Too much, too fast, too soon: The sad saga of Swan Racing - MotorSportsTalk

Brandon Davis did all he could to keep Swan Racing afloat. But even a multi-millionaire oil and gas industrialist can only bleed so much money before deciding to throw a red flag on the operation.

When anticipated funding and sponsorship failed to materialize, the two-team Sprint Cup operation sank so fast that Davis had no other choice but to essentially go out of business.

That’s what Davis told NASCAR.com’s David Caraviello in the most revealing and expansive explanation of why the two-car Swan operation failed, and why Davis was forced to sell or merge its two cars with other organizations.

“It went from a lot of fun to a nightmare in a matter of months,” Davis told NASCAR.com. “I’m not going to point my finger in any one direction. It was just the overall thing, probably adding two cars, etc. … There were challenges there.”

After Davis purchased the assets of Inception Motorsports in 2012, he continued to field a one-car operation in 2013 with several different drivers through the course of the season.

However, Davis had bigger aspirations for Swan in 2014.

After taking on minority investors/partners Anthony Marlowe and former NFL great Bill Romanowski, and then securing an investment/sponsorship deal with rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Swan grew to a two-car operation in 2014 with rookies Parker Kligerman and Cole Whitt behind the wheel.

As both drivers struggled on the racetrack, so did efforts to attract sponsorship or additional investors. Little success on the racetrack isn’t exactly a great lure for companies to spend their money on. All the while, Davis tried to continue bankrolling the team from his own oil and gas company, Swan Energy (hence the name of the team).

But it quickly became much more of a financial drain than Davis anticipated, essentially twice the amount of what he spent on a one-car operation last season. Everything was doubled from 2013 to 2014, including cars, drivers, expenses, employees and overall costs. And when anticipated sponsorship failed to come through, things went from bad to worse in a hurry.

“It started in Daytona, and things that were supposed to happen didn’t,” Davis told NASCAR.com. “It kind of snowballed from there, I guess, and it kept getting worse, not better.”

While his race operation struggled, Davis’ energy company was experiencing growth and demands that took more of his time.

“From a time perspective, my company has grown a lot, even since January as far as Swan Energy, and my other oil company,” Davis said. “The time necessity, for what I needed to do and the time I needed to spend with the race team and working on it, I just haven’t had.

“So it kind of all came to a head the week before Texas, and that’s when we started trying to figure out what do we need to do to ensure as many people stay employed as possible, and to keep the cars on track.”

To his credit, Davis worked feverishly to find jobs with other teams for as many of his now-former employees as he could.

“My first mission was to make sure everybody had a job,” he said. “That was No. 1, and not just kill it and let them go figure it out for themselves.

“From that, we’re going to let the dust settle, I guess, and see. I don’t know. I can’t tell you (what his racing future – if any – holds).”

Davis turned over ownership of Whitt’s No. 26 Toyota to Marlowe, who merged earlier this week with BK Racing, going from a two- to three-car operation.

Whitt will continue driving the No. 26, competing in Saturday’s Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond International Raceway.

Meanwhile, Davis sold the No. 30 team – but without Kligerman as the driver — to John Cohen, owner of XxxTreme Motorsports.

With the sale, Kligerman is out of a job, as J.J. Yeley will drive the No. 30 Toyota starting this weekend in Richmond (the car number will switch back to XxxTreme’s former number of 44 starting next week at Talladega).

“Will I be around the track? Yeah, I plan on helping John as much as I can,” Davis said. “I like John, he’s a great guy, and I want to support him as much as I’m able to. So yeah, I’ll be around. As far as Swan having a race car on the track, at this point I have no loose plans, or any plans.”

XxxTreme has attempted to qualify for four races thus far this season, and failed to do so each time.

As for Kligerman, he’ll remain under contract to Davis for the meantime – although he doesn’t have a car to drive. But Davis is also giving the young driver the opportunity to explore any and all other options.

“For me, it just quit being fun,” Davis said of his ultimate decision to close up shop. “I just didn’t enjoy going to the racetrack.

“Whenever I got to the racetrack and didn’t enjoy it, that’s when all the thoughts started racing through my head of — what did I do here, and how do I fix it? … At the end of the day, this one (parceling off the two teams) kept the most people working and had the most cooperation from the other parties.”

When NASCAR.com asked Davis if expanding to two cars proved to be too much, too fast and too soon, his brief answer told the entire tale:

“Yes. Most definitely.”

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DETROIT – He helped spearhead bringing the town a Super Bowl 17 years ago, but Roger Penske believes the reimagined Chevrolet Detroit GP is his greatest gift to the Motor City.

“It’s bigger than the Super Bowl from an impact within the city,” Penske told NBC Sports. “Maybe not with the sponsors and TV, but for the city of Detroit, it’s bigger than the Super Bowl.

“We’ve got to give back individually and collectively, and I think we as a company in Michigan and in Detroit, it’s something we know how to do. It shows we’re committed. Someone needs to take that flag and run it down through town. And that’s what we’re trying to do as a company. We’re trying to give back to the city.”

After 30 years of being run on Belle Isle, the race course has been moved to a new nine-turn, 1.7-mile downtown layout that will be the centerpiece of an event weekend that is designed to promote a festival and community atmosphere.

There will be concerts in the adjacent Hart Plaza. Local businesses from Detroit’s seven districts have been invited to hawk their wares to new clientele. Boys and Girls Clubs from the city have designed murals that will line the track’s walls with images of diversity, inclusion and what Detroit means through the eyes of youth.

And in the biggest show of altruism, more than half the circuit will be open for free admission. The track is building 4-foot viewing platforms that can hold 150 people for watching the long Jefferson Avenue straightaway and other sections of the track.

We are live on pit lane this morning revving up for #DetroitGP with ⁦@CBSDetroit⁩! pic.twitter.com/FJScKXqsS0

— Detroit Grand Prix (@detroitgp) June 1, 2023

Detroit GP chairman Bud Denker, a longtime key lieutenant across Penske’s various companies, has overseen more than $20 million invested in infrastructure.

The race is essentially Penske’s love letter to the city where he made much of his fame as one of Detroit’s most famous automotive icons, both as a captain of industry with a global dealership network and as a racing magnate (who just won his record 19^th Indy 500 with Josef Newgarden breaking through for his first victory on the Brickyard oval).

During six decades in racing, Penske, 86, also has run many racetracks (most notably Indianapolis Motor Speedway but also speedways in Michigan, California and Pennsylvania), and much of that expertise has been applied in Detroit.

“And then the ability for us to reach out to our sponsor base, and then the business community, which Bud is tied in with the key executives in the city of Detroit, bringing them all together,” Penske said. “It makes a big difference.

“The Super Bowl is really about the people that fly in for the Super Bowl. It’s a big corporate event, and the tickets are expensive. And the TV is obviously the best in the world. What we’ve done is taken that same playbook but made it important to everyone in Detroit. Anyone that wants to can come to the race for free, can stand on a platform or they can buy a ticket and sit in the grandstands or be in a suite. It’s really multiple choice, but it is giving it to the city of Detroit. I think it’s important when you think of these big cities across the country today that are having a lot of these issues.”

Denker said the Detroit Grand Prix is hoping for “an amazingly attended event” but is unsure of crowd estimates with much of the track offering free viewing. The race easily could handle a crowd of at least 50,000 daily (which is what the Movement Music Festival draws in Hart Plaza) and probably tens of thousands more in a sprawling track footprint along the city’s riverwalk.

Penske is hoping for a larger crowd than Belle Isle, which was limited to about 30,000 fans daily because of off-site parking and restricted fan access at a track that was located in a public park.

The downtown course will have some unique features, including a “split” pit lane on an all-new concrete (part of $15 million spent on resurfaced roads, new barriers and catchfencing … as well as 252 manhole covers that were welded down).

A $5 million, 80,000-square-foot hospitality chalet will be located adjacent to the paddock and pit area. The two-story structure, which was imported from the 16^th hole of the Waste Management Open in Phoenix, will offer 70 chalets (up from 23 suites at Belle Isle last year). It was built by InProduction, the same company that installed the popular HyVee-branded grandstands and suites at Iowa Speedway last year.

Penske said the state, city, county and General Motors each owned parts of the track, and their cooperation was needed to move streetlights and in changing apexes of corners. Denker has spent the past 18 months meeting with city council members who represent Detroit’s seven districts, along with Mayor Mike Duggan. Penske said the local support could include an appearance by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Witmer.

Denker and Detroit GP president Michael Montri were inspired to move the Detroit course downtown after attending the inaugural Music City Grand Prix in Nashville, Tennessee.

“We saw what an impact it made on that city in August of 2021 and we came back from there and said boy could it ever work to bring it downtown in Detroit again,” Denker said. “We’ve really involved the whole community of Detroit, and the idea of bringing our city together is what the mayor and city council and our governor are so excited about. The dream we have is now coming to fruition.

“When you see the infrastructure downtown and the bridges over the roads we’ve built and the graphics, and everything is centered around the Renaissance Center as your backdrop, it’s just amazing.”