At the Finish Line
NASCAR’s General
Bill France Jr. (William Clifton) passed away today at his home in Daytona, FL at 74 on June, 4, 2007 at 1:00 p.m. after battling cancer since 2000, and diabetes. Appropriately, Nextel Cup stock cars were whirling around Dover 
Speedway completing a rain-delayed race on this Monday. While his father started NASCAR, it was France Jr.’s thirty years of hard-nosed and visionary business management of the racing group that brought it to its current prominence as a major sport and marketing juggernaut -- second only to National League football in its popularity and money-making ability.
He took what was essentially a Southern-based, regional sport, and shepherded over 30-plus years its growth in all aspects into a national sport preparing to expand outside the U.S. borders; one worth billions, including his personal and members of his family’s fortunes.
Born in Washington, DC, in 1933, Bill France Jr. was less than two years old when his parents moved to Daytona Beach, FL. It was there that his father Bill France, Sr. (William Henry Getty) started his auto garage and eventually organized the most powerful stock car racing group ever: NASCAR. France Jr. attended Seabreeze High School, where he played basketball and later attended the University of Florida in Gainesville. After a two-year stint in the United States Navy, he started a full-time career in racing.
France Jr. grew up as the new “sport” of stock car racing grew. It had much more of a barnstorming element then – strong personalities held in check by the equally if not stronger will of France Sr. With France Sr., it was his way or the highway.
Bill Jr. learned every detail of the sport from the entrance gate (and the receipts) to the top of the stands to the boardroom. He drove heavy earth-moving machinery during the construction of the Daytona International Speedway out of Florida swampland; he sold programs and concessions and parked cars on the old Daytona Beach course; and he learned promotion and race management from a master – his father. He even tried his hand at driving a racing car, and had a mechanically inclined mind and knew how they worked – but figured out early which side of pit road he belonged on.
When he took over from the patriarch in 1972, his management style was more structured and less personality-driven than his father’s had been. It was based on what was good for the business of NASCAR, and France knew what was good for business. He would listen to a counter-argument, and come up with a direction best for the sport. Make no doubt, he set the rules and if you stayed within them, your life in NASCAR would be fine. You broke them, and it was clear cut where you stood -- without.
The list of business achievements he brought to NASCAR during his tenure is legion. Landmark ones include: signing sponsor R.J. Reynolds to support stock car racing through their Winston brand; expanding the race track holdings of NASCAR-aligned International Speedway Corporation (ISC); bringing stock car racing to the cathedral of open-wheeled competition at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway; spearheading a modern television broadcasting rights package now worth $2.4Billion; and finally bringing on Nextel to replace Winston as the series major sponsor of its top racing.
His business acumen and negotiation skills were extraordinary. Before France, television rights for NASCAR races varied in cost and were owned by various race tracks and other entities – a mishmash of contracts and worth about $100M or so, all told. Incredibly, he convinced the various business parties to consolidate their TV rights under a NASCAR umbrella, and then sold them all as a package deal to the competing TV networks – for about about five times what they were worth separately.
There was no detail he was not aware of at a race track. You could see him in line at the Daytona 500 every year buying a hot dog from one of its concession stands – for enjoyment and evaluation. He was mightily protective of the NASCAR brand and its racing.
Frail health the past seven years had weakened his body, but not his resolve. When he was hospitalized in March of this year with breathing and diabetic issues, NASCAR president Mike Helton noted, “he’s giving orders, and everybody is responding accordingly.”
France’s business and management model he developed and grew is in the capable upper management men and women he trained: his son Brian France, brother Jim France, Mike Helton, Jim Hunter, and daughter Lisa France-Kennedy, president of ISC. But there will never be another leader like him in NASCAR.
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