After watching a couple of tracks recently kill their shows with extended intermissions it was refreshing to watch promoters be proactive on Saturday night. And what was even more impressive was that it was a pair of first time promoters Rick and Corey Dripps who will take over the reigns of the Benton County Speedway in Vinton on a weekly basis in 2020. They got their feet wet, literally, this past Saturday night promoting the finale of the 2019 IMCA Modified Dirt Knights Tour at "The Bullring" and with rain fast approaching they made the decision to not only drop the Modified B-Main that would have cut the field from 27 to 24, they also moved the Modified feature up in front of the two Sport Mod B-Mains that were to follow the completion of all the heat races.
This allowed the featured event of the night to be run in its entirety and, when the rains did arrive more than an hour earlier than had been predicted that afternoon, they handled the other five divisions in a manner that, in my opinion, is the best way possible in this scenario. The show was called complete and those drivers that had qualified for the redraw in each division, for this example let's use the Stock Cars, the posted purse for the top twelve positions was totaled and then divided equally between those twelve drivers. Then the purse for the remaining drivers in the feature lineup was totaled and divided equally across those drivers. When you have a late season race like this, with no other date set where you can run double features, this is the way to do it. In fact, for a special event at any time of the year, this is probably the way to do it so that drivers who made a long trip in for the night that got rained on don't have to turn around and do it at a later date that might not be convenient for them to make that trip again.
Why do I feel like it was the best way to handle the situation? Because this is exactly the same way that Terry Hoenig and I handled a similar situation at Shiverfest over a decade ago and we did not get one single complaint from a driver, and only a question or two from fans.
I could go into more details on those two extended intermissions that I mentioned in the opening line, but what's the point? For one of them it is a scenario that I have watched play out three times now over the past two years. If you aren't going to learn from your own mistakes, you sure aren't going to listen to some old codger with a blog. And yesterday on Facebook I went down the sucker hole getting involved in a conversation about Entry Fees that I have should have stayed out of. However, when a driver comes on and says at my track they let the drivers in for free and then fails to mention that his track did not race in 2019, likely because their business model didn't work, but yet others start going "yea, we should all get in free" well I just had to say something.
Seems like there are a lot of "promises" to give stuff away for free in our society these days and if you think that will actually come true, well then you just aren't thinking real straight because somebody has to pay for it.
By the way, since I thumped my chest above about how we handled rainouts I should also point out that in 1992 when Larry Kemp and I tried to run the Lee County All Star Speedway in Donnellson, we thought that letting the driver and two crewman in for $25 would be the way to go. After losing nearly $20,000 by mid-season we shut it down.
Two years ago I conducted a poll here on the Back Stretch, first at the bottom of this entry with a follow up here that basically showed that purses that have big payouts at the top with an Entry Fee are perceived to be "bigger" than a purse that is exactly the same, but without an Entry Fee. So, for those of you who wonder why a track would do that, look no further than in the mirror. :)
Usually as we turn the calendar over to October I can do an "All Iowa Points teaser" that talks about which divisions still have championships in question. But can you believe that over the next five weeks we have twenty-six scheduled nights of racing at eleven different All Iowa Points paying tracks? In fact an aggressive driver can still run as many as fifteen feature races over that schedule, so with a 5-point scale that means that any driver within 75 points of the top are still mathematically in the hunt with the final events currently scheduled for November 3rd and 4th in Columbus Junction.
I guess I will wait a couple of more weeks before writing that teaser.
No racing for me this weekend as I will be on baby-sitting duty for my grandson who is not yet old enough to take to the track, at least according to every other family member. But I look to get back to action the following week and as of now I plan to be at seven of those remaining All Iowa Points events.
Rest In Peace Scott Watson, your voice and enthusiasm will be greatly missed.
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