WorkHomola Motorsport

In the shadow of each race driver is a team of people making it happen. I spent the last decade leading the design and digital media for the most successful race driver from Slovakia, who races in FIA World Touring Car Cup - the pinnacle of touring car racing.

This case study describes how I successfully rebranded his race team, built 90,000 social media fan base and prepared sponsorship pitches for 1,000,000 €.

Car Racing is a very exciting but complex sport to be a part of. In general, the key to success is speed, consistency, precision and keeping a cool head in challenging situations. All of which will still not make you a race driver as you also need funding and sponsors.

"... YOU’VE GOT TO BE EVERYWHERE, TV, RADIO, EVEN IN THE FRIDGES OF YOUR FANS LOL."

    - Jaro Homola, Race Team Manager, 15x Slovak Hill Climb Champion

To get sponsors, you need to know how to sell yourself and that can be difficult! One way is to be extremely proactive in media outlets to build up your fan base. The more the visibility and user engagement grows the happier the sponsors are!

This case study points out that actual racing is only a piece of the whole equation to successful racing. It focuses on the background work that has been done to enable racing for team Homola Motorsport and race driver Mato Homola.

Mato Homola, my brother, after winning his first race in FIA WTCR

The race team

Homola Motorsport is a family operated race team that goes beyond the geographical borders of Slovakia. The team fought for championship titles across Europe and recently it's race driver Mato Homola races around the World in FIA WTCR. The team was established in 1992 and it earned a number of championship titles in Hill Climbing, Rally and Circuit Racing. Since 2016, Homola Motorsport has been operating in the background to support Mato Homola in FIA WTCR.

 

Watch FIA WTCR video to understand the scale we operate on.

 

To see the media reach the championship has, read the following report of the FIA WTCR Race of Slovakia below.

VIEW A REPORT

My role

As a kid, I spent many years proudly watching my dad winning races. Racing was my life and being present at the race events just made my world complete. It became my hobby and an inseparable part of my life. I tried to understand the best strategy, setup, rules and the inner workings of a race car.
Me and my brother in front of our father's race car in 1999

Here is a little backstory: After my dad lost a primary sponsor in 2007, we ran into the trouble of having a reduced budget and no media coverage at all. We as a family put our heads together and I volunteered to create an in-house website for our press articles, photos and videos. Understanding the need but having no idea how to build one I still insisted on trying.

It turned out to be a great move. I not only figured out how to build websites, but it kicked off a series of important events. Our team became the pioneer team and leader in Social media in Slovak Racing. We were among the first ones that started a Facebook page, an Instagram account, live videos and behind the scenes YouTube series. The result: a 90k+ fanbase.
Fan base of Mato Homola at FIA WTCR Race of Slovakia

Throughout my 10-year involvement, my role touched everything from web design, photography, video editing, communication with media and sponsors, press article newsletters, social media, creating sponsor material and planning promo events. There has been a lot of work done.

My Work

Everything that I have done for Homola Motorsport / Mato Homola was created in my spare time. I did it for the passion towards motorsport and to help my family becoming successful.

Read below about the most significant rebrand project that I worked on and additionally about other smaller projects that I created.

Other Work

Besides the rebrand, there have been countless other projects, marketing materials, newsletters, sponsor pitches and car livery. Below are the more notable ones.

Sponsor Pitches

As explained in the introduction, sponsorship and funding are one of the most crucial parts of racing. Therefore, it is necessary to appeal to sponsors and convince them. Throughout the years I have been helping the team with structuring their presentations. Below is an excerpt of one deck which accompanied a sponsorship pitch for 1,000,000 €.

Race Car and Suit Design

I worked with all the stakeholders - race team, race driver, sponsors, freelance designers, and the promoter to make sure all expectations are met. Below is the design I helped with in 2017 for the TCR International Series.

Print

Throughout the years, I worked on several autograph postcards, posters and fan material. The most notable are the last 2 photos in the image below. There was the home race for Mato Homola - FIA WTCR Race of Slovakia. Therefore, I helped out to put together 7.000 posters, which were visible to 32k visitors and 6,763,400 TV audience. We did that to excite the fans, bring more awareness and have a gift to remember from the race.

My 2 cents

Today, as the lead of Design and Digital Media, I’m proud to say that I helped to build up a 90k fan base on social media, I successfully rebranded the whole race team and worked on a number of designs over the years the last 10 years. All of that undoubtedly helped my brother, Mato Homola, to race in the pinnacle of touring car racing world championship - FIA WTCR. This is something our family neither Slovakia would ever consider being possible. But we did it, we got the first Slovak race driver into such a world championship and I’m very proud of him and our work.

Lessons learned

• If there is a challenging opportunity, go for it
• Don't crack under pressure – same as the race drivers
• Pull all-nighters to finish side projects you are passionate about
• Your family is the most complicated client
• Do Design Thinking with family - without them knowing
• No budget means a lot of creative work!
• Never give up!

Me and my brother at Salzburgring in 2017 in front of his race car