David Grace The first thing you realise when planning a trip to Corby is that it doesn't have a railway station. Odd, one considers, given that this former steel-mining community, a few miles north of Kettering in Northamptonshire, now boasts the UK's first motor-racing track since 1907 to be purpose-built. The Rockingham multi-purpose motorsports complex rises out of the desolate, windswept wastes of this singularly dreary part of England like the biggest, brashest, most expensive - at £50 million - Scalextric set any kid could desire. But you can't have it - so there. It's another boy's toy. David Grace, the chief executive of Rockingham, is in his dream job. A motorsport fan since childhood, he can now wallow in his two favourite pastimes - the other being the down-and-dirty rough-and-tumble of running an embryo leisure business. "They didn't want a petrol-head to run the place" he says, "but someone with a business brain. I was apprehensive when I joined, because it's easy to be bowled over by something you love." And there's plenty of Rockingham to love. It's Britain's only oval racetrack, on which cars can achieve speeds of over 200mph, leaving the Formula One lads still at the start-line. The banked oval covers 1.5 miles, while the multi-circuit infield track, which is 2.7 miles long, can operate simultaneously in a variety of configurations. The main grandstand is almost 900 feet long and 80 feet high and the site can accommodate an amazing 52,000 all-seated spectators, with room for the same number again by use of additional bleachers. Rockingham is now the undisputed UK home of Champ Car racing, the US-based sport formerly known as Indy Car, which evolved from the Indianapolis 500, arguably the world's best-known motorsport brand. Rockingham Motor Speedway was the brainchild of local businessman Peter Davis, who spent 9 years trying to source finance. The project grew and investors began to bite, including Guy Hands, the legendary boss of Nomura, the Japanese merchant and investment banking and private equity giant. Hands and his wife invested part of their private property portfolio funds in Rockingham, becoming, by the end of 2000, majority shareholders. Davis, by then managing director, clearly considered his position untenable and took the long walk to the pits. "When I arrived in February this year," Grace recalls, "there was no MD and marketing director had decided to leave. We had a race programme already in place, but there was no track - it was all just mud." Talented people to run such a specialist business clearly do not grow on trees, but Grace set about building both his track and his team with the calm, steady, businesslike determination that had become his trademark over a distinguished 25-year career in licensed retailing. Born in Rugby in 1949, David Grace joined Allied Breweries in 1975 as a trainee, later moving internally to Tetleys. He left the company in 1986, by which time he was Retail Director responsible for a bottom-line profit of £4.5 million, to join the sprawling Grand Metropolitan hospitality empire, where he ran the Inntrepreneur programme. Calculated to fly in the face of traditional pub tenanting, the Inntrepreneur model was based on the sale of 20-year assignable leases to pub tenants. Grace put together a sales team of property, brewing and pub management specialists who were to deliver 900 leases in two years with rental income to Grand Met valued at £19 million. "We were a good team, but a bit like the band on the Titanic" says Grace, "we knew we would go down eventually - when we ran out of pubs to lease - but we were going to make one hell of a noise as we slid under!" In 1991, Grace moved internally to become Operations Director of Chef & Brewer. On a brief to keep costs down in the 1,600 pubs, he engineered a solid short-term profit for the business and went with them when they were sold, in 1993, to Scottish & Newcastle. He spent six years in divisional managing director roles for S & N and quickly gained a reputation as a fine man-manager. Linda Green, formerly his operations director and now managing director of retail group Habitat UK, says of Grace "He's refreshing to work with because he gives you responsibility and accountability and he's great at developing young people. He is also a true non-conformer - he once turned up to a meeting with all the S & N suits in his jeans and when they mentioned it, he told them they should listen to his contribuition to the meeting, not worry about his clothes!" A move to S & N's holiday business, Pontins, as managing director meant he was eventually responsible for managing the disposal of the business. "I'm not sure why they went into tourism" Grace says, "as they didn't really understand it and were constantly comparing the return on investment to the pubs." In 2000, S & N's share price was falling fast and the City was demanding action, so Pontins was hived off. And around that time, the 'phone rang with the offer from Rockingham. "S & N was very good to me - there's nothing as well-managed as a Scottish pension!" Grace says. On his arrival at the rain-sodden, former open-cast steel mine that was Rockingham in early 2001, David Grace began to take stock of the challenge with which he was faced. While builders toiled night and day to complete the project in time for the first race meeting, Nigel Hards, former head of UK Travel for Thomas Cook and CEO of Peterborough United football club, was recruited as operations director, shortly to be joined by sales and marketing director Eve Hewitt, who had spent six years as head of sales at the Royal Albert Hall. With finance director Nigel Reed completing Team Grace, Rockingham was now in pole position to get off to a flying start. The track has a choice of income streams with which to toy. There is CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) or Champ Car Racing, effectively the American equivalent of Formula 1, which some years ago attracted Nigel Mansell to its core. "We pay them $4 million to bring the UK leg of their circus to us and we earn from selling 52,000 seats. They lost the rights to the Indycar name because they fell out with the owner of Indianapolis, so CART has a continuing challenge to get their style of racing known worldwide." Tickets for the event range from £30 or £40 up to £150. "In a fair wind, it's marginally profitable, but it is only 3 days a year" says Grace. "You need other income streams and you have to offer racing that people want to watch." With that in mind, Rockingham has acquired the Anglo Stock Car Auto Racing (ASCAR) series, where 30 US-style saloons, such as Pontiacs and Buicks, race at speeds of up to 155 mph. "What we don't want" says Grace "is the traditional style of race days where spectators arrive at 9am, have hours of boring silence while officials strut around scratching their heads, then some slow cars go round, then some slightly faster ones - the ones you've turned up for - then more slow cars, then more officials scratching their heads! When you come here, you want to watch a couple of hours of bloody exciting racing, go down to the pits, buy T-shirts, be a part of the action. A couple of drivers might even have a bit of an argy-bargy in the pit-lane, like boxers at the weigh-in or wrestlers - it's showbiz. Racing should be personality-based - I mean, the reason people want to watch Formula One is because they either love or hate Schumacher. That's the image of motorsport we need to propagate." Rockingham aims to run ASCAR five times a year and maybe take it to Germany where there is a suitable oval track. During the rest of the season, track day organisers rent the site for around £8,000 a day and invite 120 of their members for tuition and to enjoy the racing experience. "If you do that, say, 3 times a week, then you're starting to put money back into the pot" says Grace, who also cites Formula 3, motorcycle racing, rock concerts, firework displays and hot-air ballooning events as potential earners for the stadium. Another source of income is the Johnny Herbert Rockingham Experience. The operators, in whom Rockingham has an investment, sell corporate days out and individual gift days, currently on sale in retailers such as WHSmith. "A firm could sponsor its own branded car and bring 50 key customers for a day to be scared stiff around the track - they can abseil off the top of the grandstand too, if they feel like it!" says Grace. "Racing must be affordable for the family - not cheap, but good value" he says, "and we have to ensure we're skilled at selling them other things when they get here. I've learned a lot from running pubs - for example, our loos are clean." The venue currently has 3 bars including one in the dedicated conference centre, 58 luxurious hospitality suites and a food operation which Grace admits is not quite right yet. "We want to be new and different, but we're not Henley or Ascot - we won't force linguine down their throats if they don't want it. People like sausage and chips, but we will also have pasta and good coffee. On the issue of government support, Grace stresses that Rockingham was created with none, unlike other countries, such as Italy, Brazil and the USA, where the sport enjoys a high level of financial assistance. "Motor racing in this country is misunderstood" he says. "There a lot of wealthy people in it and perhaps government thinks it should be self-funding. We have to do a selling job on government - after all, lately they've been focused on an athletics track that hasn't appeared and a Wembley that never happened. They're a bit soured on sport at present." The Queen visited Rockingham in July, as part of a county tour - the first time since the 1950s she'd been to a motor racing track - and Grace recounts with glee how the royal Roller, minus Her Majesty of course, drove around the track at 65 mph. "Our objectives are to create a profitable entertainment stadium and then to grow income-generating leisure businesses around the core facility" says Grace. "What we do may not be the purest form of racing, but it's bloody good fun to watch and you go away feeling you've had a great day's entertainment." Cycling, marathons, charity runs, ice-skating and product launches, along with rough-terrain vehicle events, are all on his shopping-list. "No one else has a better chance than us to succeed" he says. "The champ car racing gives us a reputation worldwide and we'll use that reputation to build our own series of races attracting 20,000 or 30,000 people at a tenner or fifteen quid each." He will soon announce a worldwide TV deal, the income from which will be reinvested in the coverage itself to ensure world-class production values. Of his personal future, Grace says "I'll work flat out to make Rockingham a success. I have a great belief that businesses need different types of management and leadership at different times of their lives. It needed a visionary like Peter Davis when it started, it needs someone like me and my team now to get it up and running and in a few years time, it might need someone with different skills to take it to its next stage." So, just add to his list of challenges persuading what's left of Railtrack that a local train station may be a good idea and then we'll truly be able to tell young Mr. Grace that he's done very well. Favourite things what does David Grace do when he has a pit-stop? Film: "The Shawshank Redemption" Overseas place to visit: "Bali in the 1950s - you could live for 50p a day, including rent!" Car: "My 1963 Austin Healey 3000 and my Ducatti motorbike." Object of desire: "A Spitfire plane - they are beautiful pieces of engineering." Restaurant: "'The Flying Pizza' in Leeds - universally known as the 'Effing P.'" ends