Alex Bowman, the 23-year-old Coors Light Pole winner for Sunday’s Can-Am 500 at Phoenix International Raceway, calls nearby Tucson, Arizona home.
Bowman isn’t the only NASCAR tie to Tucson. In fact, NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France managed Tucson Raceway Park early in his career, a four-employee operation that he compared to running a Minor League Baseball team.
“People were saying, ‘You got stuck in Tucson, Arizona,'” France told attendees at Transitions West 2016, a family business conference at which he spoke prior to NASCAR’s Phoenix race weekend.
“I said, ‘I’m going to get to run something,’ which I did. I got great experience.”
France spoke at the conference about the importance of learning the business from the ground up, and how that led to his first signature achievement – when as senior vice president in 1999, he consolidated the sanctioning body’s television rights.
“People said it could never be done, you’re too independent, tracks would never go along with that. And we took revenues at the time from $90 million to now $900 million in that one area.”
Source: Reid Spencer / NASCAR Wire Service
