Weekly Racing and East Moline

This week I was able to send an updated weekly racing schedule for tracks that are included in the All Iowa Points to Webmistress Sue and she quickly uploaded the information here at Positively Racing. You will notice that there is just one track that does not have the dates of the weekly opener and the season championship listed and that is the East Moline Speedway where a search for a new promoter is ongoing.

Many years ago, East Moline was my number one option for Sunday night racing and I would hate to see it sit idle even for just one season as with that tradition and population base one would think that it would offer some good potential. Yes, I know how tough it is to make a weekly show work, but the fact that so many promoters continue to do so still tells me there is some money to be made because I don't believe that there are that many gluttons for punishment out there. So with that, let me pull out my favorite meme and offer up some suggestions for the next promoter at East Moline that just might make some improvements on the bottom line. And actually, as I look through my bullet points, only one is really "specific" to the high banked quarter-mile as the rest could be applied to weekly racing in general. 

#1 - Make Turns Three and Four Great Again

In its glory days, as a race night progressed, drivers would push the cushion all the way up to the wall on both ends of this bullring with sparks flying as drivers pushed things to the limit scraping the right edge of their rear bumper against the concrete wall. This also made the track nice and wide where a skillful throttle massager could creep the bottom, a perfect setup could find a bite in the middle in the closing laps or the best of the best (i.e. Webb, Guss, Weedon, Toland, etc.) would use multiple lines over twenty laps to move their way to the front. My visits to East Moline over the past several years has seen turns one and two still go from the flat of the infield up to the the cushion pushed up against the wall, while in turns three and four you would be lucky to find a line even half way up the banking. And even then, there was no cushion, but rather a bunch of crumbs that would turn to dust as the night went on and if the wind was right, or wrong in this instance, long time score keepers Kevin Feller and Ken Reimers would a pound or two of the dirt surface home with them.

I don't know if it is a track prep situation, or if there needs to be some reconfiguration of that end of the speedway, but please do what you can to make that happen!

#2 - Three and a Half Hours Max

I spent my formative years working for a promoter, Larry Kemp, who would have his team run off a Saturday night weekly show in no more than three and a half hours, from the start of hot laps at 7:00 p.m. with the final checkered flag almost always waving before 10:30 p.m. And that was with more than one hundred cars in the pit area! As the announcer I would remind fans that we would not be taking any "planned" intermission during the night and I encouraged fans to visit the concession stand when their "least favorite" division was on the track. Side note, that meant there was a steady flow of race fans buying food and drinks throughout the evening rather having them all wait in a big line during an intermission with that steady flow likely resulting in more revenue at the concession stand for the night.

Sure, if the flagman had to take a leak we might wait a few minutes, but Doyle Bennett, Bill Newman and Donnie Williams must have had strong bladders because I don't remember that happening often. We would usually have at least one fracas a night that would take some time for the Beckman Towing team to clean up (they have always been fast!) and that would allow the flagman to slip away virtually unnoticed to take care of business.

In my opinion, no weekly show should take more than three and a half hours from hot laps to the final checkers, especially if you have less than one hundred cars in the pits. And that standard should definitely apply to a Sunday night weekly show like what we have here in East Moline where I feel that a promoter should set his or her own personal curfew at 9:30 p.m. in order to get both the fans and the drivers home in good time for an early start on Monday.

Starting hot laps in a hot sun at 4:30 or 5:00 usually leads to a scenario where the track will need to be reworked later in the program in order to put some moisture back into it, so whatever "advantage" that you think that you had by starting early gets blown away later in the evening for track maintenance and now your program ends up being four and a half or five hours long. In other words TOO LONG for that Mom and Dad that brought their kids out to enjoys the races only having to leave before the show is completed.

Per the meme here, if I ran the track I would set a motivator for myself and my team by promising my Sunday night crowd that if the final checkered flag is not waving before 9:30 p.m., bring your ticket stub back with you next week and you will either get a free soft drink at the concession stand or two dollars off on your first drink at the beer stand. Paying attention to #3 will help you to achieve this goal.

#3 - No More Than Five Classes

Four would be better, but as long as the Late Models are still on the card I am good with five. I am amazed at the number of tracks not only in this region, but throughout the country that continue to run mutli-class weekly shows that include divisions that average ten or fewer cars per week. Sure, I can understand if you want to keep a featured class that you believe brings in a large number of unattached fans (ticket buyers who are not just family and friends of the driver), but if you have support classes that are unable to give you two solid heat races and a feature each night, then I have to ask you why that class is still on the roster.

When you run seven or eight classes, you are making out a purse check to seven or eight different feature winners each night and I am betting that even the lowest paid winner is getting at least $200. One of the first things that my friend Larry Richardson did when he became the promoter at Columbus Junction was to cut two divisions that were consistently drawing less than ten cars. Did he hear a lot of bitching and claims that the move would ruin the racing program there at CJ? Of course he did, but he stuck with his plan and by taking some of the purse money that had been paid out each night to those two classes and rolling it into the back of the remaining four divisions, his total car counts soon exceeded what there had been in the pits for the six class program and the weekly show at Junction came back to prominence. Larry had the guts to stick with his beliefs and shake off the negativity in order to put on the best show possible for the fans, and it worked. He will be sorely missed by all who knew him and I am sure that he would smile down on any promoter who displayed that same kind of courage to make a similar move to improve his or her weekly show. Rest In Peace Larry.

While the drivers in the division, or divisions, that are eliminated will make a lot of noise and tell you that they will never be back, just remember that there will be less than ten of them bitching in the first place! Plus, I am still of the theory that if the communities surrounding a race track have eighty drivers who want to race there in order to keep their sponsors happy, if you give them seven divisions to choose from you will end up with car counts that will be plus or minus four from 11.4 per class, but if you give them five divisions that same pool of racers will end up giving you car counts that will be plus or minus four from 16 in each class. Now which weekly show would you want to present? 

#4 - Use An Invert To Lineup Your Weekly Races

I am sure that somebody will point out an exception, but I cannot think of one weekly track offhand that uses a draw/redraw format and has a solid weekly car count. New promoter, do not fall into that trap where the studs, along with the drivers who would really like to use an invert, but who do not want the studs to know that they are against them, push you into using a lineup procedure that is not based upon a weekly points average. It is called "racing" not "chasing" and your drivers, yes even the studs, should be ready to put on a show for your fans by having to pass somebody to win.

Don't even get me started on the weekly shows that time trial and then start "straight up". Uggh.

#5 - Pay Less To Win; More To Start

While we are pissing off the studs, let's continue to do so with a restructuring of your weekly purse. The driver that tries to be there each and every week, but for whatever reason is not a front runner at this point needs that extra money in the purse check in order to return the following week. Let's say that you are currently paying $750-to-win, $500 for second and $75 to start likely from twelfth on back. If you changed that to $500-to-win and $400 for second that would give you $350 that you could then put at the back of the purse and pay $100 to start. 

So now, let's give something back to the studs since we are abiding by suggestion #4 and running our races using an invert. I have always thought that it would be good to offer a bonus to the winner depending upon where that driver started the feature from. Sticking with the example above, if my winner comes from the second row there is a $50 bonus. A winner that starts from the third row earns a $100 bonus. Start from the fourth row and a win adds $150 to the purse check while a win from the fifth row gets a $200 bonus. In an invert system, that's where your top point driver is going to start if there are seventeen or fewer cars and if this new purse structure helps you grow your car count to eighteen or more, then the $250 bonus to win from the sixth row on back takes you right back to the $750 top prize that your studs were already looking at in the first place.

Plus, one of the complaints of using a points invert for weekly shows is that a driver who might just want to drop in for a week knows that he or she will have to start from the back of the invert. Now that comes with an incentive.

This concept should be applied all of your classes except for one if you choose to include them. See #6.

#6 - What To Do With The Four Cylinders

This is the Quad Cities and with this being your "budget" class, or "starter" class, however you want to refer to it, there should be thirty cars a week in your pit area. But instead, the count ranged from seven to thirteen per night during the 2024 season with the division being dominated by a couple of drivers.

If you are a regular visitor to the Back Stretch the title of #6 should look familiar to you as I wrote an entire entry on this subject in September of 2023 complete with statistics from several area tracks. Click on this link if you would like to review it again, or check it out for the first time, but I am going to cut and paste my proposed solution here again.

In order to increase the Four Cylinder car count at East Moline, and at other tracks, I believe that you need to do two things: 1. Remove some of the incentive to spend more money to go faster and look for gray area in the rules, and 2. Make it where the drivers who are not running up front on a consistent basis can still afford to keep coming back each week. And to do that I would rob the concept that the famous Fairbury Speedway used, or still uses for their Hobby Mod class:

Every driver takes home the same amount of purse money each race night

If your current purse structure pays $150-to-win and $20-to-start and you are only averaging ten cars you are likely paying out around $700 in total purse money for the class. My suggestion would be to pay all drivers the same amount, in this example $65, and you would put another $5 per car into your track's point fund to be distributed at the end of the season. By going to this purse structure you reduce the incentive for drivers to spend more money to go fast, plus you keep those drivers who finish deeper in the field a little better paid so that they can come back next week.

Yes, as your car count grows, you will be paying out more in purse money than you would otherwise, but you will also be selling more pit passes and tickets, plus selling more concessions to those who will be there to follow their favorite driver.

In this example let's hope that your average car count grows from 10 to 16 and you have 15 events on the schedule. This would give you a track point fund of $1,200 to distribute at the end of the season with the breakdown as follows:

1st place: 50% of the fund or $600

2nd place: 20% of the fund or $240

3rd place: 15% of the fund or $180

4th place: 10% of the fund or $120

5th place: 5% of the fund or $60

But here is your kicker to even further take away the incentive to spend more money to go fast. If the points champion accepts the 50% cut of the fund, then that driver is not eligible to compete in the Four Cylinder division at your track the following season. If the championship driver wants to stay in the division then he or she will get 25% of the fund or $300 with the remaining 25% distributed equally to drivers placing 6th through 10th in the final standings.

This might not sound like much, but what if your car count grows to 20 or 25 a night on average? At an average car count of 25 over 15 nights your championship driver will have earned $1,625 in purse money and then have the option to take half of an $1,875 point fund, or $937.50 for a total earnings of $2,562.50 on the season.

Do you think that drivers and their friends and family will be pissing and moaning about the track on social media? If they do, they will only be cutting in to their earnings potential, but yes I know that some will not comprehend that. We can only hope though!

Is it possible that somebody might try to take advantage of this system by doing a "start and park" each week just to collect $65? This is racing, so yes that might happen, so the promoter reserves the right to withhold the purse check if they see a driver doing this on a regular basis.

I may be wrong, but I believe that this system can be in place even if your track is sanctioned as long as you continue to follow all rules and lineup procedures as set forth by the sanctioning body.

Will some drivers not like it? Of course, and it will probably be the driver that is consistently running in the top three each week, and they will likely be very vocal about it. But is it possible that this driver is a primary reason why you are only averaging 10 cars a week?

Perhaps it is time to find out.

These six suggestions mean absolutely nothing if somebody does not step up to take on the promotional duties at East Moline for 2025 and whether or not the person that does take on the role follows any of these suggestions I wish them nothing but the best as I would hate to go through an entire racing season without at least one visit to the East Moline Speedway!