Welcome Mr. ''Incoming'' President source: champcarworldseries.com ERIC MAUK: Welcome, everyone, to a special media teleconference as we head into this weekend's event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, round 11 of the Bridgestone Presents The Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford, the Champ Car Hurricane Relief 400, which the Champ Car racing community will be putting a large effort towards helping the victims of Hurricane Katrina throughout the Gulf Coast. Today it is my pleasure to introduce the incoming president, the new president, of the Champ Car World Series, Mr. Steve Johnson. Steve, thank you for joining us today. STEVE JOHNSON: Thanks, Eric. It's great to be here. I'd like to make a statement, if I could. I'm very excited to be able to have my first of what will be many Champ Car media updates. I view all of you as our allies and partners, and without you, Champ Car would not be in the enviable position it is today. Our organization and series is on solid ground with a focus, business plan, focused ownership group, and a focused executive team leading the charge. I use the word "focus" because I view that as a key element of our current success and momentum as well as what will drive our future. We're focused on our fans. We're focused on our teams, our sponsors, our track partners, and most importantly delivering the ultimate entertainment value worldwide to automotive sporting and motorsports enthusiasts. It's my honor to be here on this call. ERIC MAUK: Steve, we have a large panel of media that are familiar with motorsports, but if you could for some of those people that might not be familiar with your background, tell us about where you're coming from. STEVE JOHNSON: Well, this is really an exciting time for me. It's probably somewhat a funny story on how I got into motorsports. I originally came out of corporate America where I went to work at General Electric. At GE, we were quickly bought by Black & Decker. I left Black & Decker to go for an opportunity to go with Fortune Brands, vice president of sales with the Master Lock Company. I left there and went to Allied Signal, which is now Honeywell. That was my first experience in the automotive area because I had the brands of Fram, Autolite, Bendix and Prestone. I was at Allied Signal, again, now Honeywell, happened to be the grand marshall at an NHRA event in Atlanta, Georgia. It was one of my first big major sporting events, motorsports events, to go to. As I stood on the starting line between I think it was Eddie Hill, the Pennzoil car, and Kenny Bernstein, the Budweiser car, standing between 16,000 horsepower, I was standing next to the president of the NHRA, when the cars took off, I think they had to pick me off the track, I wasn't sure what hit me, I turned to them and said, "This is the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life. Why doesn't anybody know about this sport?" Dallas Gardner, who was the president at the time, said, "We're trying to get to that next level. Would you be willing to come over and help us?" I said, "Sure." That's how I got into motorsports. I spent four years at the National Hot Rod Association as the vice president of sales, then I went to the Sports Car Club of America, president and CEO of both SCCA, Inc., and SCCA Pro Racing, which is one of the other companies. I was there for five years. Now I'm on day two at president of Champ Car. It's been a fun two days, let's put it that way. The complete FEATURE article at champcarworldseries.com
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