How Data fuels NASCAR with David Smith

Getting his start in Motorsports

#1. What was the first moment that you can remember discovering motorsports?

My first conscious memory was the 1989 Daytona 500. In that race in particular, there were a ton of storylines because it was hyper-competitive. The broadcast booth was legendary. The pit reporting was legendary. At the end of that race, Darryl Waltrip, who had won multiple championships, a Hall of Fame number of races to that point, had yet to win the Daytona 500.

It was famously his 17th try at at winning the race, and he did it. In his Victory Lane interview - he laughed, he cried, he danced, and everything that he was demonstrating was a suggestion of pure joy.

For a young version of me, I picked up on the power that sports has on our emotions, and from that point forward, I was captivated.

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#2. When did you decide that you wanted to work in motorsports?

I was always close to it. I was born in Talladega and raised in Daytona Beach. My father worked in the industry on the track and permitting side, and I was more enamored with the competition element. Now, I played sports - I ran track, I played basketball. I played high-level basketball.

I've always gravitated to the sports that move fast. I'm not a golfer - that hasn't ever appealed to me. It's the adrenaline sports. While I never wanted to be competitive as a driver, in fact, that thought really never occurred to me... I've always wanted to be in and around the sport, and there are various elements either on the periphery or right within the middle that, that pulled me in.

So, I've led many different lives within the sport itself. I've enjoyed all of them and they've made me a multidimensional manager at this point in my career.

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David's Current Role

#3. What was your first role and the first step you took towards your current NASCAR career?

The first step was an internship. It was with a company called Sullivan Worldwide Marketing Group, and not a lot of folks know the name Greg Sullivan, but he is one of the most revered, most intelligent marketers in NASCAR history. He pitched and sold the NASCAR Cup Series entitlement to Nextel, which later became Sprint. That replaced a longtime sponsor, RJ Reynolds Tobacco, with its Winston brand.

He spun his share of the earnings from that into his own independent shop. So an internship with him was, for me—and I was in college at this point in time—almost a secondary education in how to speak to the interest of others.

We were selling everything from Cup Series team sponsorships to Truck Series team sponsorships, working on behalf of the France family to promote what is now the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Series. It was an eye-opening process. And while I've migrated out of sales and marketing, there are a lot of foundational skills there that directed me along the path that I am now on.

If I hadn't had that—if he hadn't sat me down and taught me the art of proposal writing, which I was fortunate to be a part of, including the proposal that put Fastenal into the sport with Bobby Hamilton Racing in the Truck Series at the time (ironically, they're now a partner, I think 15 years deep, with RFK Racing)—that knowledge is something that I've carried with me at every step up the ladder.

I had to do a school project and had to interview two people in the profession that I wanted to be a part of. When I sat down with Greg, we had a great conversation. He treated me well. He treated me with respect. He answered all my questions. At the end of the interview, I think he was impressed.

He offered me a summer internship, which I was not going to turn down. That internship became a paid internship, which became a job. That was my foray into the NASCAR industry at large.

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#4. What does a standard day look like for you at work?

Every day, really, it boils down to three things. The first is managing people. The second is managing processes. The third is communicating efficiently.

So the projects from day-to-day may change. The importance of meetings may change. The Monday afternoon post-race debrief is one of the most important—probably the most important—meeting that we have on the RFK campus each week, because that's the time, that's the hour that we have to get smarter, right?

Sunday is a fun day. It's stressful for some in our organization, for obvious reasons. But we're racing. We're going fast. We're turning left. We're having fun. Monday's the day for getting smarter.

In every part of that process—if it's the Wednesday pre-race planning meeting, if it's syncs with our health and wellness group and our human performance, our pit crew coach, our strength and conditioning coach—understanding how the health of our athletes is treating them, what should we do to be proactive to prevent them from injury?

There are different things. I'm a man of many hats within RFK. I tell people I try to walk in between different worlds. But all of it comes down to that core of: I'm managing people, I'm managing processes, and I am doing my best to communicate efficiently.

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#4B. Can you conceptualize to a racing fan some of what you do specifically with the data and how it influences the drivers?

It could very easily be everything. It could easily be all of that, but I'll give you a few examples.

Our pit sequences, whether under caution flag conditions or under green flag conditions—there is a litany of small competitions occurring. There is the competition to be the fastest entering pit road, which, by the way, our speed—we do have a pit road speed limit—but it's unregulated. The driver's influencing the speed of the car.

How can you get down to pit road efficiently and as fast as possible? How can you roll pit road efficiently and as fast as possible—getting in and out of the box, parking the car so that you're in optimal position for your pit crew, leaving pit road, assimilating back onto the racetrack?

There is time to be gained there. Very easily could be time to lose, and if you are not paying attention to that—if your finger is not on the pulse—that becomes a particularly vulnerable moment for you.

That isn't just seconds. That's positions. And we get paid in positions.

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‍#5. What are the most rewarding and the most challenging parts of working in NASCAR?

Rewarding

The most rewarding part is helping somebody achieve peak performance.

When we talk about data analytics—let's say for a Fortune-ranked company—there may be internal data, there may be industry data. But by and large, that's about the number. We are measuring human beings. We are measuring our colleagues. So the human element, for me, I refer to it as analytics with empathy. I take great pains—and this is a challenge, but I will pay myself—to ensure that the message being delivered, at least, is coming from a good place.

There's a trust component to this. I'm not going to walk into a room where I'm not known and start recommending things that don't make sense.

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Difficult

There is a long process to this, right? This is year four for me at RFK, and with every month, I feel more and more comfortable. The relationship building is still happening. I don't take that for granted. That's the challenge—but the reward, to see those individuals achieve what they are attempting to achieve, is immeasurably cool. There has been no better feeling in my 20 years of doing this in the NASCAR industry than just that.

If figuring out a way to optimize my colleagues—if that is my gig for the rest of my life, that's a pretty good gig. It's also a massive responsibility that I don't take lightly.

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#6. What are the top 3 qualities that have helped you succeed?

There are different departments, there are different areas of expertise within this company. I am not gonna be smarter about engineering than an engineer. I'm not gonna be smarter about driving than a driver. But if you shut up and you listen to them, you're able to understand where their strengths are. What their challenges are. And you come up with ideas in how to assist them.

And more importantly, in this given role, while the subject is data I see myself as a communicator who is communicating about data and learning how other people learn is key to having them understand what they need to know in order to improve.

There is a purpose behind the data that we deliver, but we have to communicate it in a way that is neatly within their comfort zone because that's just the way. That's how I know I'm going to make an impact. That's how I know the analytics department is gonna make an impact. I can't force them outside the comfort zone.

I'll take it on the chin and I will ensure that we have an impact. So it is not totally three qualities, but it's just, it's so important just to to walk into different worlds. To be a pit crew athlete right now in the single lug nut era, to, to be a pit crew coach, to be a nutritionist, to be an engineer.

It has never been tighter. We have never in the history of NASCAR seen an era where risk has been this rewarded as habitually as it currently is. So there's a need for as much as information as possible, and the best way to deliver that is to understand what their challenges are and to understand the way that they're gonna be able.

To digest all of this because we're talking different levels of data literacy, which is fine. We're talking different preferences. Some people are visual learners. Some people are practical learners. And having that understanding of the other human across the table from you that's gonna be the characteristic that I'm just gonna carry with me from here on out.

David's Advice

#7. If you could go back and change anything about your path to where you are today, what would that be?

I probably would've invested better than I did when I was younger, but that's just in terms of personal wealth.

I think I would've slowed down. My trajectory was very fast. I quickly went from that internship role to becoming a talent scout with a top sports agency here in Charlotte. I was traveling and looking for, at that time, probably the next Jeff Gordon or the next Tony Stewart, and came across some unbelievably talented young race car drivers.

In doing that, I probably didn’t take enough time to enjoy the process—to really savor it and get down and dirty with it. I was too focused on hurrying to get to the next thing. I think I just would've slowed down the steps.

Those steps are what gave me staying power in this sport. They’ve given me a unique versatility, because there's nothing orthodox about how I came into data—and specifically, data in NASCAR. But that part has made me who I am.

I just wish I’d taken a little more time to savor the journey, because there were points where what I was doing was really cool. I know there were folks who were envious of the roles I had, and at the time, I didn’t think much of it. But looking back...

Just being on the road as a scout, working with agencies and young drivers to negotiate development contracts, even doing grueling hospitality work at track—that helped me improve communication. It gave me a different perspective on this industry.

I just would've taken a little more time to better understand the nuances, and I think that would’ve made me holistically that much stronger.

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#8. If you could give one piece of advice to someone looking to follow in your footsteps what would that be?

Do not be afraid of learning. Become as well-rounded as you possibly can, because different kinds of knowledge—an idea from sales and marketing—can work in scouting. An idea from scouting can also work in data analysis. Every part, every step of the journey can, and eventually will, matter. It will make you better within your specific role.

Given the unorthodox pathway I’ve taken, I think I’m going to be a generalist forever. I see LinkedIn and a world that focuses on specialists and specialties—getting very smart in one particular lane. A broader education, both in the formal sense and in the working world, will work wonders for you down the road. That should never, ever be downplayed.

The era of Renaissance men and women needs to come back. This kind of well-roundedness makes us more worldly, more clever, and ultimately more interesting to talk to. It also changes how you approach problems in your everyday job. You’ll come at them from a different angle than someone who has only ever worked in one specific path.

I would encourage anybody to learn as much as possible, read as much as possible, and take on weird jobs. Even if you don’t know where it’s going to lead, you will take something valuable from the experience. There is always something to carry forward. You might not recognize it until years later, but if you’re smart enough to learn something, you’re smart enough to apply it elsewhere. That is an invaluable quality.

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David's Favorites

#9. What is your favorite race/ event/ moment that you’ve had in your career thus-far?

Favorite race? The trophy is right here is the 2023 summer race at Daytona. Being from Daytona Beach, I carry a bias for races at Daytona International Speedway, but this race in particular showed me that any event at Daytona can be won accidentally.

It is referred to as a crap shoot, drafting track races but this race, but we won it. RFK Racing won it, and there was intention behind it. So much so that we finished first and second. My takeaway from that night in particular was that was a statement - both to me and internally at RFK - of what can happen when multiple departments come together and focus on the small details on and focus on the execution because that is how we won that race.

It was a beautiful result. I'm so happy we won Daytona. For the meaning behind that win and the possibilities that it suggests, I love it. That trophy's going nowhere. That's going to be a family heirloom, and that story is going to be repeated ad nauseum.

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#10. Data and the ability to conceptualize that data is so important to so many teams, drivers, and series for performance. How do you see the increasing use of data, and the new types of data captured, changing the motorsports industry for the better?

There's not going to be less data, right? So, there are going to be multiple continuous streams of data coming in. Now that's fine. If we're all competing, we're probably all going to have - generally speaking - the same data. So the difference as I see it, is going to be which team can quickly distill key data, key insights into bite-size insights in order to make a decision very quickly.

The one thing that we need to worry about is inundating our folks. I think every team is going to face this challenge with what could easily be perceived as too much data. That's fine, that's a real risk.

The front foot of communicating it efficiently, properly so that the person making the decision somehow still has the most information at his or her disposal - that's going to prove a unique challenge.

Ultimately, the one that works is going to be the one that serves the recipient, the stakeholder, the best at that moment in time and having your finger on the pulse to understand what that is of your people. We'll likely have the most success.

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