Expansion Plans

By Andrew Cutler
December 1 2007

Real estate developer turned racer Marty Roth is a study in persistance. Getting into professional racing much later in life than most, he has found it hard to attract the sponsorship support needed to fund his part time, one car Indy Racing League effort, often running without outside backing.

Now, with his 49th birthday looming (Dec. 15th) the Canadian is hoping to finally make his dreams of a full season ride come true; with two cars, no less!

In what is being hailed by the IRL as the first sign that their recently announced TEAM payout structure (*ed note: see my prior article: How TEAM works) will bring more teams into the series, Roth Racing has announced that they are ramping up their operations for 2008 & will race a full season as a two car effort. A key element in this move has been, appearently, the landing of a major sponsor, although exactly WHO that is has yet to be announced (Roth did run a two car effort at the 2007 season finale at Chicagoland with sponsorship from Dussault Apparel as a sort of "sponsorship test").

Roth admits that the past few years were hard for him and the team. "These partial seasons are very difficult and we focused our efforts this year on marketing and building the team from that standpoint rather than running around the track," Roth said. "Since Indy, we've been developing a plan to expand and go with a two-car program because they are just so much stronger as far as team performance. When you have two cars running, you gather a lot of information but the cars have to be set up right. When you're in the IndyCar Series, you have to have a good engineer. With David Cripps and a few others we hope to (hire), I think we will have a strong package for next year." 

The biggest beneficiary of Roth's plans for 2008 - besides Roth himself - looks to be Jay Howard. After winning the Indy Pro Series title in 2006, the young Brit endured a "painful" 2007 as no IRL ride - and only a handful of Indy Pro rides - materialized. He didn't take much convincing to sign with Roth for 2008.

"Marty called me and asked me if I was interested. I said yes and he said, 'OK, if anyone asks tell them you're driving with Marty Roth from now on.' OK, it's as simple as that," Howard said. "Everyone is just pushing forward. I couldn't have asked to walk into a better situation. Marty definitely is a man of his word and he definitely is 110 percent into this. It might take a year for everyone to sort of settle in and me get more experience with things like pit stops, but I've been training unbelievably hard. I'm really fired up."