The Tech Entrepreneur Behind F1’s Las Vegas Grand Prix
Last month F1's chief executive Bernie Ecclestone told Britain's Independent newspaper that the race in Vegas is "ready to go" and the news was followed up in media outlets around the world. It led to widespread speculation about the identity of the group behind the race as Mr. Ecclestone did not say who was leading it.
Highly respected US motorsport correspondent Steven Cole Smith confirmed the involvement of "an investment and management group" but did not disclose further details of it.
Mr. Ecclestone subsequently told motoring magazine Autoweek that the group does not include casino impresario Steve Wynn or Guy Laliberte, co-founder of avant-garde circus troupe Cirque du Soleil, which has eight shows in Vegas. As Forbes remarked they are both likely to support the race due to the benefit it would bring, and it has since been confirmed that neither is leading the project.
Instead, the driving force behind it is Farid Shidfar, founder of digital meeting service rundavoo.com and pioneer of the Los Angeles media and entertainment practice at consultancy firm Accenture. This position brought him into contact with a number of show-business power-brokers including Steven Spielberg. In 1994 the Oscar-winning filmmaker founded the University of Southern California's Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, a non-profit organization which records video testimonies of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust. The year after it was established Mr. Shidfar helped to develop software which enables the foundation's 220 Terabyte digital library system to be accessed from multiple museums worldwide.
Mr. Shidfar spent 15 years as a senior executive at Accenture and worked with the world's biggest media and entertainment brands including Disney, MGM, Sony and Universal. He left in 2008 to take on private projects and began to build closer links to Vegas.
The first of these was work on the launch of the brand for the city's Cosmopolitan hotel and identification of strategic partnerships for it. The hotel opened in December 2010 and two years later Mr. Shidfar founded Rundavoo, a digital service which streamlines the co-ordination of meetings as well as hotel, restaurant and event reservations.
Mr. Shidfar is understood to have been analyzing the opportunity to bring F1 to Vegas since 2011 and has boosted his efforts over the past year. On January 17 he founded the Nevada company P2M Motorsports Management LLC, and his Linkedin page confirms that it is the "consortium bringing Formula 1 to the Las Vegas Strip." This world-famous road runs through the center of Vegas and is lined with some of the most renowned casino resorts including the Bellagio and Caesars Palace. The Vegas Grand Prix "would be on The Strip for sure," said Mr. Ecclestone last month.
A senior source in the United States racing scene added that F1's track designer Hermann Tilke has visited Vegas several times to design the layout of the course which demonstrates that the project is at an advanced stage. "Tilke has made a couple of site visits. I knew that if he had gone along there must be something to it," said the source.
Forbes understands that Mr. Ecclestone has handed Mr. Shidfar a contract for a Vegas Grand Prix and he is currently looking over it. Interestingly, although Mr. Shidfar's background is not in the automotive or auto racing industry, his late father was reportedly chief executive of the Honda Company of Iran following a stint as the country's vice minister of economic affairs and finance. In 2011 he passed away in Los Angeles where his son is still based. It puts him in pole position to spearhead the race in nearby Vegas. More at Forbes.com http://www.forbes.com/sites/csylt/2014/11/10/revealed-the-tech-entrepreneur-behind-f1s-las-vegas-grand-prix/