IMSA: Tristan Herbert – Keep the (Audi) customer satisfied

Tristan Herbert, SCCA racer but also Audi USA’s manager of motorsport and Audi Sport customer racing is someone who brings the perfect perspective to his job. He’s got good history with the Volkswagen Group, too, having started racing in a 1984 VW Rabbit, while his project before ASCR was setting up and running the Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America.

Explains Herbert: “One of the reasons I interviewed for this job [in July 2013] was that 1) I felt able to be the voice from the manufacturer standpoint when discussing, say, Balance of Performance with a series’ governing body, and 2) also able to understand the perspective of the driver, the engineer, the mechanic. I used to tear the transmissions apart on my own cars. I’ve been the fuel guy. I’ve been the tire guy. Basically, I’ve probably had every job in one of these programs from the grass roots up, so to translate that into fighting for my customers, I do understand.”

But then we moved on. The Audi Sport customer racing scheme has become something of a template for those who want to go racing a current-model Audi, and with the Paul Miller Racing R8 having clinched GTD-class victory at Petit Le Mans last month , it was the perfect time to catch up.

DM: Congratulations on winning Petit Le Mans…

TH: Yeah, it’s great we were able to pull one off this year. We had a good solid strategy and the Audi R8 LMS just runs strong and reliable while our rivals suffered a lot of attrition. It’s a tough deal, because there are only three Audis on the track and eight Porsches so… our chances were limited just by sheer numbers.

So it’s very satisfying. My hat’s off to Paul Miller Racing – and Flying Lizard did great throughout the year, too, but were unlucky. They seemed to have misfortunes whenever the Balance of Performance was in our favor, or at least, not stacked against us.  For Petit, I put multiple reports together and submitted them to IMSA, and the joke was that two years of my life was dedicated to a 2mm restrictor break!

But yes, a win was exactly what we needed to bring up the morale of our teams, but if you actually looked at the data, we still weren’t the quickest car in GTD at Road Atlanta. Like I say, it came down to strategy and attrition. I certainly don’t want IMSA to think that we won the race because of a 2mm restrictor change!

DM: So, Audi Sport customer racing – from a purely objective standpoint like RACER’s – seems a great way of taking a stress away from a racer who wants a strong backup for his race campaign but who wants to run a small team in terms of personnel.

TH: Yes, we based our program off Volkswagen Motorsports platform. We promote Audi’s “Truth in Engineering” slogan, using motorsport to promote the performance and technology of Audis, but of course we want to sell production cars. So giving customers the chance to go racing in our products, and develop brand loyalty to Audi is the obvious direction to go.

I’d say Audi Sport customer racing is successful in the United States due to the time and effort we put into the infrastructure of the program, the spare parts program, technical assistance at the track. Brad Kettler (RIGHT) and Kettler Motor Werks run our ASCR technical center, and they are able to do things like rebuild gearboxes on site at the track. It’s a service no one else offers in the paddock.

DM: If someone wanted to campaign, say, an Audi RS5 in Pirelli World Challenge and they came to you to ask if Audi Sport customer racing can support that, can you guys support any Audi-related program?

TH: Our main focus has always been the R8 platform. We will have the new GT3 car which will come to the States along with all the other GT3 cars in 2016, but the R8 is really our flagship and focus in this country. We can’t support entrants on entry-level models so if someone wanted to race an RS5 in Continental Tire SportsCar Championship GS class or World Challenge GTS class, we don’t yet have the budget to form that infrastructure, but we are planning that in maybe 2016 or ’17. We are interested in the S3 – that’s a hot prospect for us right now – and you will see a couple of those debut next year in CTSCC. I can’t yet reveal to you which team…

DM: Balance of Performance adjustments are obviously an ongoing thing throughout a race season in sports cars. So does Audi Sport customer racing perform the duties to remodel the parts or recalibrate the ECU to make the cars comply? Or is it your customers’ choice to pay you to do this or do it themselves?

TH: We don’t charge anything for the customer service. Once a customer is sold a car, they set up a parts account with us and become part of the Audi family. Within that, we also do all of the BoP negotiations on their behalf, so I’m the single voice for Audi customers in dealing with Scot Elkins on the IMSA side, and Geoff Carter and Kevin Fandozzi in Pirelli World Challenge (ABOVE).

A lot of this role is managing the business case as a whole but at the same time I’m very involved with the political aspects. We’ve tried to cut out the chatter between the teams and the sanctioning bodies to be able to be the one voice of Audi. So we don’t have one customer saying his car doesn’t do this and another guy saying his car does do that, but it doesn’t do this, and so on. I’m the guy who goes to all the teams, collects all their data and feedback, and then one change request or submission will go to Scot Elkins.

It’s a difficult balance. I approach IMSA from a marketing perspective as a partner because I am effectively a customer of theirs, but I also approach it from a technical standpoint. In order to retain clients, for the good of both Audi and IMSA, our clients have to be competitive. It’s hard sometimes because I have to see both sides. I have to understand the needs of the customer, but also understand IMSA’s situation.

I do understand the position IMSA has been in this year, and when anyone’s taken a shot across their bows, I’ve stood back and thought, “Hey, we all knew this was going to be a transition year, how difficult it was going to be.” I know they’re trying to still figure things out, especially with GT3 coming.

But we’re locked into GTD for another season, and as the voice of my customers, I have to make sure their investment will be viable for another year. They’re spending money to go running in the TUDOR Championship, and while there are bound to be adjustments, IMSA has essentially announced that the cars will be largely the same.

DM: So do you think your customers appreciate the Audi Sport customer racing system? Has the program worked?

TH: Yes, and there are two reasons for that, I think. One is the reliability of the R8 itself, because it has proven it will run all day long! It’s really proven itself in Europe, in a lot of the endurance events – 24 Hours of Spa is a great example. As long as the customers and the teams follow the service intervals that we advise them at the beginning, the R8 is just a solid, solid car. Parts that are lifed out – consumables like axles, driveshafts etc. – we replace those and the cars just keep on going.

The second appeal of Audi Sport customer racing is the technical support at the track. Brad Kettler came from Joest, and he still is involved in the WEC working for Dr. (Wolfgang) Ullrich. Marcus Haselgrove’s also involved and he has been in the motorsports industry for a very long time – he came from Champion Racing back in the day – and I don’t think there’s anyone in the United States who knows more about the R8 platform. Both those guys attend every IMSA round and every World Challenge round to offer assistance from a technical perspective.

So I believe it’s those kinds of attributes that makes the program so popular with our customers – that, and the spare parts program. We carry around a couple million dollars-worth of spare parts to every race, and have on hand multiples of every part that could possibly be needed. We send one trailer to World Challenge and one trailer to IMSA so there are many weeks when both trailers are on the road.

We also do a lot of activations and engagement with our fans and clients. At some of the bigger IMSA events, we have hospitality, we run hot laps in our test car which is the silver R8 in GT3 trim you’ll see. We did an activation at Austin, with the S3 launch. We really try and reach out and go above and beyond. Marketing has always been a strong point of Audi, so there’s a strong tradition to uphold there.

DM: Is there a metric by which you can measure your efforts for the brand?

TH: Absolutely. It has really piqued interest in R8 sales, and we’re hoping that the S3 campaign in CTSCC will follow suit. We’ve seen a massive growth in our program – and it’s not rocket science – because people really want to drive the GT3-spec R8. Look at it in World Challenge spec and that’s how it was designed – big rear wing, big splitter, dive planes, ABS, traction control and so on. The IMSA car is more difficult to drive because it wasn’t designed to not have those things! We planned originally to have a lot of customers in United SportsCar and a couple of customers in World Challenge with the GT3 car. Now that’s flip-flopped: we had eight R8s in PWC this year, but three in the TUDOR Championship.

Overall, we’ve grown exponentially in the last year. We were at 10 cars in North America last year, and this year we have 22, between club racing, NASA, SVRA, track guys, and PWC and IMSA.

DM: How far could/would you expand Audi Sport customer racing? How big is too big, both from the logistical point of view and also from the point of view of preserving the “specialness” of the R8?

TH: Well, we certainly don’t want to flood a category so it appears to be an “Audi R8 Cup” class – you’re right; that’s not our aim. Logistically, we’re trying to figure out all the pieces, and we are always thinking a year in advance. Right now, we’re already planning the transition from the current platform parts. The cars running currently aren’t going to disappear overnight, and so we want to support those who continue with this car, but also need to support those who’ll campaign the new car.

So there’s a lot we need to closely look at and plan because we’re sure this program is going to continue to grow. From our customers’ standpoint, it’s an easy sell because they don’t have to drag around a big logistics backup program because we bring that. So they can focus on keeping their sponsors and clients happy off track, and being the best possible team they can be in the paddock and on the track. We’re pretty proud of being able to help teams fulfill their potential.