Heart-pounding turns, surprising twists and edge-of-your-seat drama draw fans to the brand of high-speed automobile racing that will transform the streets of Baltimore in less than a year.
But as the inaugural Baltimore Grand Prix looms closer, it appears the lead-up to the event could be just as much of a nail-biter.
With the three-day racing festival just 10 months away, organizers have yet to land a title sponsor to help shoulder the cost of promotion. A set of light rail tracks is posing an apparently unprecedented challenge for engineers. And a lukewarm climate for Indy-style racing only adds to the uncertainty.
The team of local businessmen and lawyers staging the event is banking on tens of thousands of fans flocking to downtown Baltimore for a festival to span next Labor Day weekend. They say fans will pump tens of millions of dollars into the local economy, and the city will shine in media coverage as a picturesque backdrop for the whizzing open-wheeled cars.
The group has won over the city's elected leaders, who have pledged $7.75 million for road work and infrastructure repairs for the course.
But before the green flag may wave, millions more must be invested in miles of barriers and fences, grandstands and skyboxes, sanctioning fees and advertising campaigns in several markets. That's where corporate sponsors — and their deep pockets — play a key role.
"A title sponsor can make or break your event," said Speed Channel columnist Robin Miller, who has covered racing for four decades. Typically, the sponsor pays for print and broadcast ads and billboards in exchange for prominent placement of its name.
"Ten months out and they don't have a title sponsor?," Miller asked. "They've got to be nervous."
Sponsorships, which play an increasingly influential role in professional sport, are particularly crucial in racing. Drivers, teams and races all rely on corporate dollars to keep the intricately engineered and expensive-to-run cars on the tracks.
The decisions of sponsors in recent months to back away from two of Indy racing's most prominent drivers, Tony Kanaan and Ryan Hunter-Reay, have fueled fears that money for the sport is drying up, Miller said.
Event promoter Jay Davidson is confident his team can hook the right sponsors. Davidson, the president of Baltimore Racing Development, said the group is "negotiating hard with three different companies, and one of those companies will wind up being our title sponsor."
Davidson said legal agreements preclude him from naming the companies, but two are based in Maryland and one is from the surrounding region. He said he expects to announce a title sponsor in the next few weeks who will pay "in the low seven figures."
Baltimore Racing Development is trying to line up a separate sponsor for the American Le Mans Series race planned for the day before the Indy race.
Once the main sponsors have been nailed down, Davidson says, the group intends to sell as many as 20 smaller sponsorships for price tags ranging from $25,000 to $250,000.
"We've sort of taken a top-down approach to this, so we don't preclude anything from our title sponsor," he said.
Davidson says that he expects to announce sponsorship deals this week with the five hotels near the course: the Marriott, Harbor Court, Sheraton, InterContinental and Hilton.
"We're trying to give sponsors signage that is very clear and that will show up well on television, so that it won't be cluttered like some races," Davidson said. And the group organizers have the latitude to strike new deals up until just a few weeks before the race, he said.
But it's unclear how potential sponsors will respond to a race in Baltimore. Because it's the first year of the event, there are no guarantees on attendance or viewership.
Davidson said the Le Mans race will likely be broadcast on either CBS or the Speed Channel, and Sunday's Indy race will be aired on Versus. Versus, which airs the majority of the 17 races in the Indy series, draws about 300,000 viewers per broadcast, Miller said.
The Baltimore race will also be aired internationally. In subsequent years, Davidson said, it could be shown on ABC in this country.
Lee Igel, a professor of the business of sports at New York University, says the slumping economy makes sponsorship a harder sell. If profits are flagging, he says, it's tough to persuade shareholders to spend cash promoting a sporting event. And it's difficult to gauge the value of plastering a company's name on an event.
"There's no reliable metric on return on investment in sports sponsorships," Igel said. "You get lots of vanity plays and perks, but no one is quite sure how that turns into profits."
Igel says most new sporting events, teams and venues are unveiled with sponsorships already in place.
"If you have no sponsor coming out of the event, it could mean there's not a lot of support," he said. Once the announcement has been made, he says, companies often wait to see if the price drops before making a commitment.
But Bob Leffler, owner of a Baltimore-based sports advertising agency with clients across the country, says it's becoming more common for promoters to announce events before securing sponsors. He describes the process of landing sponsors as "not for the faint-hearted."
"You've got to make a numbers case around an event that's three days long," said Leffler, who is not working on the Baltimore Grand Prix. "That's the bad news."
The good news, he said, is that Indy racing brings substantial name recognition.
"It's not like you're coming in and saying you're going to do the Bifflesplit Grand Prix and run jalopies," he said.
Davidson and his team are counting on the Indy brand to draw fans from across the Mid-Atlantic region — the next closest races in the series are in New Hampshire and Ohio. Tickets, which are slated to go on sale next month, are expected to bring in more revenue than sponsorships.
Admission will run from $25 to $70, depending on the day; three-day passes, which include access to the pit and paddock areas, will range from $160 to $200. Those hoping to view the contest for free may squeeze into balconies of high-rises along the route.
Davidson hopes to sell $7 million in tickets, compared to about $3.5 million to $4 million in sponsorships.
Scoring Labor Day weekend was a major victory for the race planners, because it will allow visitors more time to travel to, and linger in, the city. The race initially was planned for early August, but Davidson's team secured the new date after negotiations with the Orioles and the Ravens, and agreed to shorten the course to minimize the impact on Camden Yards.
More than 6,000 people have signed up to be alerted when tickets go on sale, Davidson said. He expects each to buy an average of 2.5 tickets.
Track designer Martyn Thake says planners are hashing out the final layout for seating this week. About 45,000 grand seats will ring the 2-mile course, in addition to about 70 skyboxes, ground-level boxes and tents, he said.
Quickly setting up those seats, and the concrete barriers and fencing that will line the course, poses one of many engineering challenges confronting the team. As an added complication, the Orioles are slated to play seven home games in the week preceding the race. And there's the possibility of Ravens preseason home games.
For the immediate future, the biggest challenge is finishing work on the roads — and the infrastructure beneath them.
To reduce the chance of a water main break of the sort that has bedeviled the city's system, the Public Works Department is spending about $750,000 to replace pipes, valves and hydrants along the course, according to Tommy Pompa, the department's acting chief of construction management.
Meanwhile, the Transportation Department is overseeing a $7.75 million overhaul of the streets that make up the course. Baltimore-based contractor P. Flanigan & Sons began work on the project in late summer.
Project supervisor Joe Hooper says the bulk of the work along Pratt and Light streets will be completed in the next week. One lane of Light Street will remain blocked off as workers pull up an old rail track that has not been used for decades.
Still ahead is the resurfacing of Conway Street, the widening of Lee Street and the reconstruction of Russell Street, Hooper said. A traffic light on Howard Street will also need to be reconfigured.
In March, presuming the threat of heavy snows and ice has passed, crews will smooth down new asphalt. That will give the road time to cure before the race, as tires flatten the asphalt and draw up oils, Thake said.
But engineers are still scouting out a solution to one potential snag: light rail tracks that cross the course near Camden Station. The tracks at the intersection of Howard and Conway streets are too high for the low-slung cars to zoom over, but removing them would be costly and disruptive to rail service.
"This is a big problem and it's going to impact a lot of people," said Wane-Jang Lin, manager of track and structural engineering for the Maryland Transit Administration.
MTA officials balked at a proposal by race staffers to grind down the rails. The two sides have struck a compromise: the tracks can be temporarily covered from Thursday night until Tuesday morning.
"The design challenge is that we have to cover the railroad tracks with something smooth and resilient enough to not be disturbed by the enormous power of a race car, but that we can install in a night and remove in a night," said Thake, who has designed race courses around the world. "To my knowledge, that's never been done before."
Workers from Flanigan are experimenting with covers on unused rail tracks, Thake said. And he has designed two wide turns flanking the tracks, in order to slow drivers down.
Pete Hilton, chair of the motorsports engineering program at Indiana University- Purdue University Indianapolis, says designing a safe and durable cover for the tracks will be no easy feat. The cars exert an enormous amount of force, and the wheels are capable of ripping up loosely fastened objects, he says, and any changes to the racing surface could have a profound impact on the cars.
"The handling of these cars is very important, especially when there are turns," said Hilton. "Any kind of bump in the road would be very unsettling."
Shutting down a section of the light rail during an event that closes many downtown streets and limits access to parking lots, meanwhile, could lead to transportation nightmares. MTA officials plan to run a bus bridge between open light rail stops, but need to map a route that won't leave buses snarled in race traffic.
"We want to bring people as near as possible," while allowing safe spaces for riders to enter and leave the bus, Lin said. Rail stops must also adhere to the guidelines of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Lin and Thake say they are in frequent communication and hope to work out a solution soon.
"We don't want to wait until the last minute," said Lin.
Baltimore Racing Development has signed a five-year contract with the Indy Racing League. After the first year, subsequent editions of the Baltimore Grand Prix should be easier to stage.
Whether the event is a success, once the challenges are met, will depend largely on turnout.
As NASCAR racing has grown in popularity, support for Indy racing has flagged, particularly on the East Coast, racing columnist Miller says. NASCAR's bulkier stock cars allow for rougher, more exciting racing. And fewer Indy race champions are Americans, making it more difficult to rally a domestic fan base.
But fans are hopeful that new Indy Racing League CEO Randy Bernard will reinvigorate the sport. Bernard joined the IRL in February after successfully boosting the professional rodeo industry. He has eliminated some oval track races and created new street races, such as Baltimore's, which boast better vantage points, more challenging courses and more opportunities to pass.
Davidson, of the Baltimore Grand Prix, says signs indicate Indy is on an upswing, with increased sales and sponsorships.
Miller, the racing columnist, has seen plenty of new races start with great fanfare, only to be shelved within a few years. He sees the Baltimore Grand Prix as a test not just for the city but also for the sport.
"How do you get people fired up about something that has fallen off the media map like Indy Car racing has?" he said. "Baltimore is going to be a litmus test to see if this thing could start to recover."
http://twitter.com/juliemore