What a winter/spring of 2010 it's been for me, and for Carolinas Production Group as well as Visioncast.
We are already in high gear hosting our national shows and producing new seasons of coverage for
Mazda's Visit Florida Cup, part of the Star Mazda Championship, and our other projects.

We've been working closely with our partners at Mazda North American Operations for nearly a year to help launch TV coverage of the new Visit Florida Cup "championship within a championship", and our debut telecast begins airing this weekend on HDNet.  National and international syndication starts the following week.    We will air these shows in more than 110 million households in the US, Canada, Mexico, and around the world, via our new partnership with ESPN International.   Star Mazda is celebrating its 20th season in 2010.  It remains one of the major developmental open-wheel racing series in the world and is now at the top of the Mazdaspeed Motorsports Development Ladder system.

This week we begin our third season of shooting and producing coverage of the Playboy Mazda MX 5 Cup as well, one of our core projects for our platinum client, Mazda.  I'll be joined again on the broadcasts by veteran road racer and analyst Elliott Forbes-Robinson, and pit reporter Derek Pernesiglio.   We have topped 75 million households in our MX 5 Cup distribution again this season on a variety of national and regional cable partners.   Look for our shows nationally on MASN and Comcast California via DirecTV and Dish Network, and on MavTV, AMG TV, and AmericaOne.  

You may also check out the telecast schedules for both the Star Mazda Championship and the MX 5 Cup on our expanded site, www.mazdaracing.tv.
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Earlier this year we produced and syndicated to more than 100 million households US and worldwide coverage of the groundbreaking ASA Transcontinental "Free State 500", the first American-style stock car race ever run in South Africa.  We sent our crew to Phakisa (Free State) in SA, to cover more than 30 stock cars doing battle on the 1.5 mile trioval there, built to mirror Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Our two-hour broadcast also broke new ground for CPG as we were able to strike a carriage deal with ESPN International for worldwide airings.

We're also working this season on a new short-track project, MustSeeRacing's Extreme Sprint Car Series.
This amazing brand of open-wheel racing will bring close-quarters sprint car action on paved tracks to a national TV audience for the first time.  These are winged sprint cars making 800 horsepower, and are capable of lapping half-mile tracks in less than 15 seconds.   We'll be hosting and distributing MSR's 10 telecasts for the next several seasons with the new year kicking off the first weekend of May at the legendary Salem Speedway.    Also included in the package is a two-hour telecast of the amazing Little 500 for sprint cars, 33 of these wild machines doing battle on the quarter-mile Anderson Speedway in Indiana.  They'll take the wings off for this historic event; I can't wait to be a part of it.

As always, we remain on the air on Sirius NASCAR Radio, Channel 128, also on XM 128, with our daily dose of "Tradin' Paint" from 11am to 3pm ET.  And we'll be back this year on the Carolina Panthers Radio Network (NFL), hosting the Panther Post Game  Show starting with preseason action in August.

New opportunities are presenting themselves daily, and we're extremely grateful.  Hope to see you on the TV, or the radio.

Getting set for a full week of national radio and television from our offices in Charlotte, NC.   Just back from producing two of our key racing series for television.  The ASA Southeast Asphalt Tour's third TV event of '09 unfolded down in Dillon, SC, Saturday night.  The Diesel Maxx 100 provided one of our most exciting events yet, with a race-long duel between Jason Hogan and Max Gresham.   It was a classic fight between a veteran and a teenager...and you can see who won when we debut the telecast in days on SportSouth and our other 13 national affiliates.
I then traveled from Dillon up to Virginia International Raceway today to supervise our coverage of the Star Mazda open-wheel series, the second Star event of the '09 campaign.   As usual it was a wild battle replete with wheel-banging incidents and close-quarters racing...a few too many full-course yellows for my liking but when you have nearly 30 young guns pressing hard, you'll have that.   The winner was no real surprise...but again, you'll have to tune in for our nationally-syndicated coverage to find out who prevailed.

Back to our Charlotte home base just in time to catch the replays of the wildest NASCAR race finish in memory today at Talladega.
I was there in the 80's when Bobby Allison nearly flew into the grandstand at almost the same spot where Carl Edwards tested the catch fence in the final lap of today's Aaron's 499.   Allison's aerial display touched off an immense round of r&d by NASCAR, its teams and manufacturers to develop several aero tricks designed to keep Cup and Nationwide cars ground-bound during competition.  Now, the sanctioning body may have to head back to the wind tunnel to get some new wrinkles in place, after Edwards scared everybody today.
Great win for young Brad Keselowski and his team owner, James Finch....who failed to qualify for several Cup races earlier in the season.
We'll break it all down starting tomorrow when we return to Sirius NASCAR Radio's "Tradin' Paint", daily, 11am-3pm Eastern Time.
This coming weekend, we'll be heading to Road Atlanta for coverage of our first Playboy MX 5 Cup event of the new season for Mazda during the Mitty Weekend...and you'll be able to see the show starting in mid-May on MASN, Comcast West, and our long list of cable
affiliates that are part of the MX 5 Cup Network.
Enjoy the week.

Up and running at 250 mph, hair on fire, from our Charlotte-area offices...getting ready to head to our Sirius NASCAR studios for the last show of our first full week hosting "Tradin' Paint" on Sirius.   It's great fun and terrific for me personally to have this new platform regularly on Sirius, now at 20 million subscribers.  I've been on Sirius NASCAR Radio since the end of 2007, and had hosted a nighttime/weekend show throughout 2008.  Sirius asked me to take over the 11am-3pm shift for '09 and I was pleased to accept.

At our Carolinas Production Group, we're gearing up for another huge year of production and syndication of both the ASA Southeast Asphalt Tour stock car series and the Playboy Mazda MX 5 Cup sports car series.   We're also hoping to build on the success of our production and distribution of the ARCA ReMax Series' Loud Energy 150 at New Jersey Motorsports Park, which reached more than 54 million households in the fall of 2008.

We continue to be in discussion and negotiation with four other high-profile motorsports series about handling their television production, placement, and sales.

Also on the docket this week:  The Carolina Panthers' home NFC Playoff matchup with Arizona.  Win or lose, it's been another exciting year hosting the Panthers Radio Network postgame broadcast, and the excitement of a home playoff game this weekend will be amazing.

Off now to the Sirius NASCAR studios for "Tradin' Paint", and we'll keep you posted on our 2009 schedule as soon as possible.  We'll begin our MX 5 Cup telecasts at Road Atlanta in April once again and should have a more than full plate for the year.   See you at the race track.

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Another new chapter in the development of the Rick Benjamin companies this week. We're producing coverage of two motorsports series on the same day, in two different states, at two very different venues.

A new week, and for the Rick Benjamin companies, a new chapter is about to unfold. After months of planning and preliminary work our Carolinas Production Group and Visioncast companies are heading on the road to Cordele, Georgia this coming weekend to work on the first-ever televised event for the new RC Cola/Moon Pie ASA Southeast Asphalt Tour. The series opened in exciting fashion two weeks ago at Mobile, Alabama, and now it's time to put our truck, cameras, and staff in place to create our first hour-long broadcast of the new tour.

Just back in Charlotte from the official kickoff of our 2008 racing season, at Mobile, Alabama Saturday night. One of our flagship projects starting this year is producing and hosting syndicated television coverage of the new ASA-sanctioned RC Cola/Moon Pie Southeast Asphalt Tour, featuring some of the top young late model stock car drivers in the East and Midwest. The new Tour began as the dream of entrepreneur John Kee, a veteran marketing executive. John lined up some experienced help in Technical/Racing Director Micky Cain, and Promotions Manager Stan Narrison. John approached me and the Rick Benjamin Companies last fall about coming on board to provide a comprehensive TV package for the new series.

After several months of hard work, the new ASA SAT, with its innovative backing from RC Cola and Moon Pies, debuted with the Bayou Classic 100 last Saturday night. A full pit area that included 36 top-flight drivers and teams turned out to kick off the new Tour. Qualifying on the lightning-quick half-mile was very tight, and a strong opening-night crowd turned out in LA (that's Lower Alabama, for those not familiar with Southern stock car racing) to enjoy the show.

Several drivers had shots at the inaugural series victory, and after several skirmishes, youngster Preston Peltier emerged with the lucrative win. I was also impressed with the run by Frank Kimmel's nephew Will, who steered Dad Bill Kimmel's 44 to a fifth-quick qualifying effort and a strong top-5 drive in the first half of the Classic. While Will didn't score the victory, he learned much while battling with the quality field and should be a contender the rest of the season.

We'll begin our TV coverage with Round 2 of the ASA RC Cola/Moon Pie Southeast Asphalt Tour from Watermelon Capitol Speedway in Cordele, GA. The event runs Saturday night April 5, and our coverage will debut in national syndication the weekend of April 20. Scott Sutherland will join me in the broadcast booth as our expert analyst and Mark Allen will report from pit road. Hope you can be with us.

This week, we'll be hosting the Sirius NASCAR Radio "Late Shift" at 8 Eastern Wednesday night, and at 7 Eastern Thursday night, both with Hall of Famer Buddy Baker. We'll also have the Sirius NASCAR "Backstretch" Sunday night at 8 Eastern to break down all that will happen at Martinsville Sunday as the NASCAR Cup Series runs its second straight short track event. The next Wednesday we'll be making our second trek of the year to Atlanta to call Round 2 of the USAR Hooters Pro Cup Series in 2008, from Cecil, Georgia, with the coverage to air on Versus the following Monday.

Hope you can be with us throughout the 2008 season, which will be extremely busy for us and I trust exciting for you.

Spending this Saturday afternoon in our temporary broadcast booth at Exhibition Place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

We're on site for our broadcast of the Champ Car World Series, and the Champ Car Atlantics, both tomorrow here at this legendary temporary circuit. This track has seen many of the great drivers in open wheel racing go to Victory Lane through the years. Last time we were here, young American standout AJ Allmendinger was in the midst of his surprising win streak for Forsythe Championship Racing. Now, his seat's filled by veteran Spaniard Oriol Servia.

Servia's one of my favorite guys in Champ Car, always smiling, usually fast, and generally unheralded. He qualified well here this weekend and has a good starting spot behind Sebastien Bourdais and Justin Wilson, who staged a great street fight in final qualifying earlier today.

Tomorrow's 1pm Steelback Grand Prix should be a good one...there's some bad blood between reigning champ Bourdais and  rookie Robert (Bad  Bobby D) Doornbos, who held Bourdais off for the win last week at Mt. Tremblant.

The Champ Car Atlantic round here tomorrow should be good as well...with points leader Rafa Matos and last week's winner Franck Periera on the front row.


Last week I got to take a thrill ride for the ages, in the shotgun seat of the F1x2 Minardi two-seater around Le Circuit Mt. Tremblant....of all the ridealongs I've been able to enjoy over the years, that was the wildest. Fast, amazing brakes, high g's in the corners, and some eye-popping technology. Well worth doing if you get the chance.

More to come after tomorrow's race here in Toronto.

Hello! Welcome to my new web log, glad you could stop by and join us.

It's taken awhile, and our new site will probably be a work that's always in progress, but I'm really looking forward to having this method to use to communicate with anyone who stops by.

I'm on a brief break from my on-air work with the Champ Car World Series, since the series has about six weeks off this season before resuming racing at Portland, Oregon, the second week of June.   Once we get to that point, my calendar is packed with racing and broadcast work.

Meantime I'm keeping busy working on producing video news releases and marketing videos for various Visioncast clients, along with handling some taped voiceover shows  for SPEED Channel.

Everyone here in the Charlotte area is still buzzing over yesterday's announcement by Dale Earnhardt Jr. that he's definitely moving on from DEI and the 8 car at the end of the current Nextel Cup season.   There are reports this morning that he'll announce a deal with Richard Childress Racing at Darlington this weekend before Saturday night's Dodge Charger 500.   I think that's the right place for him to be, a real homecoming opportunity, and I think it's just a matter of time and marketing before Jr. climbs into an RCR Chevy carrying the number 3. 

Meantime I think this marks the beginning of the end of DEI.   Clearly Jr. has been the moving business force there for several years now.  No question that Budweiser moves with Earnhardt Jr. to his new team in some capacity, and unless Teresa Earnhardt and Max Siegel can sign another driver with plenty of marketing clout and on-track talent, DEI will struggle to find funding.  Simply put, there's little reason for a major backer to want to spend money there when the stable of drivers is down to Martin Truex and Paul Menard.

Both can be capable drivers, but few people are buying their t-shirts.

We shall see what happens down in South Carolina this weekend.