2012 National Schedule

Wake up and smell the coffee

Contrary to what some of you think I don't think anyone is happy about this new deal. Maybe a few that wanted to chase the national points more may be happy about the reshuffle of the points structure, but nobody is happy about losing divisional races.

For some of you who keep insinuating that somehow we should have just kept our mouths shut...if some of us hadn't bitched about the system 'being broken' and this all would have just never happened.

Wake up and smell the coffee!!

Tracks were losing money on us. If you think that tracks were going to continue to host us while losing money, you're "sniffing the Nitro" as I was told.

This new deal is tough. Unfortunately we will probably lose some racers over it. Some will have to race less, some a lot less.

But this "I'm just going to stick my head in the sand and this all will go away" mentality is partly why things got this way. This thing came to a head just like I have said for a few years it would. Enough tracks got together and said either we don't have alcohol or we don't have a divisional.

As I stated in another thread. What's done is done, we all need to band together and work on rebuilding our 'brand.' If we can't show we are a front gate draw and can MAKE the tracks money instead of COST them money, we're going to keep losing events.

At the end of the day we're going to have to put aside the feeling we're entitled to a place to race, entitled to a certain payout, really entitled to anything. We're going to have to get back to basics no different than if we were a regional circuit and start working with tracks and NHRA. We need to work with the tracks that have brought us in with the attitude "What can we do to help make you money."

If we can get a few track owners to rib the other track owners that dropped us at the year end track owners meeting, we'll be on to something. "Hey Bob, do you know how much money I made off those damn alcohol cars this year?" As it stands right now, most of them are getting together talking about how much money they lose. That's why this regional deal happened.

If we sit back and put the promotion of our class all in the hands of the tracks and NHRA, well look around and see what's happening now.

I know this is still a sore subject to some, but everyone sitting around saying 'careful what we wish for' needs to realize this was going to happen. Just be glad they didn't shit can the whole program and tell us we have 16 nationals to run at.

 

blame

Santo,

I'm definitely not blaming the racer. But we nor NHRA can hold a gun to the track owner's head and make them promote a race they don't want to promote.

The damage was done years ago when it was acceptable to not promote a Lucas Oil or Federal Mogul, or to some degree some of the later Winston divisional races.

Now we have a reality we have to accept. That's where I see a problem. Some people don't want to accept that a lot of tracks didn't see us as a money maker for them. Maybe some tracks didn't want to take the risk of advertising. Maybe some tracks weren't in a cash flow position to advertise enough to get a return. Some tracks were not getting enough of a car count to get a show to promote.

Whatever the case may be, we need to take a realistic look where we're at, quit taking it for granted tracks will just bring us back because it's what they've done for 30+ years.

We all need to realize what just happened, and more importantly WHY it happened. Then we need to go to the tracks that did bring us back with an attitude of 'what can we do to help?' opposed to an entitlement mentality that we're entitled to have a place to race.

Too many people still think this was about improving car counts.

 

the cards we have in our hand

John and Woodchip:

First off, Woodchip, I've never said anywhere the alcohol cars should come up with their own purse money or advertising money for a track.

We can all get hung up in what the tracks and NHRA 'ought' to be doing or the way it should have been.

All I'm trying to do is address the here and now. We can try to improve the situation we have now or just keep on taking what they deal us.

I'm not justifying the mentality of some track owners, some division directors and series sponsors that got us to this point. In the business world it's referred to as a sunk cost.