After so many changes in Lebanese Motorsports this year, we had to meet Gaby Kreiker, the deputy of the ATCL organizing committee and ASN observer to talk about every change, and about the situation of the sport in Lebanon in addition to the latest events, the club is Organizing.
What did change after the last ATCL elections in February and what effect did it have on the MotorSport administration in the club?
Nothing has practically changed. The administration of the club dedicates authority to the MotorSport commission that takes charge of all Motorsport activities. Jack Salha is still the Coordinator and nothing inside the motorsport commission has changed.
Many people seem very annoyed by the fact that the same administrators are still in charge in ATCL, and this is blocking change and advancement. What do you say about such claims?
Well, let’s be honest . Motorsports in general needs stability and continuity. When this is absent many problems would rise. Take Jordan for example, their commission is changing every year. This is not helpful. FIA itself recommends stability and continuity.
We support the entrance of new faces to the commission, but on the condition that they start learning the system and the rules and gradually start holding positions and responsibilities. Motorsport in Lebanon could suffer a lot if we get a totally new team and start working from zero. This is not healthy.
We always prepare ahead of time to be ready. Rally of Lebanon this year is almost finished in terms of preparation. People think that our Job is easy, while it is totally the opposite. The system in Lebanon makes us suffer a lot and it’s very difficult to do what we are doing.
How much does the unstable political situation in addition to the corruption we suffer in this country, affect your work?
More than you can imagine. We suffer from this on the level of the government. We face problems like; ‘why is this event under the patronage of this minister or this deputy or another’.
So back to the issue of change, we are with change but we recommend it happens under the regular and normal procedures. We welcome all new ideas and we are happy to welcome any new member and help him gain all the experience needed to perform and help.
On my reign I have performed over 20 committee elections. Every year we have 5 or 6 people entering the commission of motorsports. Changes also took place in most categories. Take 4×4 for example, it’s the first time Emil Mattar takes charge of a category this year. Imad Lahoud would be taking charge of speed test for the first time. We are doing changes but not radical, and against all problems.
Motorsports is suffering from the lack of sponsoring, is it your duty to attract sponsor and what are you doing in this respect?
To start with, it’s not my duty to find sponsors for the drivers, since I don’t have sponsors for my events. The events are costing us so much. Every year the club pays over 500000 dollars as losses in order to organize events.
We will be open to help in any sponsoring issue when we at least find sponsoring for the club to continue its work properly.
Our target is not making profit. We might be open to free entry charges for all competitors if we have sponsors for ourselves at least.
Through this sequence we have felt that there is a problem in this regard. We created a new marketing commission and brought in young people to work on it. This will help the drivers take the exposure they deserve.
Our first step was changing channels and it really paid well. The change to OTV helped every driver to take more exposure and this will help him find more sponsors. I guess that in the coming events things will be even better, so let’s wait and see.
What are the cons and pros of the switch from LBC to OTV?
The cons would be that the channel has a certain political affiliation, but I only think about the benefits of motorsports. When events like the 4×4 are broadcasted live on TV, and we get over 27 spots a day, compared to what we used to get on LBC, then it’s worth it. LBC wouldn’t put us on prime time and they wouldn’t give us more than 20 spots for the whole event. By this we are getting more exposure regardless of the channel’s political affiliation. Simply we are getting more audience and this is what happened in the 4×4 event.
Last year we had an offer from MTV. We had another offer from Al Jadeed too.
At the beginning of this season we told LBC that we had another offer and asked them what they can improve, but nothing really changed especially in the spring rally, so the change of channel was inevitable.
In the mid-nineties Motorsports were the premier sports in Lebanon. What happened and led to the rise of basketball and fall of motorsports?
LBC were paying 250000 dollars for ATCL, but they were not covering motorsports like they did to basketball. They just wanted basketball to rise and wouldn’t help motorsport. They just buried motorsport this way.
They wouldn’t let motorsport commercials pass on LBC peak time. Before basketball we were the premiere sport in Lebanon and we used to pass on peak time. LBC should remember that most of their technical expertise in sports is because of motorsport.
We used to cover 25 stages live although we didn’t have all the technical capabilities to do it like we have now. We used to spend a month ahead of the rally in order to prepare for the best coverage possible.
We switched 3 channels other than LBC in the past such as Future, MTV, and TL, but we never got the exposure OTV did now. This didn’t help the cause of motorsport in the past. OTV is promoting the whole championship now and this by itself is a big improvement.
We can notice that electronic media and online activities regarding ATCL are not up to standards and are not up to date. What are you doing regarding online media?
Regarding our online media, the RallyofLebanon.com website is very good but the ATCL website is not up to standards right now. At the beginning the motorsport committee was handling the issue of the website than this changed and the website was managed on the level of the club with all its activities. So we had this little confusion.
We had a meeting 4 days ago to explain to the administration of the club that most of the visitors of the website come from motorsport, so something should change so we can benefit together.
We have agreed that there will be a person dedicated for updating all motor sporting news for the website, in each event within the event itself. We will also be updating all the photo albums after each event. We are also working on a dedicated Facebook group for motorsports and we hope to attract as much people as possible.
Why the publication of all regulations did delay this season?
You are right, there was a delay in the publication, but this was not our fault. FIA changed the regulations especially regarding the rally groups like ‘N’ ‘A’. The FIA didn’t sort out all the technical details on time. We didn’t know the regulations regarding the 1600 cc cars as well as the breed of the cars in addition to many other things.
The other issue was the elections in ATCL which also delayed us. So we waited until everything was over and then we finished the regulations.
Why did ATCL decide on doing 4×4 Criteriums, and not rallies this year?
Last year we had some organizational difficulties especially in the last rally last year and we found out that we cannot handle long 4×4 rallies. We felt that our guys are not ready to organize such events. We have to be self-critical. We were not on the right level and we had huge safety issues and this not acceptable at all. We faced some challenges regarding timing and this is also not acceptable.
We believe that we should not organize any event if we don’t have all the safety measures. Last year 5 cars fell and it took us more than 5 min to know where each car was. This is not acceptable and we will not organize 4×4 long rallies unless we are sure that these issues are solved.
We changed all the 4×4 team and we are looking forward for better organization
How do you asses the night stages both in ROL 2010 and Spring rally 2011?
Night stages saw people coming to the rally in bigger numbers. Usually night stages carry more sensation for fans. They listen to the sounds and start seeing dim lights. The whole scene is very spectacular. This helps us bring more people to the stages, although I think that we will never reach the number of fans we used to have in the past. Many economic reasons are also playing part in the return of fans to the stages. He has to pay gas and food and many other factors to be able to watch the stage and this is making us lose fans.
Night stages are now being hosted all around the world and we are the only ones in the Middle East hosting night stages. This is a great experience for us and for the drivers. Last year the Lebanese drivers showed their edge over the Arab drivers at night stages.
This year in spring rally everybody enjoyed the stages. We had some problems with lighting and we worked on fixing them. Last year’s problems were not due to us. We hired an international team and they were not on the best level. They simply let us down. We are learning from these experiences and looking forward for the future.
Some claim that you are biased to a certain team and things always happen their way. How do you answer such claims?
My simple reply would be to ask Abdo Feghali or Roger Feghali, and ask them how our relationship is, together. Those who claim that Roger takes whatever he wants from ATCL, please ask them if this is the case. For example he did a test lately and we sent him blame. He complained that ATCL only blamed him although everybody was testing.
The problem we are facing is that some drivers don’t have a limit. Some drivers call us at 11 at night for things they need. This is an invasion our personal lives.
For me drivers are all equal, people with the biggest and smallest budgets.
Sometimes we organize an event with 20 contestants, and all 20 want to organize the rally according to their benefits.
We do whatever our conscience tells us to do. At the end you cannot make everybody happy whatever you do.
What is your opinion regarding people organizing motor sporting events outside the ATCL?
To start with, we have taken a decision that any event that takes place without the approval of the club, we will ban the driver contesting and withdraw his license; even marshals organizing the events will be banned.
On the other hand the government should start acting regarding this issue. We met the sports and youth minister and he was very cooperative in this issue. We have also agreed that the ministry of internal affairs will send recommendations for all officials under its jurisdiction not allow for any event unless the both the ministry of internal affairs and of sports and youth approves on the event.
We are mainly not against the idea of organizing events but they should be at least at the right level of safety needed. Everyone who is willing to organize an event should send it to the sports and youth ministry and then to us to study it and approve on it.
This even applies to the Red Bull Car Park drift. This year we are out of this competition and every one participating should take responsibility for it.
What are the possibilities for Lebanon to be hosting an international rally championship, WRC or IRC?
Regarding the IRC, it’s not that difficult. If we apply for the hosting of such an event we will be granted hosting next year. Our only problem is the turbulent situation in the region. We cannot engage our self now in such an event. Bahrain GP has been cancelled; Jordan Rally went through a lot of difficulties and is still facing some more. We cannot take such a risk now.
We have the right level to host WRC events, but we cannot take such risks now. IRC is much closer than WRC because it’s much easier to organize but the best thing we do is not to think about it. We need stability. If we have stability we host it, as simple as that.
Does the Israeli factor have any influence on us hosting such events?
It does have no influence in my opinion. I don’t think we have Israeli drivers participating in motor sporting events on the international level. It’s practically irrelevant.
What is the future of motorsports like in the upcoming years?
I can say that we are still living on our past glory. We have a lot of problems.
To start with we have a problem with the level of Marshals. The level is not the same as we used to have earlier in the past years. They are still starters with young age.
The problem of sponsors is affecting everything honestly. We hope that with the new TV coverage we can attract more sponsors and this will reflect positively on us in terms of training the marshals, financing them, organizing better events and much more.
We need to enter the universities to create motor clubs. We are entering schools and universities for seminars on motorsports and safety. We are also trying to enter the community of scouts which also helps in getting more people disciplined and ready to work.
We need a long term sponsor so we can continue. The good thing though that in comparison to all Arab countries we are on a much higher level.