It will be a busy weekend of racing coming up here in the upper Midwest with a full list of special events along with some Season Championship events as well. Hopefully the weather will cooperate as we are now at that point where if an event gets rained out it is nearly impossible to reschedule without having somebody irritated at you for "stepping on" some other previously scheduled show. I am also amused each year by how some people react when a track's Season Championship event gets rained out and is not rescheduled. Are other weekly points races made up on an off night? No. So why would you expect or demand that the weekly racing finale/Season Championship event should be made up? Oh right, because your favorite driver is eleven points back in the point standings and you want him to have a chance to erase that deficit in one night. So, as usual, we have people who look at things only how it affects them rather than considering the whole picture, something that is common across all of society, but somehow seems to be enhanced when it comes to racers and fans.
Don't be one of those people!
Speaking of points races, this brings me to something that has always driven me crazy when we get to this time of the year. I was listening to a radio show last Saturday where it was mentioned that Driver A had a 175 point lead over Driver B so "the race was still tight" heading into the final month of the season. Hey people, there is no one common point system in racing, so if you are going to talk about a points race you must also include some kind of discussion of how the points are tabulated. How many points does the race winner get? What is the increment from place to place and how many points do you get for just showing up? Going back to the example above where the Facebook fan was so mad about the driver who was eleven points behind not having one last chance to somehow pull out the title, it was at an IMCA track where the points are one-point increments per place. Therefore this person's favorite driver would have to finish eleven places better than the point leader in the feature in order to tie and twelve places better to win the championship. But here's the rub, it was in a division where the track had only had car counts of less than ten each of the past three weeks. So, umm, ......yeah......rage on Facebook fiend.
The discussion continues in the aftermath of the Quad City Speedway's announcement that they will not run the Mod Lite division in 2019. While it was not specifically stated, one would assume that a reason for this would be the low car counts all this season where the class seldom if ever cracked the double figure mark. While several people are suggesting replacing the class with something else (Trucks, 305 Sprints, Crate Late Models, etc.) I am glad to see that others are saying that there is no need to add anything else. Five divisions on a Sunday night at a track with a curfew is enough.
I do find it interesting though that the Crate Late Models will be on the card for this Sunday's Ron Marks Memorial at East Moline.
As I spent hours picking up storm debris yesterday the QCS situation was on my mind and I came up with how I would handle a situation if I were a promoter given a scenario where a group of people came to me and wanted to start a class of cars that would be unique to my track. We have seen this on several occasions over the past ten years where a very vocal and enthusiastic individual, or group, approaches a promoter and essentially says, "hey, if you run my new class of cars at your track next year we will have ten of them there on opening night and I know of as many as twenty guys right now who will build one once they know of your commitment." Let's face it, that is a pretty compelling pitch given the car counts these days in some of the already established divisions so there have been promoters who have signed on for the new class. The problem is though that outside of the 9:1 Late Models that now run at Darlington, Wisconsin, I am not aware of any of these recent startup classes that are delivering car counts that even give you two solid heat races.
When considering starting what I have been calling a "novelty class" as the promoter I would want to first think about whether it will be a division that general race fans will enjoy watching. I have never understood the infatuation we have had with putting undersized/under powered cars on full size race tracks where a driver doesn't even have to lift to go through the corners and, if you are going put something full size and slow out there, let them beat and bang on each other within reason to give the crowd a thrill. Friends and family will always come out to watch Bob drive his race machine, but will Bob's race machine sell tickets to general fans? Or worse yet will knowing that those race machines are running that night make general fans consider other options?
Do all of you remember how the current Four Cylinder class was introduced to the area? Promoter Terry Hoenig called them the "Wild Things" at the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson and one of the rules was that you could not lead two consecutive laps, other than the white flag and the checkers, or you would be disqualified. Made for some very entertaining action and the car count grew quickly. It wasn't long though before some of the faster drivers lobbied to do away with that rule so that they could be real racers and, well here we are with over half of the tracks that now run the class struggling to pull ten or more cars each week. Perhaps it is time for some PROMOTER to try that rule again and see what happens! But I digress......
If somebody or a group came to me and wanted me to start running their novelty class I would say "sure, but under these conditions". To start the season, and until you have ten or more racing machines (better than saying cars or trucks!), the driver of each machine will get three free pit passes but there will be no purse money paid. Once you reach that ten machine threshold we will no longer do the free pit passes and you will be paid the purse that we agree upon, however if you fall back under a count of ten for two consecutive weeks, we go back to the free pit passes and no purse. This protects the promoter to committing to a purse structure that pays out too much money to a class that is short on counts and should provide enough incentive to the group to actually deliver on what they promise in the first place. And, before you think that it is not a reasonable deal for the drivers, this would be better than buying a $25 pit pass and then getting paid $125 in purse money. Heck, once the car counts get over ten the drivers finishing at the back would probably want to stick with the original deal!
At least in my mind, this is a win-win scenario for both parties allowing the promoter to give the class a try without taking on the risk. And the only reason the individual or group would not be satisfied is if they truly did not have the support that they claim to have. But before we start having tracks look at starting up their own novelty class, let's take heed of the word of my good friend Warren Busse who says "we already have too many classes!"
Okay, so enough "picking up branches" thoughts and on to other notes.....
The inaugural Dirt Million had to be considered a great success topped off by a fabulous race where Earl Pearson Jr. passed Bobby Pierce late to take the win. Pearson's car suffered damage in a pile up on lap nineteen and then drew a caution on lap twenty-nine with a flat tire. What looked like misfortune might have actually been the break that Pearson needed to get to the front with the fresher rubber. The race had to be red flagged on lap fifty-one when the flagman was hit in the face by a mud clog, but he gathered himself back up and finished out the event despite the swelling. Guess those Bell Helmets that Doug Clark and the flagging team wore at Knoxville for the first-time during the Nationals looks like a pretty good idea now!
At $405,967 the event came up well short of the goal of one million, but it was still the second highest paying race in Dirt Late Model history with Pearson taking the winner's share at $202,939.50 and all starters making at least $4,058.79. You can bet that they will have this event again in 2019 although given the results they might want to call it something other than the "Dirt Million". I also heard that some people were surprised that "only 77" drivers raced with some thinking that this would draw well over one hundred. Want to get that kind of a car count? Change the purse distribution in a manner where you guarantee all drivers who start a Last Chance race a minimum of $3,000. So what, that means that the winner only makes, for example, $147,000? "Only"?
A USAC record 118 entries have been received for the BC39 Midget race to be held on the newly constructed dirt track in the infield of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway next Wednesday and Thursday September 5th and 6th and if you are not attending you will be able to watch a one hour recap on NBC Sports on Friday the 7th.
Iowa's Todd Shute drove one of Oklahoman Jessie Hoskins' #71 cars to victory in the IMCA Modified main event at Dodge City Raceway Park in Kansas Saturday night.
With his regular track taking the weekend off Sam Halstead towed his #84 Crate Late Model from his southeast Iowa home of New London out to the US 30 Speedway in Columbus, Nebraska, on Thursday August 9th where he finished fifth in the Grand National Late Model main. Tad Pospisil was the winner.
Spending time with my grandson will keep me away from the track this weekend. He just turned one so it won't be long until I take him to his first race though! Next up for me will be a visit to one night of the IMCA Super Nationals in Boone. Perhaps I will see you there!
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
Wednesday Notebook: August 22, 2018
I mentioned last week that I was "in that post Knoxville letdown" and part of that is because each year I realize that there are fewer of us dinosaurs there as Media to cover the event using the written word. Just like everything else in our society now, race coverage is being consumed in sound bites and video clips that are distributed almost instantaneously so by the time that I drive home, or to Steph and Barry's house my "home away from home" during the Knoxville Nationals, and take the time to type out a description of the event it is essentially "old news" by then since the highlight reel is already up on a Facebook page.
Don't get me wrong, I think that it is great that the event has that kind of immediate exposure and those that provide it do en excellent job. In fact I believe that you can attribute Saturday's sellout crowd to being a result of their efforts, but I am like the old veteran player who now sits at the end of the bench and wonders just how much longer he is going to be wanted.....or needed. I do still get a few hundred page views for my nightly recaps from Knoxville though so as long as there are those of you who still take the time to read the written word, this old dinosaur will continue on even though those numbers pale against the two or three thousands views I have with a story on a race night in Vinton or Oskaloosa!
Besides, if Kyle Ealy can return to the dark side and start blogging again, I have to hang right in there with him! So let's break out of this funk now and start sharing some random notes and observations once again.
For the past several years the Sprint Invaders have scheduled a doubleheader or tripleheader for the weekend following the Knoxville Nationals and those events have enjoyed some nice success. This past weekend the Invaders drew 27 360 c.i. winged Sprint cars to the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson Friday night and 24 cars to Burlington's 34 Raceway on Saturday. This was impressive considering that two other tracks in the region decided to schedule post-Knoxville events on Saturday with Park Jefferson near Sioux City running a $5,000-to-win show for the 410's and the Hamilton County Speedway in Webster City booking a Lucas Oil ASCS National Series event. The Park Jeff show pulled in just eleven cars, with three of them being from the McCarl family, and in Webster City there were thirteen ASCS touring drivers and not one single car that does not follow the tour. This does not mean that the racing wasn't good at either event, but the car counts for each were surprisingly low and I think that shows that after two weeks of non-stop racing at Knoxville and the Osky Challenges, regional drivers and crews need to take a week off.
So why does it work for the Sprint Invaders? Check their roster from this past weekend and you will see only a handful of drivers who participated in this year's action at Knoxville, and all for just the 360 Nationals, so even they had already had their one week off while the rest are itching to get back to the track after likely being in the stands to watch at Knxoville.
Congratulations to Randy Martin who took the win at Donnellson on Friday coming back to pass leader Paul Nienheiser late in the race. Nienheiser in the Midland Performance #50 for the weekend had driven by Martin earlier, but the ol' veteran from California, Missouri, dug deep and charged right back to take the win. Then on Saturday night it was great to see Burlington's own Cody Wehrle celebrate his first feature win with the Sprint Invaders and lock himself into a solid point lead with three events still on the schedule. You won't find a nicer young man and it has been a joy watching him get faster and faster each season in the Andy Huston Racing #40c. That top four at 34 Raceway showed the youth movement with McKenna Haase in second, Dustin Clark third and Tanner Gebhardt recovering from motor issues on Friday night to come from tenth to fourth. And a big thank you to Randy Martin who stuck around for a rare appearance at 34 Raceway to finish fifth.
As mentioned three races remain on the Sprint Invader schedule with the next event on Sunday September 16th at Jason Goble's Quincy Raceways. Then the Invaders will close out the season with a big two day show at 34 Raceway, The Fall Haul on Friday and Saturday September 28th and 29th. Mark it on your calendars!
On Saturday morning I watched some of the live stream of Caleb Hammond's racing experience from the Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa and everyone involved did a spectacular job of making a dream come true for the 11-year-old who is dying from leukemia. The young man got a little squirrely on his first two attempts entering turn one coming up to speed, but after that he handled it like a pro! The whole situation should bring a tear to your eye, but for some reason it really hit me as I watched Dustin Griffiths and Mike Hughes flank Caleb's car and take turns racing up beside him. First, Dustin on the inside and then Mike on the outside to give him a real feel of what it is like to race on a Wednesday night at his hometown track. Other drivers did the same as well as you will see in this video. The racing community and the community of Oskaloosa came together to make it a very special experience for Caleb.
In that video clip you catch a brief glimpse of Scott Watson who served as the public address announcer for the day's racing action. Scott has been battling some serious health issues of his own, but listening to him on Saturday it is easy to hear that neither his voice or his quick wit have been effected. Good job Scott!
From that to this......
On Friday afternoon after battling on and off rain showers all day with still more on the radar the Davenport Speedway made the announcement that they would have to cancel the night's races on the track's Facebook page. So let me ask you this, if this was the track that you regularly attended and you saw that during an iffy day weather wise they had just canceled, raise your hand if your immediate action would be to comment on that post with the term "Wtf?". Okay, so those of you with your hands up right now, you are idiots, unless of course you use that acronym for the term "Where's The Fun?" since you now need to find something else to do that night since the races are canceled.
Seriously people? I am absolutely amazed at some of the stuff that gets posted as comments on the Facebook pages of different tracks wondering just what motivates someone to say things that are just so stupid! Then again, it is better than when we just had Anonymous Weasel Posters (AWP's) hiding behind usernames on a forum as now we can actually click on the profile of the person making the comment and say "yep, I can see that." Kind of like Bill Engvall's comedy bit "Here's Your Sign".
Working on the Minnesota points this week I noticed that the top two Stock Car drivers in the All Iowa Points made the trip up to the Arlington Raceway just southwest of the Twin Cities on Wednesday August 1st for the track's annual Stock Car Shootout. South Central Minnesota hot shoes Jeffrey Larson and Luke Sathoff finished one-two with Damon Murty in third. John Oliver Jr. made the six plus hour tow from Danville, Iowa, started sixteenth and finished eighth in the twenty-nine car field.
Add Modified driver Luke Lick of Rosholt, South Dakota, to my list of great racing names.
Have I mentioned how proud I am of my son Morgan who is now handling the press releases for Terry McCarl, Austin McCarl, Carson McCarl and Josh Schneiderman? With a full time job plus classes working toward his MBA he does not have time to add more clients at this time, but those classes will end in December so if you are looking for help in 2019.....The kid has been coming up with concepts for special event promotions for several years now and I will not be surprised if he pulls one off here in the next couple of years.
Congratulations to Abe Huls who won his 100th IMCA sanctioned Stock Car feature event on Friday night at the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson. I had the pleasure of being the guy sticking the microphone in his face in victory lane and afterward Abe asked if I could help him figure out what his overall win total was. So I went home that night, pulled up my All Iowa Points spreadsheets from 2006 on since Abe had raced in the division and counted up a total of 123 wins on AIP tracks. Add one more victory to that at the I-35 Speedway in Winston, Missouri, earlier this year and the total count is 124 for a driver that has long been one of my favorites both on and off the track.
The one night of racing at the West Liberty Raceway in 2018 was a big success as more than 140 cars were in action in front of a full grandstand on Saturday August 11th. I would have been there myself had it not been the final night of the Knoxville Nationals, but Brian Neal did a fine job of providing some Positively Racing coverage of the event in Midwest Racing News. It will be interesting to see what this night leads to now in regard to plans for the historic track in 2019 as one big special does not necessarily mean that weekly racing should return. I wanted to see a full roster of the drivers in attendance so that I could see where they came from. 34 Raceway in Burlington had the night off from regular racing since they were hosting a Figure 8 event, however both Maquoketa and Independence were both in action and seemed to have their normal car counts. So where did these 140+ cars come from and could you count on 80 or 90 of them being at West Liberty on Saturday nights next year?
At this point my selfish wish is that they hold more than one night of action at West Liberty in 2019 so that I can return to the track that I essentially grew up at!
One track that has benefited from West Liberty sitting idle this season is the CJ Speedway in Columbus Junction as some drivers who previously raced one night a week on Saturdays are now making CJ their Friday night choice in 2018. CJ's success story actually started in 2017 though after they dropped their two novelty classes, the Mod Lites and the Trucks, since both were drawing eight or fewer competitors each week and then took most if not all of that purse money and spread it through their four regular classes of Modifieds, Stock Cars, Sport Mods and Sport Compacts. Car counts in each of those four grew in 2017 and that growth has continued in 2018.
Why do I point this out today? Because I see that the Quad City Speedway has announced that they will drop the Mod Lite division for 2019 and right away people start suggesting what class, or classes, should replace them. Don't "replace" them with anything! Take the $1,000 or so that you were paying the seven or eight car field of Mod Lites and spread that money into the back of one or more of your existing classes and see if you experience the same results as Columbus Junction did where the growth in your regular classes more than covers the "loss" of the class you dropped.
Any weekly track that has five or more divisions right now with one or more of them averaging less than ten cars a night should look at doing the same thing. And, shocker, it might not be the class with the lowest average that should be dropped. Each promoter should take a hard look to determine what mix of divisions will give him or her the best chance to sell tickets to general race fans, those who are not directly connected to a driver because that is what will determine the future success of the track. Friends and family will nearly always be there and even though they may bitch about a show running late, or the track being dusty, they will be there once again the following week if their driver is there. When the back gate mentality took over we somehow forgot about what an unaffiliated race fan wants to see and that is a reason why many weekly tracks are struggling.
There are tracks out there that still put on a good show even if they are only getting eight to twelve cars per division. I have to been to several shows like that in 2018. The one thing that I do not like about those shows though is that the heat races are nothing but a second set of hot laps. Two heats of six cars where the top five either make the invert or the re-draw offers no incentive for drivers to actually race once they are in the top five. I am waiting for the first track to go back to paying purse money in the heat races, perhaps $50 for first, $30 for second and $10 for third to give the race fans some actual racing once again in the heats.
No racing for me over the next two weekends due to other commitments and family time so I will miss out on Season Championship events and the Labor Day weekend specials. Plans are to expose Morgan to his first visit to the IMCA Super Nationals for one night and then after that I will be searching through our Specials Calendar to find my next destination. Hope that you have your favorites marked as well and we might just see you on the Back Stretch!
Don't get me wrong, I think that it is great that the event has that kind of immediate exposure and those that provide it do en excellent job. In fact I believe that you can attribute Saturday's sellout crowd to being a result of their efforts, but I am like the old veteran player who now sits at the end of the bench and wonders just how much longer he is going to be wanted.....or needed. I do still get a few hundred page views for my nightly recaps from Knoxville though so as long as there are those of you who still take the time to read the written word, this old dinosaur will continue on even though those numbers pale against the two or three thousands views I have with a story on a race night in Vinton or Oskaloosa!
Besides, if Kyle Ealy can return to the dark side and start blogging again, I have to hang right in there with him! So let's break out of this funk now and start sharing some random notes and observations once again.
For the past several years the Sprint Invaders have scheduled a doubleheader or tripleheader for the weekend following the Knoxville Nationals and those events have enjoyed some nice success. This past weekend the Invaders drew 27 360 c.i. winged Sprint cars to the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson Friday night and 24 cars to Burlington's 34 Raceway on Saturday. This was impressive considering that two other tracks in the region decided to schedule post-Knoxville events on Saturday with Park Jefferson near Sioux City running a $5,000-to-win show for the 410's and the Hamilton County Speedway in Webster City booking a Lucas Oil ASCS National Series event. The Park Jeff show pulled in just eleven cars, with three of them being from the McCarl family, and in Webster City there were thirteen ASCS touring drivers and not one single car that does not follow the tour. This does not mean that the racing wasn't good at either event, but the car counts for each were surprisingly low and I think that shows that after two weeks of non-stop racing at Knoxville and the Osky Challenges, regional drivers and crews need to take a week off.
So why does it work for the Sprint Invaders? Check their roster from this past weekend and you will see only a handful of drivers who participated in this year's action at Knoxville, and all for just the 360 Nationals, so even they had already had their one week off while the rest are itching to get back to the track after likely being in the stands to watch at Knxoville.
Congratulations to Randy Martin who took the win at Donnellson on Friday coming back to pass leader Paul Nienheiser late in the race. Nienheiser in the Midland Performance #50 for the weekend had driven by Martin earlier, but the ol' veteran from California, Missouri, dug deep and charged right back to take the win. Then on Saturday night it was great to see Burlington's own Cody Wehrle celebrate his first feature win with the Sprint Invaders and lock himself into a solid point lead with three events still on the schedule. You won't find a nicer young man and it has been a joy watching him get faster and faster each season in the Andy Huston Racing #40c. That top four at 34 Raceway showed the youth movement with McKenna Haase in second, Dustin Clark third and Tanner Gebhardt recovering from motor issues on Friday night to come from tenth to fourth. And a big thank you to Randy Martin who stuck around for a rare appearance at 34 Raceway to finish fifth.
As mentioned three races remain on the Sprint Invader schedule with the next event on Sunday September 16th at Jason Goble's Quincy Raceways. Then the Invaders will close out the season with a big two day show at 34 Raceway, The Fall Haul on Friday and Saturday September 28th and 29th. Mark it on your calendars!
On Saturday morning I watched some of the live stream of Caleb Hammond's racing experience from the Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa and everyone involved did a spectacular job of making a dream come true for the 11-year-old who is dying from leukemia. The young man got a little squirrely on his first two attempts entering turn one coming up to speed, but after that he handled it like a pro! The whole situation should bring a tear to your eye, but for some reason it really hit me as I watched Dustin Griffiths and Mike Hughes flank Caleb's car and take turns racing up beside him. First, Dustin on the inside and then Mike on the outside to give him a real feel of what it is like to race on a Wednesday night at his hometown track. Other drivers did the same as well as you will see in this video. The racing community and the community of Oskaloosa came together to make it a very special experience for Caleb.
In that video clip you catch a brief glimpse of Scott Watson who served as the public address announcer for the day's racing action. Scott has been battling some serious health issues of his own, but listening to him on Saturday it is easy to hear that neither his voice or his quick wit have been effected. Good job Scott!
From that to this......
On Friday afternoon after battling on and off rain showers all day with still more on the radar the Davenport Speedway made the announcement that they would have to cancel the night's races on the track's Facebook page. So let me ask you this, if this was the track that you regularly attended and you saw that during an iffy day weather wise they had just canceled, raise your hand if your immediate action would be to comment on that post with the term "Wtf?". Okay, so those of you with your hands up right now, you are idiots, unless of course you use that acronym for the term "Where's The Fun?" since you now need to find something else to do that night since the races are canceled.
Seriously people? I am absolutely amazed at some of the stuff that gets posted as comments on the Facebook pages of different tracks wondering just what motivates someone to say things that are just so stupid! Then again, it is better than when we just had Anonymous Weasel Posters (AWP's) hiding behind usernames on a forum as now we can actually click on the profile of the person making the comment and say "yep, I can see that." Kind of like Bill Engvall's comedy bit "Here's Your Sign".
Working on the Minnesota points this week I noticed that the top two Stock Car drivers in the All Iowa Points made the trip up to the Arlington Raceway just southwest of the Twin Cities on Wednesday August 1st for the track's annual Stock Car Shootout. South Central Minnesota hot shoes Jeffrey Larson and Luke Sathoff finished one-two with Damon Murty in third. John Oliver Jr. made the six plus hour tow from Danville, Iowa, started sixteenth and finished eighth in the twenty-nine car field.
Add Modified driver Luke Lick of Rosholt, South Dakota, to my list of great racing names.
Have I mentioned how proud I am of my son Morgan who is now handling the press releases for Terry McCarl, Austin McCarl, Carson McCarl and Josh Schneiderman? With a full time job plus classes working toward his MBA he does not have time to add more clients at this time, but those classes will end in December so if you are looking for help in 2019.....The kid has been coming up with concepts for special event promotions for several years now and I will not be surprised if he pulls one off here in the next couple of years.
Congratulations to Abe Huls who won his 100th IMCA sanctioned Stock Car feature event on Friday night at the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson. I had the pleasure of being the guy sticking the microphone in his face in victory lane and afterward Abe asked if I could help him figure out what his overall win total was. So I went home that night, pulled up my All Iowa Points spreadsheets from 2006 on since Abe had raced in the division and counted up a total of 123 wins on AIP tracks. Add one more victory to that at the I-35 Speedway in Winston, Missouri, earlier this year and the total count is 124 for a driver that has long been one of my favorites both on and off the track.
The one night of racing at the West Liberty Raceway in 2018 was a big success as more than 140 cars were in action in front of a full grandstand on Saturday August 11th. I would have been there myself had it not been the final night of the Knoxville Nationals, but Brian Neal did a fine job of providing some Positively Racing coverage of the event in Midwest Racing News. It will be interesting to see what this night leads to now in regard to plans for the historic track in 2019 as one big special does not necessarily mean that weekly racing should return. I wanted to see a full roster of the drivers in attendance so that I could see where they came from. 34 Raceway in Burlington had the night off from regular racing since they were hosting a Figure 8 event, however both Maquoketa and Independence were both in action and seemed to have their normal car counts. So where did these 140+ cars come from and could you count on 80 or 90 of them being at West Liberty on Saturday nights next year?
At this point my selfish wish is that they hold more than one night of action at West Liberty in 2019 so that I can return to the track that I essentially grew up at!
One track that has benefited from West Liberty sitting idle this season is the CJ Speedway in Columbus Junction as some drivers who previously raced one night a week on Saturdays are now making CJ their Friday night choice in 2018. CJ's success story actually started in 2017 though after they dropped their two novelty classes, the Mod Lites and the Trucks, since both were drawing eight or fewer competitors each week and then took most if not all of that purse money and spread it through their four regular classes of Modifieds, Stock Cars, Sport Mods and Sport Compacts. Car counts in each of those four grew in 2017 and that growth has continued in 2018.
Why do I point this out today? Because I see that the Quad City Speedway has announced that they will drop the Mod Lite division for 2019 and right away people start suggesting what class, or classes, should replace them. Don't "replace" them with anything! Take the $1,000 or so that you were paying the seven or eight car field of Mod Lites and spread that money into the back of one or more of your existing classes and see if you experience the same results as Columbus Junction did where the growth in your regular classes more than covers the "loss" of the class you dropped.
Any weekly track that has five or more divisions right now with one or more of them averaging less than ten cars a night should look at doing the same thing. And, shocker, it might not be the class with the lowest average that should be dropped. Each promoter should take a hard look to determine what mix of divisions will give him or her the best chance to sell tickets to general race fans, those who are not directly connected to a driver because that is what will determine the future success of the track. Friends and family will nearly always be there and even though they may bitch about a show running late, or the track being dusty, they will be there once again the following week if their driver is there. When the back gate mentality took over we somehow forgot about what an unaffiliated race fan wants to see and that is a reason why many weekly tracks are struggling.
There are tracks out there that still put on a good show even if they are only getting eight to twelve cars per division. I have to been to several shows like that in 2018. The one thing that I do not like about those shows though is that the heat races are nothing but a second set of hot laps. Two heats of six cars where the top five either make the invert or the re-draw offers no incentive for drivers to actually race once they are in the top five. I am waiting for the first track to go back to paying purse money in the heat races, perhaps $50 for first, $30 for second and $10 for third to give the race fans some actual racing once again in the heats.
No racing for me over the next two weekends due to other commitments and family time so I will miss out on Season Championship events and the Labor Day weekend specials. Plans are to expose Morgan to his first visit to the IMCA Super Nationals for one night and then after that I will be searching through our Specials Calendar to find my next destination. Hope that you have your favorites marked as well and we might just see you on the Back Stretch!
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
More Sprints This Weekend and Current Missouri Points
I am experiencing that post Knoxville letdown. After being at the races eight times over a nine day stretch it is oddly relaxing to be at work and at home again and I am feeling lazy.
Don't forget that the Sprint Invaders will be at the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson this Friday night before moving on up to 34 Raceway west of Burlington on Saturday night. Hope to see you there!
You can always catch the updated All Iowa Points on the Positively Racing website. And here, on today's Back Stretch, are the current points for the state of Missouri.
Don't forget that the Sprint Invaders will be at the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson this Friday night before moving on up to 34 Raceway west of Burlington on Saturday night. Hope to see you there!
You can always catch the updated All Iowa Points on the Positively Racing website. And here, on today's Back Stretch, are the current points for the state of Missouri.
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