Welcome to all the NICO members from the Team HLM group.

Let me introduce myself, Frank Howard, one of the principals in Howard & Law Motorsports along with Peter Law, Darren Law's father (drives the Brumos Red Bull Daytona Prototype).

There are many articles about the team out on the web describing our philosophy on motorsports. Google "Team HLM" to find out some more information. But, in a nutshell we feel that to produce a product that can survive the test of time a company must first have the money to run a top notch organization. By securing the money we can then reinvest in our team for the future. After all, transporters, cars, crew, etc. wear out, retire, and need repaired.

Motorsports and particularly sports car racing have not had a great deal of success in the US for a number of reasons but mostly because of the lack of funding for teams because of the impact of auto manufacturers and short sighted sanctioning bodies. The trouble with auto companies doing the funding is that when they get the information they need for their production cars then the money dries up and thus the teams go away. Another problem has been sanctioning bodies have let costs and technology get so out of hand that only a choice few have been able to compete thus small car counts thus poor racing thus series collapse.

Let me also add at this point that very few forms of racing can be funded through having a "sponsor" put their name on the car. A front running car in our series will generate about $300,000 of air time value from the Speed Network. Our budget is in the $5,000,000 range, so as you can see the advertising value is not enough to get a company to give you their hard earned money. BTW, the only series that has that kind of attraction is NASCAR and even they can't squeeze enough money in advertising to make it viable.

We decided on the Rolex Grand American Road Racing Series because we feel they have a real strong business model dedicated to:
1) having strong competitive racing, equality and car counts
2) making sure we give the fans a good value
3) keeping costs to a reasonable level so we can keep car counts up and prices down for the fans.

We really have a lot of confidence in the people at Grand AM. Jim France and Roger Edmundson run a great ship.

Now to answer some of the questions I've seen on the site. Forgive me if I've missed some but in due time we'll answer as many as we can. The Team HLM G35's are a race car built from the ground up by Crawford Race Cars, LTD. These cars are tube chassis'd with all carbon fibre body work. Our rules state that the car must maintain the recognizable shape as a production car with stock mirrors, taillight covers, headlight covers, and door handles. The wing is also a specified wing meaning every GT car is running the same one. BTW, our cars are inspected throughout the build process and approved by Grand AM officials for compliance to the rules.

Our engine is a 4.5L Infiniti V8 build by Menard's Engineering in Indianapolis. Our rules state, again approved by Grand Am, that we're allowed any engine that is in the family of cars, thus the 4.5L was approved but it is a very stringent approval process. First we build an engine, submit that to Grand AM, then they approve that engine building procedure and parts and supply us with what our car will have to weight. Thus there is not need to build a high tech 900 HP engine because we will just have additional weight added to the car. This keeps cars relatively within the same HP to weight ratio thus truly competitive racing.

Come and see us at VIR. Alex Moore (Business Development Manager), Bryan Sellers (driver), and me will be at the track with the car. Max Crawford, owner Crawford Race Cars, and Andy Scriven, the engineer that designed the car will also be on hand. BTW, Andy was the chief designer of the Lola-Nissan Group C prototype and worked on the design of the Jaguar Group C V12 engine / LeMans effort. for you sports car fans.

I hope this gives you some inside information to the team efforts. We are very happy to be teamed up the NICO folks and look forward to having a very special "fan crew club". You're going to hear a lot of information about this shortly but suffice it to say it will be unique with lots and lots of inside scoop. Again, please post any questions and we'll try to answer as many as possible. Some answers may be require confidential information and I won't reveal any of that but I otherwise we'll do our best.