Earlier this spring Watkins Glen International Speedway President Michael Printup fed the rumor mill about things that might happen at the track in 2011. Two of those things were very unique events, a car swap between a Formula One and a NASCAR driver and a concert / festival by a “jam” band with a fanatical following. Printup, a user of social media took to Twitter to announce on March 18th, “I think I am going Phishing this weekend!”, then said shortly afterwards, again via Twitter, “hopefully we will have some big racing news soon coming from The Glen!!! and there is one more surprise out there as well!!! Stayed tuned!!!”
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[/media-credit]Although many don’t remember the track had hosted Summer Jam in 1973 headlined by the Grateful Dead and it drew more people than Woodstock a few years earlier. Subsequent laws were passed restricting this type of event there but those were reversed in the fall of 2010. So the rumors about Phish going there started in the fall and continued into the spring of 2011. The rumors about the car swap also circulated for some time and Printup just fed fans and media little morsels of information about both events. He played it perfectly as both events came to fruition and were successful.
The track and area has a storied past but there was a time back in the early 1980’s that saw the track fall into disrepair after Formula One stopped racing there. Eventually it was saved by a partnership between Corning Enterprises (a division of Corning Inc.) and International Speedway Corporation (ISC), the company that owns Daytona International Speedway and many other race tracks. A lot has changed at Watkins Glen International Speedway since then and it’s near demise, one change was the addition of the Glen Club, a facility that hosts V.I.P.’s. On March 6, 2007 the club burned down. Since then the track had used temporary facilities to replace the structure that hosted V.I.P. for track events and private parties. For this season that facility has been replaced with a permanent building. It’s just one of the many projects that the track’s president, Printup, has initiated and completed under his short tenure.
Printup, a native of Hamburg N.Y., was named president of the track in June of 2009. According to his profile available from ISC, Printup has a long history of working in professional sports. From 2005 through mid 2007 Printup was vice president of 380 Development LLC where he was the project manager for the development and implementation of a racetrack in Staten Island, N.Y. The company later abandoned the project after reported difficulties with local government representatives being just one of the problems.
From there Printup went to the Michigan International Speedway where he was the senior director of facility management. In that position he headed up all business and facility development. He also headed up new business initiatives at the track and managed almost $30 million in projects.
Speedway Media caught up with Printup on one of the hottest days of 2011 and he spoke about both of those rumored events mentioned earlier. “It’s been a fantastic year,” Printup said. “I know it’s been the busiest our track management has ever been. Between the ‘car swap’, planning for the Phish show, something really outside of the box that we just did, it’s been busy. We have the track rented almost every single day from the middle of April until November 1 so there’s not much peace that can be had up at Watkins Glen. We all love it and we’re having a very busy and now hot summer.” Printup then explained that although it was very hot the elevation of the track still allowed for nice breezes.
When asked about new things for 2011 at the track he said, “It’s been another busy year on our capital improvement program. I got here in 2009 and we took a totally different review of what we were doing from a capital improvement project list. We’re fortunate because the company has really been supportive of the changes that we made and of our strategic plan and our master plan.” For this year he said, “We have put in camping amenities, about $500,000 worth. We added a bunch of stuff over at Gate 1 (camping area), new lights, additional water, and better parking. We added showers. The Crown Royal Club is now a permanent structure. We put up 4 new grandstands in areas that we used to rent grandstands. So it’s providing a much, much, better experience. In the last 7 or 8 years we’ve put almost $28 million into the place. This year alone we’ve put in about $3.3 million. And I’m very proud to say all with New York State construction companies and vendors as well.”
Printup’s position is that the fans need to be catered to and notice how hard the track works to get things right for them, “The whole goal is to take care of the fans. I wish I could fix everything in a year. I lobby and we end up with a strong strategic plan. The goal for me and my team is for the fans to recognize a change every single time they come back to the track.” One thing he mentioned was making it better all around the track. “We bought $100,000 worth of picnic tables alone just to spread throughout the grandstands instead of people camping on the grass and laying there,” he said. He also wants to finish adding more permanent grandstand seats a project that fans will see is half-way completed when they get there.
Obviously the premier NASCAR series stop at the track is a highlight of the year but 2011 saw a really special event when NASCAR’s Tony Stewart and F-1’s Lewis Hamilton swapped their rides at the track. “My short term dream event was that car swap,” Printup said of the event in early June. “That was literally one of the first phone calls I made when I became track president. The vice president of Mobil is a very good friend of mine and I’ve known him for over a decade. I said, ‘you know where I’m at?’ He said, ‘Yes’ and I said ‘first I need Mobil 1 as the official oil’, he told me to ‘go to hell’. He said, ‘not a chance; I’m not spending money at race tracks.’ Number two I said, ‘let’s copy what Indianapolis did with Jeff Gordon and Juan Pablo Montoya and let’s do a car swap.’ He said, ‘That we might be able to do.’ I did that in July of 2009. It took two years to get done. In the last year we worked really, really hard on it.”
One thing that did come from that swap was the idea of racing the “boot” section of the track during the NASCAR race. Tony Stewart and according to Printup, Juan Pablo Montoya are on board with NASCAR racing on that section of the track.
“I would like to see it and I will lobby, heck I already have lobbied, with NASCAR but we’re going to take it one step at a time,” he said about seeking permission to use the infamous boot section. “I met with a few of the NASCAR executives the week after the car swap. I sat down with them and said, ‘I know it’s premature to be barking up a storm about racing the boot but let me take a look at a few capital things first.’ Then he explained why he couldn’t do it right away. “You don’t want to just open up the boot and not have a plan. I would have to pave the sand trap in turn 8. I wouldn’t want to do it before then. I would want to consider, do we want to add any seats? Even if it’s limited bleachers. Camping. There are just so many things to go through. So I told NASCAR, ‘give me at least a year to think about this and maybe in 2012 I’ll come back and lobby you and maybe we run Nationwide on the boot.’ We could start there and just how it goes.”
Printup has great plans for the infamous track in the finger lakes of central N.Y. and wants to makes fans want to come back. But one thing he did say was that the possibility of a Formula One race at Watkins Glen was remote. “You’re picking my dream event,” he said when asked about F-1 racing there. “To have a NASCAR and Formula One facility would be unbelievable. But Bernie Ecclestone (Formula One Management CEO and President) is a tough cracker. I’ve been involved in this for a long time. I am a Formula One and NASCAR freak and fan. I just know of anyone that is paying Bernie, $25 million a year in a sanctioning fee here. We couldn’t sustain that business. We would be selling tickets at 1,000 bucks apiece. Then you’d just out price all the fans that truly, truly love the Glen for its road course, technical abilities, it’s a drivers course. It just wouldn’t make sense.” He said, “They want to be in New York City, Chicago, L.A., now they’re going to be in Austin Tx. Which is fantastic. That would be my dream event. That’s a long way away.”
