It happens every year, but usually it waits until the current season is over. Not this year. Forum posters are already making "suggestions" to promoters on how to make their shows more driver and fan friendly and it always makes me cringe a bit when I see an AWP say something to the effect of" let's tell promoters how to put more butts in their seats and more cars in their pits." Really?
First of all, forum board posters need to learn that few if any promoters EVER look at a forum board because most of the time it is just too painful. So even if you do have a good suggestion it will more than likely go unnoticed if you only post it on the internet. If you really want to make a difference at your favorite track, then go introduce yourself to the promoter and talk to them. Put a name and a face to your thoughts as a race promoter is much more likely to consider advice from somebody that they talk to in person rather than somebody known only as "dirtyskull" or "eventhater".
Second, suggestions like "pay more money because the sport is expensive" and, or "charge less money to get in" probably make a lot of sense to someone who has a car or who buys a ticket, but to a promoter who is looking at his P&L statement for 2011 it is probably the last thing that they would want to consider right now. So if you are prone to post "suggestions" to promoters on how to make a race program better, make sure that you consider all three entities (drivers, fans and promoters) because whether you like it or not, the promoter needs to make money for their efforts. Otherwise they will leave and you will have no race track to attend, or to coach from your keyboard.
I was very happy to see that my friends Ron McKeever and Warren Busse share one of my thoughts right now in that we have too many classes at several race tracks. Do you want to "raise" the purse for the drivers? Do it by keeping your total purse the same, or slightly lower, but eliminate two or three divisions. When a "back gate" division that used to draw fifteen or twenty cars is now only drawing six to ten then perhaps it is time to put that class on the shelf. It appears that the economy has had even more of an effect on the divisions that require lower budgets because those drivers had lower budgets to start with. And, if having that division is not helping you sell tickets to general fans, then it is no longer a profitable division for the track.
The same thing can be said about the premier division. If your top class is only drawing five, six, seven or eight cars a week, then it is likely that they are costing you money rather than helping you present a successful weekly program. The general fan that used to buy a ticket to watch this class when it had enough cars for two or three full heats, and a feature that would still have more than ten cars in action when the checkers flew, are likely not buying that ticket to your weekly show anymore. They are either staying home and waiting for a special event, or they are driving down the road to another track where the featured division has a full field. As an example, if a weekly track has six Modifieds and twenty-two Sport Mods on average in 2011, that track needs to provide some sort of incentive to move at least six of those Sport Mods to Mods in 2012, or it needs to drop the Modifieds and spread that $1,000 that it was paying to those six drivers across the remaining divisions. In the early 1980's, the thought of a track running an IMCA Modified as the premier division for its weekly show was scoffed at, but soon there were several tracks thriving with exactly that concept. The Sport Mods of today are faster and more competitive than what those Modifieds were thirty years ago. Who will be the first promoter to take the risk and run the Sport Mods as the "featured" division during their weekly show?
So there. First I tell you that if you want to give a promoter some advice, you should do it face-to-face. Then I turn around and offer up general advice on the internet. Oh well, at least if a promoter stumbles across this he or she will know who said it!
And by the way, your comments and feedback are always welcome here, but for them to be published you will need to provide your name and hometown. Unless of course you completely agree with me, then you can remain an ANP (Anonymous Nice Poster).
I look forward to being at night one of the annual Pepsi USA Late Model Nationals at 34 Raceway near Burlington Friday night and hopefully I can steal the microphone away from Rich Adams for a race or two. I got a chuckle from the Facebook post regarding the discussion with the Hobby Stock drivers at 34 about rules for next year and the prospect of going to the 9:1 compression motors or all the way to the IMCA rules for the division. What do you suppose the outcome would be if you asked twenty guys who were racing equipment that would basically have to be totally replaced in order to go to IMCA, if they wanted to go IMCA? There was probably a couple of drivers who felt that it would be good for the future of the division, but speaking up for IMCA would have been the same as saying "I say we let him go" in that crowd. Oh well, nothing like having a race car that you can only race weekly at one track.
Other commitments including a wedding will keep me away from the tracks for the rest of the Labor Day weekend, but here's hoping that you catch as much racing as possible at a track near you. And let's be careful out there!
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