Updating my stats from Tuesday, two more UMP Summer Nationals events have been won from the front row making it now 16 of 20 or 80%. As en example of some of the fine on the spot and at the moment "reporting" that you can get from Twitter, texting, cell phones, etc. it was stated on a forum that at Terre Haute last night there was a "big crash on first lap I believe. Pierce was involved, a car in front of him broke and took out 7 cars", proving once again that to put something on a racing forum it doesn't necessarily have to be true, but it must be interesting! Actually it was a two car tangle several laps in when Jason Riggs got too high off of turn two and when he came back down the track on the back stretch he collected Bobby Pierce eliminating both cars. Big crash? Yes, I guess that since it eliminated 13% of the field you could call it a "big crash" as there were only fifteen cars on hand making me wonder if Terre Haute will be back on the Hell Tour schedule in 2015. The Tour moves on tonight to the Mighty Macon Speedway, then Friday night in Farmer City before coming back across the Mississippi River to 34 Raceway in Burlington on Saturday night.
Shortly after posting Tuesday's notebook that included a paragraph about social media I came across this sad story about the closing of Baer Field Speedway in Fort Wayne, Indiana, due in large part to the negativity displayed about the track on the internet. Barry, Sue and I started the Positively Racing website five years ago because we could see the trend of negative comments growing on the internet and when we speculated that it could someday lead to something like this, a race track actually closing, we were laughed at by some who maintained that the old saying of "any publicity is good publicity" would hold true. I just hope that this specific example will help to reverse the trend and that we will not see more tracks go by the wayside in part, or because of negativity in social media.
One of my favorite drivers is a perfect example in that he feels that he was wronged by one of the tracks that he used to race at weekly and now he makes it very well known, quite regularly on Facebook, that he will never go back there again, often using vulgar language to enhance his point. I just shake my head each time and wonder what he is going to do if someday that track is the only one in the area that still runs his division weekly? Or worse yet, what if that track ends up being the only one in the area that still races weekly? If you don't want to race there any more, that's fine, say it once and move on.
One of the things that I love about "blogging" over the old days of print is the fact that I can always link you back to something that I might have stated or predicted in the past to either expand upon that point again in the present or just flat out gloat that I was right! Fair is fair though and I must also do the same thing when I was wrong and that happens now in regard to the Four Cylinder or Sport Compact division and its low car counts at some of the All Iowa Points-paying tracks. In this entry from August of 2013 I made the assumption that promoters would not drop the division even if the low car counts persisted due to the fact that they don't really cost the promoter anything from a straight accounting standpoint. I was wrong! The Independence Motor Speedway dropped the division during the offseason due to the lack of a solid car count and just this week the Sport Compacts were discontinued at both the Farley Speedway and the Dubuque Speedway after sometimes as few as three cars signed in on race nights during 2014. There are a few more tracks out there that still struggle to draw more than five or six a week and it will be interesting to see how they handle the situation going forward.
I said it then and I will say it now, I am not a Four Cylinder "hater". I do enjoy the racing that they provide when there is a solid car count and when the fast drivers are starting tenth or twelfth in the feature, just the same as I feel about any division.
My weekend plans are taking shape as the weather forecast gets more focused for Friday and Saturday. Check back in to see where we end up on the Back Stretch!
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