5.0&SF: How large is Ford Racing, which you now command?
BW: Well, it's a much smaller group than I had previously. When I was in PD, the job I had before coming here, I had about 900 people globally-engineers, scientists, technicians. This group is closer to the 50 number: some Ford folks, some agency, some contract, and so on. The group is much smaller, but from my personal perspective, its so much more exciting because you can get to know everyone who works for you. I've always tried to get to know everybody, and it's not hard to get day-to-day contact-900 people compared to 40 or 50, so it's a lot smaller group. You know, Ford Racing has always been a pretty efficient operation. Where it goes out is all the team interfaces, the sanctioning bodies, all those folks that you deal with on a day-to-day basis.
5.0&SF: Where does the Ford Racing budget come from inside of Ford Motor Company? Are you an adjunct to marketing...?
BW: Yes, definitely marketing. From my perspective, Ford Racing's main charter is to improve the company's image and increase vehicle sales through motorsports. And, of course, we also have the parts catalog. The idea with the catalog is parts for the production car to make them more attractive. Everything pretty much revolves around selling more cars and trucks, and really trying to enhance the image.
5.0&SF: Dan Davis seemed to have a pretty successful tenure at Ford Racing. By now, you've probably identified some areas you'd like to concentrate on, build on what he's done and put your own stamp on it. What areas are you looking at?
BW: I think a good thing that Dan did was working with NASCAR and the engine programs. Those are solid and we really want to keep them going. The work with the Funny Car safety-which Dan really latched onto because it seemed like part of Ford's DNA-and the Performance Packs for the production car, Handling Pack, and so on, those are all great things.
I think the one area that I'll be looking at is reaching out a bit to the sportsman-type racers. To me, they are some of our strongest advocates and we can use their passion for Ford to sell more cars and trucks. Give them the tools they need so that when someone says, "Yeah, I had a Ford a while ago, but I had some quality problems," the sportsman-type racer can respond: "Well, did you know that Ford is second to none in quality? Maybe you had some problems back then, but it's not a reason not to buy a Ford today. Ford has some of the highest quality products on the road." You know, help them help us try to sell some parts; reach out to them. So we'd really like to get more involved and embrace our sportsman racers. That's one piece of it.
Then there are some professional races that we don't dabble in today, but on the other hand, maybe the folks that are watching that type of racing won't consider a Ford today. So if we can go in there and kick everybody's ass, that would be a cool thing.
5.0&SF: Could you be more specific on which sanctions you're...?
BW: Well, I think some of the SCCA World Speed Challenge, maybe looking at what we can do in American Le Mans early next decade when they start changing things. But, you know, we're not making any commitments. What I'm doing so far in my week and a half here is looking at the areas we aren't playing in and why, and whether there's an opportunity if we do go play there.
5.0&SF: What is the time split between your duties administering Ford's professional racing associations and the performance parts program?
BW: Probably 75 percent on the racing side and 25 percent on the parts side. You know, the parts program is running pretty efficiently; there are lots of things there that have been successful. I want to put just a little of my fingerprint on some of those items as well, based on my background and some of the stuff I bought and liked and used. As a user, a purchaser of some of those parts, [I may have said,] 'Gosh, I wish Ford Racing offered this as opposed to maybe not having it as a Ford Racing part.'