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With the power of RACER, Vintage Motorsport’s online audience grows in size and engagement

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emailBy George Tamayo | June 2, 2020 5:07 PM

When Racer Media & Marketing, Inc. acquired Vintage Motorsport magazine and VintageMotorsport.com a year ago, the strategy was to give the venerable brand a visual refresh while maintaining its well-earned editorial reputation, expand its digital footprint and build a means to offer commercial partners a way to connect the Vintage Motorsports audience with the RACER audience. The effect is the emergence of a true cross-brand marketing platform reaching the largest and most diverse racing audience in North America.

As we near the one-year milestone, audience traffic has grown by 508% when comparing the first four months of 2019 with same period in 2020 (7,625 v 46,383 unique visitors). Similar growth has carried over to the Vintage Motorsport social media platforms that have all experienced sharp growth in users and engagements. Facebook reached over 116,172 users within the first four months of the year (+670%) and Twitter garnered 20,288 impressions (+262%).

We are still in the early days of this effort to better reach and engage the core audience for vintage racing and the performance collector car market, but these results are very encouraging with the promise of more growth to come.

Leveraging RACER’s market-leading digital reach and engagement

As we developed Vintage Motorsport magazine, VintageMotorsport.com and related social media platforms, we also launched a Vintage Motorsport-branded channel on RACER.com that is promoted via RACER’s active social media platforms.

This incremental exposure has captured 202,206 unique users who have perused 225,936 pages of vintage racing-related content. Moreover, by extending into RACER social media footprint, Vintage Motorsport content has attracted an additional reach of 401,330 users on Facebook and 390,245 more impressions on Twitter.

Our Vintage Motorsport and RACER teams are on your side and ready to help you get back up to speed

The bottom line is that we believe vintage racing, along with the racing and performance collector category, are vitally important to our company. Our efforts to grow the audience and participant base for the sport and the performance collector car hobby while also raising its industry profile and stature will continue to the benefit of the category as a whole.

Our team is ready to create cost-effective cross-platform packages tailored to maximize value and impact. Put this fast-growing audience energy and engagement to work for your company to attract attention, customers and success as the vintage racing and performance collector car market comes back to life in the weeks ahead.

Industry

 

Vintage Motorsport’s 2020 May-June Issue is now available

 

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2020 NTT IndyCar Series Season Guide

The NTT IndyCar Series begins its 2020 season on the high banks of Texas Motor Speedway Saturday night. To get you up to speed and ready for the 200mph-plus action under the lights, enjoy RACER magazine’s 52-page 2020 NTT IndyCar Series preview.
It's fully updated and packed with features, interviews and information, and it's FREE! Just CLICK HERE for a digital magazine experience that takes you inside the fastest, closest racing series on the planet.Kicking off with 200 super-fast laps around 1.5-mile Texas Motor Speedway (June 6; LIVE 8pm ET on NBC), the 14-race IndyCar season will be a rapid-fire test of nerve, skill and versatility. With ovals, road courses and city streets all bringing their own unique challenges, there's nothing else like it in racing.

From 230mph passes in the 104th Indianapolis 500, to late-braking duels at Road America or Mid-Ohio, to slugging it out on the streets of St. Petersburg, excellence is the only option if you want to be the champion. It's why IndyCar drivers are a different breed.
Enjoy the ride, but first enjoy the read!

ALL AMERICAN

Josef Newgarden vs. Alexander Rossi is a marquee matchup in the making.

ATTITUDE INCLUDED

Meet IndyCar's new generation. They're fast, confident and ready to win – right now.

FINAL LAPS

Tony Kanaan is bowing out of full-time action on his own terms – racing for wins.

PLUS

LIVING ON THE EDGE
If you’re racing to win, Scott Dixon and Graham Rahal know it’s a fine line between success and disaster.

SCREEN TIME
IndyCar’s new-for-2020 aeroscreen is a hit with the racers. Will Power tells us why.

PATH TO GLORY
Simon Pagenaud plots a path to Indianapolis 500 victory.
THE 200MPH CLUB
Meet the drivers taking on the 2020 NTT IndyCar Series.

AND MORE! CLICK HERE to open and enjoy.

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RACER artist Paul Laguette's inspired celebration of the sport

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emailBy RACER Staff | August 22, 2020 2:19 PM

RACER magazine is a celebration of racing and racing culture, and that begins with the vibrancy and dynamism of its covers. Whether it’s track action, personalities or specially commissioned art and illustrations, every cover is a stunning evocation of the sport we all love.

Issue No. 305 (July/Aug. 2020) exemplifies what makes every RACER cover so special: A stylized take on the speed and tradition of the Indianapolis 500, it’s a unique piece of art worthy of framing and hanging on a gallery wall.

We sat down with RACER’s in-house artist Paul Laguette to talk about how his ideas and style turned concept into vivid and memorable reality for the cover of RACER No. 305.

RACER: First off, wow! Love the artwork. With 304 RACER covers before this one, it still stands out as something we’ve never seen before. Was that something you had to consciously think about?

Paul Laguette: Thanks for the kind compliment. To answer your question, yes. I always think about what RACER has done before. I never want to copy anyone else, or repeat myself.

R: So how did you come up with the idea?

PL: Believe it or not, this was an idea I scribbled out on a piece of paper years ago. Back in 2014 I was commissioned by Indianapolis Motor Speedway to do its race program cover art. Not just for the Indy 500 program, but for its inaugural road race, too. While talking through ideas with the Indy staff we wanted to do two covers that had a similar look. One with the cars going clockwise for the road course cover, and one with the cars going counter-clockwise for the 500 cover past the pagoda. Back in 2014, I shelved this idea, because the difference wasn’t that obvious at first glance.
The proposal for a pair of Indianapolis program covers in 2014 – stunning.

R: So in your opinion, why does it work now?

PL: It almost came to me as a subconscious thought. That’s kind of how my brain works. I was on a phone call with RACER editor-in-chief Laurence Foster. He asked me to do the cover. In his own words he said, ‘I have some flour and a few eggs but nothing ready to cook up.’ He knew he wanted to evoke the tradition of the Indy 500 and to include a current-day reference with the 2019 winner, Simon Pagenaud; but it was a blank canvas beyond that. My subconscious pushed forward this idea from years ago. I quickly explained it to Laurence – who loved the direction – and he sent me a bunch of reference material to work from.

The thing about Laurence is he’s great at visualizing things and translating my thoughts into a workable and doable solution, but he wants to be surprised and elated by where an artist or photographer takes his rough ideas or concepts. That makes for a great space for an artist to work in.

I quickly made a rough photoshop cover composition and sent it off to him – pagoda, bricks, car, the overall perspective. I wanted to make sure the composition worked for him and met all the requirements needed for a cover, too: the position of the RACER logo, headline text and the UPC code, that kind of stuff. I find it’s best to know these things first. That way you don’t have to fudge your finished art.

R: That’s interesting. You mentioned your two Indy covers. I’m familiar with them. The color palette is very different to the RACER cover. Was that going back to what you said earlier about not wanting to repeat yourself?

PL: Kind of. When I presented the cover comp to Laurence it was not drawn out yet. It was just a few photos cut and pasted together. I sent him a few travel posters from the middle of the last century. All of them had beautiful simple color palettes. I told Laurence I wanted to pay tribute to this era of art, and that’s what we both agreed on.
Travel-poster inspiration for RACER’s Indy 500 cover.

R: So at that point you were locked and loaded? After that, was it just, ‘Head down, make the magic, and send in the finished art’?

PL: Good question, and the short answer is, no. I don’t like working in a vacuum; I don’t like keeping people in the dark. I never want surprises coming back at me either …

In this case, I got the art to a comfortable level of execution where I still hadn’t spent a lot of time on it, but it was thought out enough to share with Laurence. I wanted to let him see where it was headed. I got the “thumbs up” and that’s when I went to town on it.

R: Is this your favorite of all the covers you’ve done for RACER?

PL: It is for now! I’ve actually had a few conversations with Laurence about the next issue and the next cover. That one! That one is going to be my favorite!

R: Can you give us a hint to what the subject matter is?

PL: No. I’ll just say this: It will look like nothing you’ve seen on the cover of RACER before!

R: Thanks for talking with us, Paul. It really is fun to get the behind-the-scenes details on what goes into making a cover.

Speaking of details, I’ve got a couple final questions. Firstly, what’s with the running order on the Pagoda? Who came up with that?

PL: Oh: I asked Laurence for a plausible top 10 – kind of mid race, no overt favoritism… He gave me one, but I goofed: P1 should have been No. 22, Pagenaud, but I put 28 for some reason. Still, I really can’t call it a typo since Ryan Hunter-Reay has just a good of a chance of winning it, too.

 

R: Final question: Artists sometimes hide things in their work. Do you do that? And, did you hide something for us to find in the cover art?

PL: You got me there. Yes I do, and yes I have in the past. Years ago, when RACER ran its “In Focus” series of race car studio shoots, I always did a cockpit illustration with numbered callouts of what all the knobs and switches were. I used to hide a simple happy face in every diagram. I also paid homage to my Southern California punk roots by hiding “Black Flag” logos in other artwork, too.
If we didn’t circle, would you have found the hidden ‘Black Flag’ logo?

R: So, cover No. 305… Any hidden surprises?

PL: You need to buy the poster and check it out. I’ll just say this: the poster will give you a better chance of finding what I hid!



(Look for the hidden image and take advantage of an Indy 500 weekend special on the RACER #305 poster – just $23 and $29 for 12″x16″ and 18″x24″ respectively – by clicking HERE. Go to racermerch.com for information other RACER products including or featuring artwork by Paul Laguette.)

Paul Laguette, RACER Stuff