Where the rubber meets the road

The Racer's Group is Petaluma's best-kept secret, a company providing both pinot noir wishes and GTO dreams

March 1, 2006

By DANE GOLDEN
ARGUS-COURIER STAFF

Careful. Walking into the Petaluma garage of The Racer's Group is enough to make any automotive enthusiast go weak in the knees. On one side sit several racing Porsches, done up with sponsor stickers glistening under the lights, and on the other side sit a couple of fire-breathing Pontiac GTO.Rs at rest, but not for long.

This is Petaluma's best-kept secret; home to one of sports racing's best teams, and one of the sport's most diversified businesses.

If you're very lucky, driver and owner Kevin Buckler may even take you behind the large oaken door to perhaps the world's most unique private wine tasting room. It's that of Adobe Road Winery perhaps the only tasting room situated in the midst of some of the world's finest and fastest automobiles.

All of this sits behind an understated facade in the Lakeville Business Park, the headquarters of The Racer's Group (also known as TRG) and Adobe Road Winery. TRG moved into the new digs about a year ago from Infineon Raceway, their headquarters for more than a decade.

You'd expect one of the world's best sportscar teams would be based somewhere in car racing country, like North Carolina, but it suits Buckler and Co. just fine. In fact, Buckler and TRG were chosen in 2005 to represent Pontiac's factory racing effort. So, in effect, the nucleus of the Pontiac factory racing effort for GM is based here in Petaluma.

TRG is actually three companies in one. The company, founded in 1993, manufactures and distributes racing parts. They also have an "arrive and drive" business, where they take wealthy racing enthusiasts to race on the world's best tracks in their own Porsches. And, of course, there's the TRG professional racing team, which has won every big endurance race in the world.

The winery is actually business number four under the same roof. Each of the businesses, in a way, complements the other.

Buckler's career as a car owner and driver came together in the 2002 season, when his team won the GT class at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, Fla., and GT title at the famed 24 Hours of Le Mans. He capped the season by winning the Porsche World Cup, awarded to the most successful independent Porsche driver in the world. His team also was the overall winner at the 2003 24 Hours of Daytona, the first time in 27 years that a GT-class car won the endurance race.

The company designs the performance parts based on their racing experience.

"We design them, we put them on the car, we screw them up, we crash them, we fix them, we make them better, and then we start selling them," Buckler said.

They manufacture and distribute racing parts, including bushings, bearings, shock absorbers and sway bars, all over the world.

The parts business was an entrée into racing.

"I was always passionate about racing. We were putting on the car a lot of the parts we were designing," Buckler said. "The parts business blossomed, and then I started professional racing."

Later, the company added the "arrive and drive business." Their clients are wealthy enthusiast drivers who retain TRG to transport their cars to tracks all over the country. The owners show up for several days at a time, their cars already in place, and race them without the hassles of transportation and maintenance.

"We show up at the track in Wisconsin, and they arrive and drive," Buckler said. "We have their cars ready, they race for three or four days and we take care of them. We have a whole group of guys who do that. These guys have been racing as amateurs, some of them, for ten or 20 years."

Then there's pro racing, which has evolved from Buckler on an open trailer going to the California Grand Prix the first time in 1995 to where they are now, going to 24 Hours of Daytona and Le Mans with a four-car team.

Each of the businesses contributes to the other. In a difficult business, TRG has developed a multi-tiered approach where each part of the business hedges the bets on the other.

"If tomorrow I got hurt in a car crash or our drivers went to another team or a sponsor relationship ended, we don't want to just close up shop and lay everybody off, which is what happens a lot in this industry. So we tend to be very diverse in our businesses," Buckler said. "They're all equally important."

The winery is the latest addition to the formula. Buckler has been making wine for a number of years under the label Adobe Road (the pinot grapes, which won the Chronicle's Gold Medal "Best of Class" award last year, are grown at Herrerias Vineyard on Adobe Road). They have a custom crush facility in Healdsburg, and make six varietals.

Buckler credited his wife and his team with the company's overall success. Debra Buckler is the CFO and keeps things running smoothly when Buckler is on the road 32 weeks a year. And the whole TRG/Adobe Road team, he said, is excellent.

"I think that the most important element of our success is the fact that we have a really good group of people that we've assembled, the team," he said. "And in our business, teamwork is everything. We have to have good department heads, good managers, and good staff. And everybody here does a great job and I'm really proud of everybody."

TRG will also be the focus of a six-part reality television miniseries about the six-car team's path to the 24 hours of Daytona. The show will be on the new high-definition channel INHD this spring.

(Contact Dane Golden at dgolden@arguscourier.com)

THE RACER'S GROUP (TRG) AND ADOBE ROAD WINERY

CEO: Kevin Buckler

Founded: 1993

In Petaluma since: 2005

Employees: 30 full-time

Privately held

Phone: 935-3999

Web: www.theracersgroup.com,

www.adoberoadwines.com

PETALUMA BUSINESSPERSON PROFILE: KEVIN BUCKLER

CEO Kevin Buckler founded The Racer's Group in 1993 as a performance product line and began racing in 1995. He and his wife, CFO Debra Buckler, live in Novato with their three girls, and moved the business to Petaluma from Infineon Raceway a year ago. Buckler says that Petaluma is a great community with genuinely nice people, and a diverse town where one can visit a livestock auction, a vineyard wine tasting and a racetrack, all in the same day. Buckler loves downtown area but doesn't get to spend much time there because he's either hard at work or on the road. Of course, he also has a winery on site in case he gets thirsty for a great pinot.