On 17 March, The Checkered Flag spoke with International Off-road Drivers Association president Kelly Kuether ahead of the inaugural season, which begins on 29/30 April.
Below is the full transcript of the interview. Some text has been altered from the actual dialogue to improve readability and remove verbal pauses.
An article summarising the interview can be read here.
Transcript
TCF: To start off, how did the idea to start IODA come about? I know there was a rift with SODA’s leadership, but can you elaborate on what specific issues went down?
KK: The biggest issues with the rift that there was with SODA, point blank, was people were being treated poorly. It was being run more like a dictatorship. It didn’t matter what drivers wanted, it didn’t matter what people thought, it was going to be the owner’s way or no way. It had gotten to the point where now that we have gotten further into the offseason and heading towards the new season that points champions weren’t being paid. None of that was done. Just overall bad leadership.
We wanted it to become what it was supposed to be, which was a drivers’ association. Now we sit here today, drivers actually have a say, their opinions matter, they count. The other big thing that people were very unhappy about was the original SODA series back in the eighties and early nineties was actually a nonprofit, and people got very upset that it was set up as a LLC, and that all the money was being turned into his pocket while being represented as the old way that the series was run.
TCF: I’m not going to name names but I’m sure you know who, but someone from SODA came to me the other day claiming that IODA was infringing on SODA’s trademark and was raising the possibility of legal action. I was wondering if you could comment on that allegation or if it’s just sour grapes from what seems like a messy divorce.
KK: Absolutely. Number one, yes, in some aspects, it is a messy divorce. But the biggest thing is, after doing all our due diligence and our research and everything else, he has no trademarks. He has no copyrights. The last time anything was filed for copyright was in 1997 with the Short-course Off-road Drivers Association Incorporated, which was the original series. The trademark at that same time was what the federal government—the trademark commission, I believe it’s called—is what is called dead. There is no trademark left anymore. At this point, the only reason that we feel that this is happening is because of the fact that he has now lost his series.
Many people have said it was the right idea, wrong person at the time. Do we know about the threat of legal action? Yes, we do. We have received his letters. We have spoken with lawyers. He is trying to use the past company to try and say he has this or has that, when in reality, they are two entirely different organisations. He didn’t purchase the old organisation of the SODA Incorporated. He is a Short-course Off-road Drivers Association LLC. So while he has some of the same name, he doesn’t share the entire business entity. He never purchased the old entity, so to speak.
TCF: When people hear about racing splits, they’ll usually think of like IndyCar in the 90s which set back that sport back to the point where it still hasn’t recovered today. For you personally, are there any worries about what this could mean for sportsman short course in the Midwest? Or do you think having alternatives co-exist would be a good thing for the sport as a whole?
KK: I think with what we are doing and the goals we have, I think that our series is going to provide and show in the long run that we will be the premier series for the sportsman-type race. We are setting up ourselves to be in a position to continue to grow and to continue to cater to the sportsman. While we love the professionals and we love watching them, they’re welcome to come run with us little kids anytime they’d like, our big focus is being on the sportsmen. We want to make sure that for years to come, that this is very realistic and continue to have a growing plan, to continue to have places for kids to come in and race, for the people who maybe have done their time in the professionals and want to come back just to have fun on the weekend.
Like I say, we have people from five years old all the way up to seventy. Some of them do race the pro series, some of them race the pro series their entire career. One of the gentlemen that we have racing with us has done the Mint 400. He’s done all the big desert races. He’s done all the races up here in Wisconsin in the early days, even through TORC and Champ and all of them, but has decided that he doesn’t want to continue to do the pro series, so he has come back down to the sportsman series and is teaching and showing the next level of racers the knowledge he’s earned over the years.
TCF: What growing pains or other challenges do you think will come with not only running a series in its first year but also having to compete with SODA and any other series in the area? Like if I were a driver looking for a grassroots series to race in, why would I come to IODA?
KK: The biggest thing with IODA is we’re not out here to compete with the big series like Champ. We are out here to cater to the sportsman. It is a series for the drivers, by the drivers. To be honest with you, in my opinion, SODA’s no competition to us. SODA to me, like I said earlier, right idea, wrong person. To run a series, you can’t go and run a race and be the president or the owner of the series plus still race. With other series that is with another series that’s in the area, I won’t use the name, that’s exactly the situation it is. It’s looking out for his own race—it comes down to, he wanted a place to race.
Here, I am not a race car owner, I’m not a driver. I am merely a person who has a passion and a love for the sport. I am not looking out for any one class or any one person. I am looking out for the sport as a whole or the series as a whole. I want to see the best show put on. I want to see the best results for all the drivers as the president, and in the same breath, we have a board that is made up of drivers that still have their input. We run everything with votes. Nothing by ‘This is just the way it’s going to be.’ Our meetings are open to anybody anytime, not just the board. We don’t hide anything, we don’t keep everything behind locked doors. Somebody has a question they can ask and we’ll answer it.
TCF: Obviously, racing is very expensive. and I’ve seen a bunch of ways that series try to cut down costs like waiving entry fees and all that. What’s IODA’s gameplan to make racing as affordable as possible while still managing the costs of operating?
KK: What we have done is we have put together a membership package that includes a big chunk of the normal costs with some discount to it, as well as the fact that we have kept our entry fees lower again by the decision of the drivers from the classes. We have also done it now where you get a lot more seat time than you would in other series to make more bang for your buck. And then we want to also start increasing sponsorships for classes and so on and so forth to increase the payouts while keeping low entry fees.
TCF: On the topic of entry fees, there’s still over a month left until the opener, but how are entries looking so far? Can you give any specific numbers?
KK: Numbers are starting to look good. They’re starting to pick up rapidly. We have just gone live with our website and our memberships and everything within the last few days, everything is continuing to roll in. Preliminary numbers as we’ve been doing our talking with people, we think right now our opening weekend, we are probably going to be somewhere, plus or minus a hundred cars, maybe a little bit more. We have picked up a lot of new classes that weren’t really opened in the other series that’s around here. We picked up some UTVs, we picked up stock trucks now. Basically, we have made a home for everybody. I think right now we have, I believe the count is 16 classes.
TCF: All of your races this year are taking place at Gravity Park.
KK: Yeah.
TCF: How did that deal come about?
KK: We were familiar with Gravity Park obviously from another series. No matter what, I wanted to make sure that we could guarantee everybody a season. I didn’t want to be a one- or two-race show, and everybody that got together in the beginning, I said the same thing. So we started negotiating with Gravity Park with the thought process that as we move forward from here, we will continue to grow to other tracks. We will be adding more races.
Gravity Park will be kind of our home track, if you’d call it that. It’s a nice facility. Lots of room. The owner is good to work with, he’s kind of still that old school honest man, and he’s been a pleasure to work with to this point and we look forward to many years to come with not only that track but a lot of other tracks in the state here.
TCF: For you personally, if you could bring IODA to any track in the area or anywhere, really, where would you like to go?
KK: To be honest with you, the goal is to get us into some of the bigger tracks that Champ is racing now. We’re working on opening the doors to possibly racing up at Bark River. There’s another track in northwestern Wisconsin that we’re working on trying to possibly get a race up there.
We’re waiting to hear a lot more as to what is happening with Champ. We’re under the impression and hearing stuff through the lines that there’s been an offer to purchase Champ and that they may be moving away, where they may only come back in this area for a few races. So that’s kind of where we’re positioning ourselves to try and step up into that spot where we can make sure that all of those sportsmen do have a place to race at different tracks that they may be used to.
TCF: What’s your philosophy for marketing and media? Do you plan on live streaming races or do you believe more in just posting highlights online to get people’s attention and encourage them to come to the races?
KK: I believe more in getting them to the race. We’re trying to create a family environment, kind of that short track Saturday night field excitement. We get the families involved. The kids are down there, we have a programme put together just for the kids, we call it the Kids Club. They can come down and there’s activities for them, so we really want the family to be involved, not just looking at a monitor at home, watching the races. We want that interaction between fans and drivers and the little children and the kids to hopefully get these young kids interested to continue the sport for generations to come. Kind of our belief is if you don’t get them to the race track, you can’t get them interested and if you can’t get him interested, there’s nowhere for the sport to go. If a sport begins to die, there’s no new generation calm enough to pick it up.
TCF: It’s probably early to look deep into the future, but what’s your vision for IODA? How would you want to grow the series after this year, especially after what you said with Champ and everything?
KK: I would like to get to the point where I see us running probably in the neighbourhood of ten races a year scattered throughout Wisconsin and into Michigan. I don’t know if we’ll ever get over to the Minnesota side of it, over like ERX or anything like that, but I continue to see us growing and continuing to make the series better and better, more investments into making the series better, make it better for the drivers, better payouts, and continuing to build it, not just for the drivers but with the drivers.
TCF: Before we wrap this up, is there anything else you would like to add?
KK: I mean, really, we have touched on what the core. The core of IODA is it’s for the drivers, by the drivers, and it’s about kids and family. We do everything we can to keep politics out of it and just come back to the purest form of racing we can get.
