The First Principles of Growth: Why the WRC and IndyCar Must Stop Building For Retention
I’m a big fan of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.
Not the bombastic U.S. version with its over-the-top music and theatrical blowups; you always got the sense some of those outbursts had been rehearsed.
I’m talking about the original UK series from the early 2000s. Gentler, more grounded, but still carrying that signature Ramsay edge.
In that version, he’s less TV personality, more true consultant, clearly invested in turning things around, drawing on decades of hard-won industry insight.
And like any consultant, he often faces resistance from the people he’s trying to help. One phrase comes up in nearly every episode, from owners whose restaurants have been around for years or even decades prior to Ramsay’s arrival:
“We don’t want to alienate our existing customers.”
The existing customers, almost without fail, are older. Loyal and familiar certainly, but symptomatic of the problems faced by the respective restaurants.
Ramsay always cuts straight through, saying essentially:
“You’re catering to them, and still failing. You need a more dynamic customer base if you want to survive.”
The same applies to two of motorsport’s most stuck properties: WRC and IndyCar.
Formula 1 got richer as it got younger
Pointing to F1 as a model of motorsport success is cliché in 2025, especially if you mention Drive to Survive (which, yes, I just did). But we keep referencing it for a reason: F1’s transformation has been a masterclass in reinvention.
The Formula by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg captures this shift beautifully: the journey from greasy UK garages to today’s sponsor-slick, globally televised “Circus.”
What used to be an elite technical sport has become a global lifestyle brand.
The grid is younger (just compare Kimi Antonelli to Nigel Mansell), the media strategy is international, the coverage more cinematic.
The drivers, whether they like it or not, are now personalities on social media. Lewis Hamilton’s rise was a clear turning point: he helped take F1 from niche sport to pop culture phenomenon, likely irritating many fans raised on the sport’s insular, aristocratic past.
But the results?
Undeniable.
Viewership is up. Sponsorship is up. Grandstands are sold out. VIP ticket prices are through the roof.
And as The Formula points out, fans can now “access” F1 without watching a single lap. To purists, that’s heresy, like wearing a band t-shirt without knowing more than the radio singles.
But from a commercial perspective, who cares?
If your core fans are truly loyal, they’ll stay. The marginal losses are just that: marginal. Meanwhile, casual fans may only buy a hat, but some will go much further.
And even if they don’t, that’s still a lot of hats!
F1 made the trade.
At one point, not that long ago, it was literally driving to survive.
And then…
It took off.
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In less than 500 words.
The first principles of growth
To grow revenue in any business requires some combination of the following:
Selling more to existing customers (new and/or existing products)
Raising prices of existing products
Selling into newer markets (new and/or existing products)
This short-list seems straightforward, but it hides the detailed work that has to happen before-hand before answering questions such as:
Which products justify a price increase, and by how much?
Which new products can we introduce?
Who might be interested in such products?
This kind of analysis raises numerous other questions but ultimately the goal will be to define a clear endpoint (qualitative and quantitative) that guides all strategic decisions.
My hypothesis is that, much like Gordon Ramsay would say, the makeup of the endpoint should discount - but not entirely forget - the current fan base mix.
After all, if you could sell more existing and new products to the hardcore fan base, in perpetuity, well, the WRC and IndyCar would already be riding that wave.
Hardcore fans = Retention, not growth
WRC and IndyCar have some of the most loyal fanbases in motorsport. These fans:
Know the history
Understand the nuance
Support teams and drivers year after year
But here's the problem:
Retention doesn’t equal expansion.
These fans have already made up their minds. They’re in.
Which means they’re not the battleground.
Designing everything, or anything really - coverage, format, branding, media - to please them is like making a modern smartphone tailored to flip-phone purists.
This isn’t always intentional. In many cases, the real issue is that no one has clearly defined what success should look like.
And so the answer is to default to the status quo rather than aiming to please the stakeholders that will propel each series forward.
The path forward is to define the right endpoint and identify the audiences who will get you there, then make every single decision in service of that future, not the past.
We can also hypothesize that other underlying problems could be cleared up by a shift to a more casual audience; IndyCar engineers present an expensive cost item now, but surely that pipeline would fill up naturally as more aspring engineers are drawn to this motorsport?
Loyalty isn’t a growth strategy
In motorsport, as in any business, growth doesn’t happen by accident. It comes from making deliberate choices about who your future customers are and building everything around them.
That means identifying the right audience, understanding their expectations, and aligning your product, message, and experience accordingly.
Judging from the stagnant state of both series, the mistake WRC and IndyCar seem to keep making isn’t about execution or the respective racing products (in my opinion, they’re both unique and world-class), it’s about orientation.
They’re still looking backwards, whether they mean to or not.
No sport can grow if it’s optimized for the people who already said yes.
It grows by earning attention from the ones who haven’t yet.
If you're serious about redefining what growth looks like, and how to get there, I’d welcome a conversation.
David Vaucher
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Main image source: Colin Redwood via Unsplash