Greg Gill, on SRO Motorsports America’s Growth and Ideas For Fan Engagement

Over the weekend, SRO Motorsports America President Greg Gill sat down with DSC to chat about how the series has attracted its biggest fields since the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic, as well as ideas for engaging fans and bringing the series back to being a fan-centred event.

It wasn’t all that long ago that SRO Motorsports America’s flagship series, GT World Challenge America, was struggling to even crack double digit entries for some races in the last two seasons. Jump forward to first race meeting at Sonoma Raceway, however, and the flagship GT World Challenge America series can now proudly boast a 20 car entry list – supplemented by 42 entries in GT4 America, and 28 in the all-bronze GT America series.

“It is a good trend, year over year,” Gill remarked on the grid growth in 2022. “In some cases, it’s 30 percent up [from last season].”

“I think all of sports car racing is doing well globally, right now, and there’s been a real strong interest in that. So we’re thankful for it.”

“But you know, there’s an expression: ‘The harder you work, the luckier you get.’ We have an incredibly good, hard working paddock and hard working staff that has helped build this.”

All of motorsport, sport at large, society at large – felt the brunt of the “coronashock” in March 2020. Gill and SRO America were in a very unique position, to say the least, when the entire world suddenly changed.

“We were on track when the decision was made at St. Petersburg, Florida, in 2020,” Gill recalls. “There were concerns, people were trying to understand what it meant.”

“And we were literally driving in a session when the decision was made by media companies, the organization, the event, that we’ll have to pull the plug and stop.”

“That was shocking. And then the world changed so radically from March through May, with complete lockdowns.”

“But what we discovered out of that, is that racing is so much an internal, competitive nature sport – that for the individuals were participating in it, they didn’t want to stop competing.”

“We love fans, and we’re happy to be back with them. But it wasn’t fan dependent, which allowed us to be able to quickly emerge in July, racing again. And the customers were thrilled.”

“We had to understand the safe ways to do that, and to test, and to mask, and to do these things that were so important. But we could move forward. And again, that’s a testimony to all of the stakeholders to make that happen.”

“I’d like to tell you that it was some brave decision we made. But it was made as a group, and we moved forward. I think that allowed the foundation to be there in 2021, to start understanding that it’s going to be different. And now this pent up demand – as we’ve seen in all forms of sport, people are just keen to get back to normalcy. So we’re riding that wave and very thankful for it.”

 

Now that things are getting back to, at least, something resembling the normalcy of old – Gill has areas where he’d like to see SRO Motorsports America continue to improve upon for the future.

“Continued grid growth is important to us,” said Gill. “Secondary to that, is we are a 30-plus year-old organization.”

“Probably seven years ago, we were much more fan-focused and dependent, as we realized we were moving into much more of a customer racing model starting in 2016.”

“We’re a part of the SRO group and SRO family. It’s customer racing from top to bottom. There are great manufacturer programs in the Intercontinental GT [Challenge] as part of our GT World Challenge program. But at the end of the day, it’s customer racing.”

“And now that that’s clarified, we want to return and say, ‘Let’s connect this to fans.’ How does that look? What does it look like in North America?”

“That ties in – and we’re very pleased – with doing what we’ve done with eSports, which is very much a hands on consumer experience. We’re pleased, obviously, with our Assetto Corsa Competizione game, to be able to bring fans in, and to get that dedication.”

“We’re working on grid growth, fan engagement – and then the natural extension is the eSports engagement as well. In Europe, it goes so far as requiring drivers to participate in it.”

Would it mean that, in the near future, we could see eSports events paying points for the real-world GT World Challenge America championships? Gill replied confidently, “Absolutely. We’ll see what that looks like.”

Images © SRO

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