Over the past decade, Brandon Igdalsky steered Pocono Raceway from obscurity to relevance.
But the time has come for new hands to take the wheel.
Former track CEO and president Brandon Igdalsky announced his resignation from Pocono on Tuesday, handing CEO duties to younger brother Nick Igdalsky and the title of president to Ben May.
The elder Igdalsky leaves the track his grandfather built for a role with NASCAR, becoming the sanctioning body’s managing director of event marketing and promotion.
“The cards just all fell into place,” Brandon Igdalsky said Friday. “We’ve done some great things at Pocono, and talked to some friends at NASCAR and just kind of looked at the void that they had from the track’s perspective. And it was the perfect timing, perfect fit.”
Nick Igdalsky, who becomes just the third CEO in track history alongside grandfather Dr. Joseph Matiolli and brother Brandon is thankful for the opportunity to take the reigns.
“It means a lot to me,” he said Thursday. “This is a family-run business; it always will be a family-run business. Just to have good people to get your back and to help you learn along the way will be a great asset to me. But I’m fully prepared. My experiences at other facilities and what I’ve done here at Pocono has prepared me.”
Nick had been the Chief Operations Officer and Senior Vice President of the facility since 2007 while also spending five years overseeing renovations at South Boston Speedway, a 0.4-mile track in Virginia. He admits the promotion to CEO came a bit sooner than he anticipated, but with a loaded NASCAR weekend right around the corner, he feels ready to jump into his new role.
“My thoughts and hopes were that Brandon would stick around for at least another 10 years or so, but that doesn’t appear to be the case,” Nick Igdalsky said. “But I’m prepared.”
May first began working at Pocono Raceway in 2000 through Mountain Concessions and joined the track’s full-time staff a year later as its director of trackside sales. After three years as the CMO of the Tricky Triangle, he finds himself eager to begin his new adventure.
“Nick and I are excited to continue the solid work that Brandon started, the path he put us down,” May said. “It’s going to be good.”
Nick Igdalsky and May will need no time to build a relationship with one another. The duo met in college at Elon University during the late 1990s.
“Ben May and I work very, very well together,” Nick Igdalsky said. “Our strengths complement each other extremely well. We actually went to college together – that’s how we started here at the racetrack, working summers on our breaks from school. And he just became more and more involved and ran the concessions company and became more and more involved in the raceway side of it as the years went on. So his knowledge base is just as good if not better than mine.”
May, a Saylorsburg resident, is very much involved with his local community. While he does work for both the Mattioli Foundation and the NASCAR Foundation, May’s main line of community service comes as the First Vice President and Secretary of the Board of Directors at the United Way of Monroe County.
“I started on the marketing committee many years ago and was invited to join the board a few years back,” May said. “So my path on the board today will lead me to be the board chair here in the coming years and (I’m) really to help guide the united way and focus on Monroe County.
“I’m a Monroe County resident, and aside from a year when I lived in Wilkes Barre, I’ve lived in Monroe County since 2002 or 2003. (I’m) proud of the work we’re doing with the United Way, proud of the way the United Way has kind of reshaped themselves in our community.”
May emphasized the importance of connecting with fans within the county, citing the facility’s need to succeed locally first.
“The truth of the matter is we can’t be successful nationally if we aren’t locally and regionally,” he said. “And that may sound weird to some, but it’s not. The base of our business and our customers and our fans are coming from this area. NASCAR and IndyCar may be played in 50 states, 30 countries, and (are) a global brand, sure. But Pocono Raceway itself can’t be successful nationally if we aren’t locally. The support of our community is paramount.”
Pocono Raceway had long been seen as one of the most dreaded stops on the NASCAR circuit. The facility was heavily criticized for its lack of safety innovations and lackluster races in which drivers would log laps over the course of a grueling 500 miles.
That largely changed when Brandon Igdalsky took full control in 2011. From adding catch fencing and SAFER barrier to the track’s entire perimeter to a total repave of the track — both the 2.5-mile triangular course and its infield road course variations — to building a solar farm, shortening its NASCAR races, and bringing IndyCar back, Pocono Raceway has provided some of the most entertaining races in recent memory, a total reversal of the not-so-distant past.
“Probably the biggest thing was changing the mindset of Pocono first and foremost, whether that was the mindset of the drivers or the fans or the community or anybody else,” said Brandon Igdalsky. “It’s now a place where you can go back to a place where people want to be on race weekend.”
Each of the three men emphasized how much of a team effort it has taken to right the ship at Pocono Raceway.
“When we developed our vision and mission statements and core values a few years back, that was a team effort between Brandon, Ben, and myself,” Nick Igdalsky said. “We all did it together and we all agreed upon those 100 percent, wholeheartedly. So none of those change.
“I told the staff when we announced it to them that there’s obviously different personalities — Brandon’s personality is far different from my personality. I’m not going to change that. Don’t expect me to act like him or do the social media or anything like that. But we all have the same goal. And the goal is our destination. There may be different paths you can take, but a lot of roads lead to the same destination. So I may not take the same road as Brandon did, but the goal and the destination is still the same.”
