There’s a saying that suggests Funny Cars don’t run on nitro, they run on cubic dollars. Paul Lee has added another wrinkle to the conversation. Dollars and nitro make a fuel car run, but a good business model ensures it runs efficiently and delivers results.
This year, Lee’s McLeod/FTI Funny Car, running the Mainline Sales livery in Pomona, has been as efficient and delivered more results than expected. As Lee puts it, what he’s pulled off is not rocket science.
“It’s all about the people,” Lee said. “There’s three things you need to make a successful race team as far as business goes. One is the money, right? You need the right marketing partners and businesses that participate. The second thing is you need the right parts and pieces. If you want to compete with the big boys, you need the latest parts, the good blowers, heads, and clutches; you need all that stuff. And the third thing, and the most important, is the people. Don Schumacher was always good at putting people together, and it’s no different than in any business. He was a successful businessman.”
Lee paints the picture of being a student of the drag racing game, and as young as he can remember he chose two team owners to pattern his future career after. He patterned himself after Connie Kalitta and Joe Amato, two successful businessmen who built their teams on the using the same pathway as their businesses.
Many don’t know that Lee first sought to be an investment banker.
“I was in the stock market,” Lee said. “I loved the stock market. I loved everything about initial public offerings and IPOs working at the stock exchange. So, there are two parts to being an investment banker. One is the legal side, and the other is the financial side. So when I went to college, I said, well, I’m going to learn both. So if I’m going to be an investment banker, which is kind of what I do now with the mergers or the acquisitions that I do. I’m basically doing my own investment banking. There’s a legal side and a finance side. Well, now I can do both, either one. I don’t need a lawyer to make it successful or vice versa. I don’t need a finance guy to make it successful. I do it myself.”
Lee’s business portfolio boasts successful brands such as McLeod, FTI Transmissions, FTI Parts, Silver Sport, and Competition Clutch.
“It’s all about the combination of people that you have running those brands,” Lee said. “We all work together, and that’s the same with the race team. So, in the last five years, we started this team in 2019, and I’ve tried to put the right people together. I thought I was putting the right people together, but the results didn’t come. So what do you do? You just have to change people until you get the right combination of people.”
Just like in business, there’s a measure of gambling that goes into finding the right combination. Lee took a gamble on rookie tuner Jonnie Lindberg, and the team’s success can be attributed to the success of pairing him with semi-retired championship tuner John Medlen.
“I am into giving people chances,” Lee said. “I’m into letting people prove that. I don’t mind that. I don’t mind giving young guys, and I’ve done it in the past that haven’t worked out. I like finding that diamond that no one else found, right? And giving them a chance. And Jonnie Lindberg is a guy who was successful in Alcohol Funny Car, is a world champion fabricator who can build a race car can do anything. He can tune it, drive it, and build it. Not too many of those guys around. He lives and sleeps drag racing, and that’s what you need to do to be successful as a tuner in this sport.
“So when we were deciding what to do for this year, John Medlen as our consultant, him and I talked, and Johnny Lindberg was interested, and John Medlen said right away, “Boy, that’s the perfect guy. I could really teach him. He’d be good. Me working with him, he’s smart enough, he can figure stuff out real quick.”
Lindberg, Medlen, business development director Steve Cole, and a team of relentless crewmen dedicated to winning drive Lee’s mission statement to fruition.
“As long as you realize that people are your most important asset, whether it’s business or a race team, that’s the secret,” Lee said. “A lot of people that run businesses think their parts are the best, or they sell themselves, or this manufacturing process is the best. It’s really the people that make it happen. You could have the best parts in the world. I could have the best clutches in the world. If I don’t have the right people to build them, sell them, and distribute them and all the stuff that we do at McLeod and the Wharton Automotive Group, it wouldn’t be successful.
“So it’s no different. Business, race team, same way. You got to look at it that way, especially at this level, when you’re spending as much as we do, it’s a business.”
