town. Created by John A Norris, Motorheads has the clear imprimatur of the mega-corporation's streaming wing: a checklist of genre parts cobbled together into an ungainly product that seems both cheap and expensive at once. The pilot contained more Top 40 hits than I've ever heard on a TV show, including assumedly pricey tracks by Olivia Rodrigo, Benson Boone, Teddy Swims and more; the characters discuss 'winter break' while the trees remains leafy and green. Motorheads is at least self-aware that it's not reinventing the teen soap wheel, coasting on the expected elements. New kid in town throwing a wrench in the social order? That would be twins Zac (Michael Cimino) and Caitlyn (Melissa Collazo), who have moved back to their mother Sam's (Nathalie Kelley) hometown from Brooklyn, for reasons unknown, to live with their uncle Logan (Ryan Phillippe), a former Nascar mechanic who has retreated to his small auto-repair business. Unresolved daddy issues? The twins' father, Christian Maddox, was a legendary driver who disappeared 17 years ago following a post-robbery car chase that became a viral YouTube video played in the series on loop. (Christian is played in flashback by Phillippe's son Deacon, who looks far too young to be a father of twins, let alone a local legend.) Rich kid villain who is secretly overcompensating for deep insecurities? That would be Harris (Josh Macqueen), the son of a local magnate and reigning car champion, who drives a Porsche and boasts a near permanent sneer. Love triangle? Not one but two: Zac is immediately smitten with Harris's Sandy-esque girlfriend, Alicia (Mia Healey), Caitlyn with closeted cool girl Kiara (Johnna Dias-Watson) and angsty loner Curtis (Uriah Shelton), who happens to be a motorcycle enthusiast. Ludicrously high and continuously escalating stakes? All of the parents, who apparently all had their kids during senior year, get tangled in another car chase crime operation that invariably ties into Zac and Harris's ultimate drag race showdown. Also, there's a diner. 'That's literally every high school,' jokes one parent when a fellow parent/ex-lover remarks how crazy it is that their sons are fighting over the same girl. True, though some make the ingredients pop more than others; The Summer I Turned Pretty, by far Amazon's most successful entry into the YA market, turns similarly incestuous and ridiculous drama into compulsively watchable television befitting the legacy of such soaps as One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl. Motorheads, by contrast, repeatedly sputters through laughably bad lines ('Tell your lesbo sister to stay away from my girlfriend!'), even clunkier exposition ('I mean, your dad just lost her,' Alicia reminds Harris of his dead mother) and mediocre effects (an obviously CGI-ed bird omen, for one). Car race scenes that should get pulses racing instead drag, failing to pull focus from the inevitable second screen. The extent that the show works is credit to a winsome cast of new faces, particularly Cimino, Collazo, Shelton and Nicolas Cantu as archetypical nerd Marcel. While the elder Phillippe seems to strain for Logan's World-weary, burned-out father figure, the kids' chemistry feels natural, the show at its easiest and most enjoyable when it allows the foursome space to tease, bicker, hang out and toss around mechanical jargon while fixing up Christian's old car. The group provide a sweet heartbeat for the series – faint, but enough for this viewer to power through the 10 overlong episodes that land in unsatisfying territory, anticipating a second season that, given the streaming services' capriciousness with renewals, I fear will never come. Which is a shame, as Motorheads has potential – there's some good parts in an ever-reliable engine, but this arrangement stalls. Motorheads is available now on Amazon Prime Video
