In a keynote address at the Motor SportBusiness Conference, CART senior vice president marketing Richard Henley, said the brand name was under review and that the company would conduct a research programme over the next year to see how fans would respond.
Henley said CART’s strategy was to focus on building “a stronghold in North America” where he admitted the organisation was “nowhere near where it needed to be from a brand awareness point of view”.
CART, he said, would be “investing more heavily in the US and then branch out internationally”. But in a statement that appeared to contradict this US focus, Henley argued that CART’s international TV exposure exceeded that of its closed-wheel rival NASCAR and that CART would continue to grow in Europe.
Meanwhile, on the vexed question of CART’s relationship with IRL, Henley gave no sign that reconciliation was in the offing.
“These decisions are not my decisions. It will be decided by the board of CART and Tony George of IRL. In the short term, we probably will not meet somewhere in the middle. IRL’s strength is in the mid-west with American drivers. We’re more metropolitan. I hope we can both be successful.”
