Houston, we have a problem!

We just received a piece of bad news. Our association president, "received a call from the owners of Penwell Knights Raceway at Odessa, Texas. They are shutting the track down until a buyer is found." This cancels our June 19th date there. Another one bites the dust.

And I'm going to ramble on about this right here.

We already had a cancellation earlier this year due to the fight between NHRA and AHRA over San Antonio Raceway's scheduling of an AHRA event while holding a track sanction from NHRA. By the time the dust settled enough to show the new AHRA flag flying over the place; we had already been cancelled and had found an alternative venue for the date. At least the SAR deal happened before we had set the schedule. The Odessa cancellation leaves us with a hole to fill.

But that's beside the point. We can fix the schedule. I was talking about a track closing its doors. Penwell Knights may not be able to fix their problem, and that concerns me, as it should you.

I have never been to this track and anything I say here has nothing to do with this facility. But in light of the Odessa announcement, we racers need to pay attention to this whole situation because we have as much to lose as any track operator shutting down.

Every time a track closes, we lose another venue to race, and the spectators lose a place to watch. Now we have one less group of people who are influenced by and interested in our sport, resulting in less advertising dollars, because, now "the demographics aren't there" and so on. The failures feed off each other and generate more failures.

The up side is that successes breed more successes. When you have a track operator that works with his racers, it results in a wider variety of faster and quicker cars running at that track, drawing a bigger crowd, generating more advertizing interest, which adds to the track revenue stream, and so on.

Track owners can't rely solely on racers to keep the doors open. It's the spectator dollar and the resulting swell of dollars that follow the spectators that does it.

Bad tracks hurt us all.

A track near where I live, which I won't embarrass, has a decent 1/8 mile track and shutdown area that will rattle fillings out of your head. Well, it shouldn't surprise anyone that I don't want to run a 2500-3000HP blown fuel altered there. I might make a good pass on the 1/8th mile, and then tear up a bunch of stuff or just crash the car because of the condition of the shutdown section. Owner doesn't seem to care as demonstrated by his failure to fix it over the last 6-8 years. He continues to lose fast cars, more spectators and their dollars and the greater advertizing bucks that accompany larger crowds, as a direct result of this track defect. That is a recipe for a track failure, eventually. I know of a least 20 blown and/or injected cars running 1800 hp and up that would love to be able to run there, because we all consider it home and it's so damned convenient. It makes you smile just thinking about having a track nearly in your backyard. But that's where it ends. He won't fix it and we don't want to chance it. So we go somewhere else, less often than we would go if we could use this nearby facility. That adds up to a lose-lose, for all of us.

This sport has been on an upswing for most of the last 20-25 years. Now we are in a trough and we all need to step up if we care about our form of racing. (If you want to vote a different ticket next election that might help, too, but that’s for another forum)

So if you have a track owner that's working with you, let him know that you appreciate it. And then get out there and step up and get the crowds coming. If we don't, the local tracks are going to be worth more as rice paddies than they are as race facilities and it won't be that far down the road!

Told you I was going to ramble a while!

Damn it, Boy!

 

You said it well, aafa434. Billings is for sale - estate sale, I think.
When you look at the capital required to build a great facility, it is very evident that we need to conserve what we have.
The racers can't pay for everything. We have a great show and need to encourage a fan base to help with the overhead nut.
We're tryin' here.
Cheers,
Ed Arcuri
www.rockymountainsuperchargers.com

 

AA/FA, when SAR switched santioning why not book your race there anyway. I would be surprised if they would not open their venue to your group.
Insurance is the same deal, and you follow their tech saftey rules which mirror NHRA's anyway
Dean