crowds.jpgIf you are a member of the Carter Motorsport team, the new season kicks off very early with the annual appearance at the Autosport show. You may think this sounds like a right laugh and a great opportunity to check out some awesome motors and some lovely ladies! Ok, so that is a small part of it but in truth, for all involved this is a very busy show where we carry the baton as ambassadors for our beloved sport, an opportunity we at Carter Motorsport do not take lightly.

Andy was at the show on Thursday doing all he could to walk the halls and talk to new contacts as well as catching up with old friends. It is becoming increasingly difficult to pick up new sponsors at the show because everyone is doing the same thing and why not? With all the right companies under one roof it's the perfect opportunity to preach to your captive audience.

I arrived on Friday, meeting Andy outside the venue at 9am (The opposite to Andy, I hate mornings so the 6.30am journey start time was not the best!). It was just the two of us (there's a song in that!) for the day so as soon as I arrived, we set about getting the car out of the trailer ready to wheel into the venue. Thanks to some duff info on our paperwork, we were a long walk from the required entrance door. It's not easy pushing a 300" long car with only two of you so we quickly recruited as much passing help as possible. Steve Turner soon arrived and was able to help fetch and carry wings etc. As always, we were on the Santa Pod stand. The Bedfordshire race venue has come along way in recent times and I feel this is reflected in the quality of this years show offering. We feel privileged to be asked back each year to form the centre piece of this quality collection of vehicles.

With the car roughly in place, we were off to our first appointment, a press briefing with Eurodragster and Motorsport News. Once settled in the media centre, we shared the news of our two car team for 2006. Steve Turner and Andy were on hand to answer the questions backed by full press releases from both parties. With the briefing complete, Andy and I begun to walk the halls. Our main objective was to spend time catching up with our existing sponsors, as well as making contact with potential new ones. It was great to see Lucas Oils, K&N, BMRS and NGK with such a big presence, the NGK stand carrying a massive display graphic of our car. All of our sponsors have become good friends to us so it was great to just chat and catch up! This has to be why so many of our sponsors have remained with us for so long, as well as us being very successful and flag fliers for their brand I guess?! Our time pacing the halls always seems tough as it is a lot of ground to cover, but I do feel we made some great new contacts but time will tell. With new sponsor, RCS Cables on board, it has already proved worth while. Our new sponsorship package produced by Motorgraphic really is the business and I do not feel we could not have done anymore in showing these guys that we mean business! At the end of a very long day, Andy and I headed back to Gerrards Cross for a curry and rest before another early start on Saturday.

signing.jpgWith a number of important commitments scheduled throughout the day, Andy dug out his finest suit and we were off! We had a number of the Super Crew on hand making our life a lot easier and I would like to thank Ben, Steve, Roger, Kim and Sarah for all their hard work. Again, I spent some time trying to introduce the Carter team to some new contacts as well as a quick catch up with others. On the stand, it was heaving with a huge amount of interest being shown in the cars and the venue. The Pod girls handed out flyers whilst Andy and Barry did numerous signing sessions, as well as being on hand to answer questions for gathering masses. To add to this, Andy and I had to head of to the live stage where Andy's racing hero and someone he used to race against in the late 70's, early 80's Barry Lee was to conduct a live interview for those gathered. I have to say, in previous years, the live interviews have seemed hard work with the stage not always in the best position and the crowd some what limited. However, this year they had got it right and the audience numbers were good. As the interview gathered pace, the crowd grew and stayed to hear all about our drivers exploits in a '300 m.p.h. go kart' as it was referred to! I think Andy would be the first to admit that this side of the game is not his favorite, however, on the evidence of this stage performance, he has become a very relaxed and accomplished speaker. He even looked like he was enjoying himself (and managed to squeeze our major sponsors names in...good boy!). I feel that this was a great show for us and i hope we are asked back again by Santa Pod.

Our next outing sees us at the ever-popular 'Xtreme Wheels' show. Please come along and support the show and those from our sport who have thrashed like hell to have their vehicles on display for you. We really look forward to welcoming you onto our stand and saying hello, If you can't make it to the show, we look forward to seeing you at the track. We may even be headed your way as we travel the UK for our primary sponsor, B&Q.

Dan Welberry
Carter Motorsport
www.andycarter.net

Back