Rust's motor sports odyssey comes to Mid-Ohio
By Rob McCurdy
July 11, 2011LEXINGTON -- Craig Rust didn't set out to become a motor sports executive, let alone president of Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course and The Mid-Ohio School.
"I didn't want to get a real job," he joked during an interview in May, "so I said, 'How can I work in this?'"
After graduating from Lehigh University in his hometown of Bethlehem, Pa., with a business degree in 1988, he eventually landed a job with Madison Square Garden in New York City as its sale coordinator and manager in charge of event sponsorships.
He spent four years with MSG in the early 1990s, and saw what was coming.
"I remember being at MSG with a group of guys and putting on a NASCAR race and they were like, 'What are you doing?' I said this is coming because it was still pretty much in the southeast part of the country. I said look at those grandstands and look at the sponsorships on the cars and look at all the money," Rust said.
He might have noticed the growth of motor sports in America's consciousness, but he never thought it was part of his future, either.
It wasn't until he and his wife Shannon moved to southern California in the mid-1990s so she could go to law school at USC that a life in motor sports began percolating for Rust.
"I didn't seek out wanting to work in racing. I actually sought out wanting to work for Roger Penske," he said. "To me that was the appeal."
Penske, also a Lehigh grad, was a favorite racing personality of Rust's father. Whenever Penske's team was racing at Pocono or Nazareth, he would load up the station wagon and take the family to the track.
Fast forward to 1996 and Penske was building California Speedway in Fontana and Rust was looking for a job. He had contacts within Penske's organization and eventually landed a gig, becoming the track's marketing and sales director.
It was like going to Harvard Business School for an up-and-coming motor sports executive. Besides working for someone of Penske's stature, he learned at the side of Scott Atherton (now the president and CEO of the American Le Mans Series) and the late Les Richter (a 2011 Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee who ran Riverside International Raceway for 20 years before working at NASCAR, then Penske).
"Here I am 15 years later. It's been a fun ride," Rust said.
And a busy one.
When Penske sold his race tracks to International Speedway Corp. in the late-1990s, Rust found himself on the fast track within ISC, a company with intimate ties to NASCAR that is also led by the France family.
In January 2000, he went home to Pennsylvania to become President of Nazareth Speedway. In 2002 Rust was given the reins to Watkins Glen International, serving as president of the venerable upstate New York road course.
"We had a really nice run at Watkins Glen, and I'm really proud of what we were able to do over there and where the track is today and how I left it for my successor," Rust said.
He spent more than seven years running the Glen, but in June of 2009, Rust left to run Chicagoland Speedway and Route 66 Raceway in Joliet, Ill. The facility -- one of 12 across the country in ISC -- hosted NASCAR Sprint Cup and Nationwide races along with Izod IndyCar Series and NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series events.
"I was approached by Kevin Savoree and Kim Green last fall and they indicated what their plans were," Rust said. "It was hush-hush at the time."
Savoree and Green were in the midst of buying Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course and its school from Michelle Trueman Gajoch and TrueSports, Inc., and they needed someone with experience in running an operation of that magnitude, since neither had that kind of background.
Savoree and Green ran open-wheel race teams and they promoted two IndyCar street races in Toronto and St. Petersburg, Fla., but track ownership was a new game.
"One of the things Kim and I believe is you have a model and you follow that model and don't stray from it," Savoree said. "At St. Pete and Toronto we have local GMs and they live in the community and work in the community and that's what they do every day. For us, it was really important to get something like that here."
Both knew Rust from his years of running Nazareth and The Glen, and they liked what they saw every time they went to the track with IndyCar.
"It's about chemistry. We both felt like we hit it off with him. That was No. 1," Savoree said. "Just as important, he's got a really technical skill set that's not easily acquired."
Savoree said they were impressed with what Rust did in his tenure at Watkins Glen.
"He got to The Glen when it was in pretty bad stead, and I think in a big way he was part of bringing The Glen back to life," Savoree said. "Obviously we're not in that straight here. We have a property that has a lot of good going for it, so now it's going to be how do you get Mid-Ohio to the next level."
After working in a buttoned-down, structured, corporate environment like ISC, Rust is intrigued by the challenge and the differences of working in a small company while in charge of a facility like Mid-Ohio.
"I think working for a privately held company (like Green Savoree Mid-Ohio), if there's a question, you can pick up a phone and say here's the situation as opposed to a very big, public company (like ISC) that has reporting rules and compliance," Rust said. "There's so much you have to be aware of, and you have a board of directors so there is that aspect.
"Because of the infrastructure that was set up, you had resources that could make things very easy (at ISC). Now we're a smaller company and those resources may or may not be there. It's just different."
But at the end of the day -- at both companies -- it all comes down to promoting events and running them.
Savoree and Green feel like they found the person to do both well.
"Craig was somebody where we felt it was meant to be," Savoree said.
Just like it was meant to be that Rust would someday find himself as a motor sports executive.
rmccurdy@gannett.com
419-521-7241
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