RACE CAR DRIVER USES MEDIA TRAINING

Some of the most enjoyable work we do involves sports figures and celebrities. In the following article, excerpted from the Daytona Beach (Fla.) News-Journal, writer Shawn Akers tells of an unusual application of VS&A's media training techniques.

Right away, Blake Feese's media training was put to the test.

The 23-year-old Hendrick Motorsports driver had just been involved in an incident on pit road during the season-opening ARCA Series race at Daytona International Speedway. Crew members and photographers were injured. It was his mistake that caused the mishap, and quickly he would have to explain it to reporters anxious to get his side of the story.

Feese was well-prepared, due certainly in large part to a one-day training session with Virgil Scudder of the public relations firm Virgil Scudder and Associates, in which Feese and Hendrick Motorsports teammate Boston Reid were given instruction on how, as race car drivers, to deal with the media.

"At that time, there were many, many things going through my mind, but obviously first and foremost was that I was worried that a whole lot of people had gotten hurt."

"And I knew that I was going to have to face questions about it, and that I was going to have to be calm and rational with my answers. The first thing I did was that I told (the media) to give me about five minutes to compose myself, and that's a fair request when something like that had just happened. I thought about what we had been taught on how to handle something like this. When I finally came out to talk to the reporters, I was less anxious and I was better able to handle it. I'm really thankful that I was able to go through that training because it really helped out."

Through an agreement with Lowe's, the sponsor of the No. 5 Hendrick Chevy, Hendrick Motorsports sent both Feese and Reid through the training session with Scudder in Charlotte during the off-season. Kyle Busch, who drove the No. 5 Chevy last year in the Busch Series, also went through the training between 2003-2004.

"It was awesome," Reid said of Scudder's presentation. "They taught us how to answer difficult questions, to not get nervous and ramble on, and to know what the reporter wants. He really made you feel comfortable."

Reid said he wouldn't mind doing it every year. "You never stop learning, and each level you progress to there are different things to deal with," Reid said. "If they'll have us do it again, I certainly wouldn't mind at all."

Neither would we, Boston.