Smooth Transition
by Andy Belmont-Staff Writer and ARCA Series Driver
11/12/2003

The move from the Charlotte area has been relatively smooth. ABM is back up and running at full speed with our efforts to get as much as possible back in house. "Volume" (Kenny) is hard at it with a new tail clip going onto one of the Daytona cars. Getting a jig set back up has taken some time, but looks like we are right on track.

Shaver has the primary short track car just about ready to head to the paint shop. This is the first full body we have tackled in a long, long time and it looks pretty nice. Some of the fabrication work is slower than we would like, but it takes tons of time to fit all of the body templates that we have to work with. Once that car hits the paint shop at the Bucks County Technical School, the new class of kids will get a first hand look at what the full bodied stock cars look like before they are all dressed up with the Verizon colors and graphics.

Back to school nights are a big deal in our home town and we have run race cars and the simulator to as many facilities as we can within reason. Annually, we put a car at the Philadelphia Community College automotive section, the Tech school and several other places. The annual book fair is coming where we fill a car with text books. Prizes are awarded to the student who correctly guesses the number of books inside the car. This car is on display at the Oxford Valley Mall in Langhorne and is seen by thousands. All of these events are a big kick to me personally as we get to be on hand and speak about something we love. Hopefully, we can get through to a few of these kids.

Pocono Raceway has been a big help assisting us with some of the school programs, and in fact, have helped us with tickets for the students for going on ten years. Dr. Joe and Dr. Rose are as I have said on many occasions, a class act.

Wes Hughes and Jess Montgomery have been very hard at it in the office. Our annual impressions report for our sponsor Verizon is due to be finished this weekend. Our report is basically a compilation of everything that we have done to garner impressions for the program. From travel with the different vehicles carrying Verizon logo's to radio and TV to a clipping service of all of the places that there has been a news article or Internet mention. No small task, but part of what we offer to our sponsors to assist in quantifying the program.

It looks like this year's program will come in solidly under five cents per thousand impressions (CPM) a figure that is unbelievably low and efficient as an overall expenditure of the program. It has been a mountain of work in the office, but most worthy of course. Add all of this to scheduling the show car dates and respective things that we sell as a company and you can imagine how busy they are. I am blessed with a great group of people.

Planning for the Focus Ministries auction at the banquet is going well and once again we will be hosting a hospitality suite at the Eastern Motorsports Press Association in January. We keep hopping!

We are in the final phase of getting our radio program expanded for this season. Unless something totally comes unglued, we will broadcast during speedweeks live from Daytona USA from 9PM to 10PM. Once all of the details are ironed out, we will send out a firm schedule and a tentative line up of guests. This should be a fun hour each evening where we have drivers, media folks and the like on hand. We will also be doing some question and answer stuff with the audience and have had a great response to prize requests for the show. If you're in Daytona and have a tough question, we will enjoy the challenge of trying to answer it.

Of course our daytime program will go on from the Speedway itself and we will be on daily from 10AM to 12PM. Working as a media person is a welcome change and gives us a totally different perspective of our sport.

It's hard work, but I love my job!

Andy Belmont