A blueprint for a better operation: How RFK works with Fastenal

March, 15, 2023
By the Blue Print Editorial Team

Steve Newmark, RFK Racing President

​Fastenal has had an outstanding partnership with RFK Racing in the NASCAR Cup Series for over a decade. We had the opportunity to speak with RFK Racing president, Steve Newmark, about how the past two years have affected their team.​
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Q: With the implementation of NextGen cars, what challenges did you encounter with single-sourced suppliers and the supply chain?

A: ​When we implemented the NextGen transition, which represented a massive overhaul of how we do business, it probably wasn’t optimal timing as we were in the middle of an unprecedented health pandemic and global supply chain disruption. All of the teams in the sport struggled with that dynamic as it made the transition to a completely new business model much more difficult.

For us, we saw a number of challenges including a significant shift in parts of our workforce and a new paradigm for how we build cars. However, the challenge that would’ve been the most visible to the fans is that the shift jeopardized our ability to have enough race cars to take to the racetrack.

The normal course of business for us in this sport for the last 50 years has been that when you go to a race, you have your primary car and you have a backup car. So, if your driver wrecks in practice or qualifying (a tire could go down, mechanical failure, etc.) you have another car to roll off the truck, so you could race in the actual race. However, at the start of this year, because of the shortage of parts, we didn’t have enough parts to build adequate cars.

So, for most races we were going with one car as backup for both of our primary race cars. This meant that our drivers were told to be a lot more careful in qualifying and practice. Particularly, if one of our cars wrecked in the first practice, they’d have to tell the other driver that they don’t have any leeway anymore because if they wreck, they will not have a race car the next day.

That was fairly stressful and highly unusual. Fortunately, we were able to navigate the difficult situation, and as the season progressed, we were able to overcome and find solutions to a lot of the shortages.
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​Q: How has the change to single-source suppliers affected you?

A: Well, as a starting point, the teams did embrace and endorse the change to the NextGen model, as it’s something that we believe is good for the sport. But, like the old adage, everybody likes the idea of change but not change itself. And there’s no doubt that the new platform has added a different layer of stress for our entire organization. We’ve always prided ourselves in being masters of our own domain because we controlled almost every aspect of the car build process. Essentially, we could determine our own destiny. If we needed new or additional parts or pieces, we just worked harder and used all 24 hours in a day.​

That shifted when we became much more dependent on outside suppliers. Now, we are beholden to the ability of a third party to manufacture and deliver quality parts for the areas of the car that have been designated as single-source supply parts. This reliance on third parties is foreign to us and how we operated. So, as we were ramping up, we were really trying to understand how to operate within this new business model and ultimately get the most speed out of the car.
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Q: Since much of the production of parts in now out of your control, how have you changed your focus to improve the things you do have control of?

A: As we’ve transitioned into NextGen, our business model has shifted because we no longer control as much of the car build process.

With that change, we’ve had to reimagine how our workforce is constructed and what skillsets we need to make our cars faster than our competitors’. For example, unlike in past years, we don’t have a full department building chassis because that part now comes from a third party. And we don’t need as big a design group because the areas in which we have the flexibility to design our own parts has been curtailed.

Instead, there is now a greater emphasis on quality control and efficiency in putting the car together. In the NextGen world, we make sure every part that comes in is subject to laser scanning and we are meticulous in ensuring that we use the best parts that we receive from the suppliers.

We’ve also had greater emphasis now on simulation, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and a lot of the other technologies to make sure we optimize the setup of the car and the variables that we can control such as tire pressures, shocks, and springs. We have also dedicated more personnel to collaborating with Ford Motor Company, and the other Ford NASCAR teams, to take advantage of any aerodynamic advantages that we can find with the new car bodies that were introduced this year.

At the end of the day, we still have the ability to make hundreds of different decisions that affect how fast our cars will be on the track, and to succeed, we need to maximize our efforts in those areas.

Q: Does your partnership with Fastenal give you a competitive advantage?

A: We’ve been really fortunate to have Fastenal as a partner of ours for over a decade. During that time, in my opinion, it has evolved into the gold standard of partnerships in NASCAR. Most people know that sponsors in NASCAR use the platform for sales and marketing purposes. Fans see sponsor branding displayed prominently on all racing assets, and the programs are brought to life with creative engagement ideas around social/digital activation, sweepstakes, and other driver interactions and endorsements.

But Fastenal is different in that they are much more than a marketing partner and have evolved into a comprehensive business operations advisor. Fastenal impacts almost every aspect of our business. You can track the evolution of the partnership with how we have become more efficient and effective in running our own business. The list of examples in which they’ve helped us improve how we operate touches almost every department within our organization. It started with the installation of vending machines to help us with inventory control, which reduced loss and greatly increased our timeliness in building our cars. The range of assistance has expanded over time to include fulfillment strategies (including around same day requirements, which are often paramount in our business), parts planning, and guidance around supply chain logistics, which was particularly critical during the last two years.

Despite having a full staff of engineers on our team, we’ve even engaged Fastenal at times when we’ve had engineering issues, such as soliciting help to lighten up bolts and other parts to reduce weight in the car. In fact, this year we approached Fastenal with some issues we were having around safety concerns with the driver’s seat in the race car. Fastenal quickly reached a solution that addressed the issue within the tight rules structure imposed by NASCAR. Fastenal just has a level of expertise that exceeds anything that we could have ever expected from what is traditionally a marketing partner. Put simply, they’ve helped us operate as a better business both on and off the track.

Most importantly for us, and to use a term near and dear to the racing world, Fastenal brings “horsepower with proximity” in that they offer best practices and technical superiority from across the globe, while also having local representatives that we interact with on a regular basis and are always available to be on-site whenever needed. That’s a rare combination in today’s world and something that helped us make it to Victory Lane in 2022.

Watch the whole interview

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