POCONO, Pa — NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France briefly addressed the media Sunday at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway to give his insights on the newly established driver’s council, which met for the first time last Saturday at Dover (Del.) International Speedway at the request of the sanctioning body.
“It’s great,” France said. “I’ve said from the beginning that you know that we’re going to improve our communications across the board with all the stakeholders and they’re certainly as important as anybody, so that’s consistent.”
And while France insists an open-door policy has always been a standard practice, he added, “What you’re seeing is just more formalized conversations. We talk all the time about things that are important to them (drivers).
“We did the same thing with the track operators. We didn’t have a formal get together with them, we now do in February of every year, where it’s very formal and we lay out things for them. That just gives everybody a really good seat at the table to express what’s important to them. That’s what I’ve said from the beginning that’s important to us.”
France also added that a formal meeting has yet to take place with the RTA (Race Team Alliance), but he expressed that it’s important to keep the line of communication open with everyone, including the RTA in the interest of making NASCAR better for all.
“Look, when anybody has things that can improve the sport, we’re going to be open to that. It doesn’t really matter how the exact form of communication happens, what matters is that it does happen. And we’re getting the stakeholders as close to us as we can, because there’s a lot of good ideas that come out of these discussions.”
While France didn’t offer any exclusive insight of what actually transpired during the meeting, he did offer some of the dialogue. “The drivers with safety, there’s a business side to this that they have an interest in, there’s all kinds of things that they have an interest in that we need to make sure we communicate well with them,” he added.
And while France clearly indicated the creation of the drivers’ council isn’t a change in the direction or dictatorship of the sport, he did reiterate how important conversation is to keep the sport flourishing.
“Not at all,” said France on the question. ”That’s exactly what I said a number of years ago. That’s my style. To be collaborative to do more communications, not less. And if we have to formalize them to get (better) more input, then we’ll formalize them. Whatever it takes to get everybody to be able to express what’s important to them.”
France did not attend the initial driver council gathering.
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