[Honest-Sam]

Originally Posted by MRmcgillicutty Another thought is the good ole frisbee toss. Each driver sign one and throw it over the fence before the feature. If your frisbee has the winning driver on it u get a free usac shirt. More stuff like that that makes it more of an "event."

I love this idea. I would think that the fans would absolutely eat it up.

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Originally Posted by Kirk Spridgeon I really wish we could get out of a mindset from 10-20 years ago or more. This is 2009. As much as the pavement side of things is in the tank, I can't believe that you could ever find better racing than we have on dirt right now.

Well said.

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Originally Posted by Kirk Spridgeon I don't envy the teams, especially those who run multiple divisions. But it seems like no one is willing to do their part. I surely wouldn't be such a die-hard fan if not for guys going the extra mile and giving me a face and a personality to go with the cars on the track. I have found with all the people I've brought to races - they don't want to watch cars go around the track - they want to watch people they've met and can identify in cars wrenched by people they've met and can identify. Thank goodness for guys like Robbie Stanley, Tony Elliott, and Jack Hewitt being around when I was younger to get me hooked on sprint car racing and sprint car drivers...

VERY well said.

[kinser]

Originally Posted by Kirk Spridgeon So the new staff at USAC raised the purses after their first year. Seems like a good thing to me. I hope they can keep it going and raise purses more often than every 15-20 years...

What I am saying is that in all those years there wasn't a purse increase and there was only a tiny increase ? Where has all that money gone all of those years ?
Posted via Mobile Device

[50mcrewguy]

Originally Posted by Seadog Are you running Winchester or Toledo next month?

I don't think we will be ready for Winchester (work gets in the way!) Maybe Toledo if we can get together the parts and the time when we get home from Richmond. (Crewing the 94 sc car, driver Mike Lichtey from Canada)

[Kirk Spridgeon]

Originally Posted by kinser What I am saying is that in all those years there wasn't a purse increase and there was only a tiny increase ? Where has all that money gone all of those years ? Posted via Mobile Device

Away from racing! It's not hard to see that a really good crowd is not as common as it used to be. And there's definitely not as many sponsors willing to throw money into this deal anymore. The tracks have to pay that money - and most aren't willing to spend a whole lot more than they're spending now. So we need more people to attend and support sprint car races to raise the money more...

[Jerry Shaw]

Originally Posted by Kirk Spridgeon I really wish we could get out of a mindset from 10-20 years ago or more. This is 2009. As much as the pavement side of things is in the tank, I can't believe that you could ever find better racing than we have on dirt right now.

This is a point well taken. Racing is ever changing, like the shifting sands. It's always been like that and always will be. Racing was great back then, but as far as dirt is concerned, it is great right now, too. There have been low points, but we're not in one, right now. In fact, it took a couple of days after Midget Week was over for me to decompress. It was just that good, IMO. One of the best weeks of racing I've ever experienced. The bar has been set very high for Sprint Week.

Asphalt racing obviously has problems, right now. With it's tradition, it deserves to be fixed. I hope someday they can find a way to add more events and find away to get more people to compete. When they do, hopefully it will be adding to the overall schedule or running it as a separate entity and not in a way that takes away from their already successful product, dirt track racing. JMHO.

Jerry

[franksphoto]

How about this if you don't transfer thru your heat you cannot start on the pole of the feature!
Frank

[kinser]

What I mean is where has all of the money gone that USAC has made all of those years ? I do agree with you that the teams and drivers need to hang around for awhile after the races. I have always enjoyed hanging out and having a couple of cold ones after we get done racing but you don't see that much anymore.
Posted via Mobile Device

[Jerry Shaw]

Originally Posted by franksphoto How about this if you don't transfer thru your heat you cannot start on the pole of the feature! Frank

I bet if they took a poll, among race fans, not getting your qualifying spot back if you didn't transfer out of the heat race would win 90% to 10%. And as Paul Harvey used to say, that's "From The What It's Worth Department".

Jerry

[Kirk Spridgeon]

Originally Posted by franksphoto How about this if you don't transfer thru your heat you cannot start on the pole of the feature! Frank

Originally Posted by kinser What I mean is where has all of the money gone that USAC has made all of those years ? I do agree with you that the teams and drivers need to hang around for awhile after the races. I have always enjoyed hanging out and having a couple of cold ones after we get done racing but you don't see that much anymore. Posted via Mobile Device

Frank - that's what I was saying above. They do it in CRA, and it works great when we go out there in the fall for the Oval Nationals. I love it. And the penalty for not making it through the heat is not crazy....you just can't start in the front three rows.

Kinser - I honestly couldn't tell you where it has all gone. I'm sure Kevin Miller would like to know, too. But I can tell you that USAC LOSES money by sanctioning races and showing up to work them. The sanction fee does not even cover their costs. But you always hear about how terrible that sanction fee is and how they're raking in the dough.

[openwheelKT]

TV is not the end-all-be-all on this topic. Would it be great and help? Of course it would. It would be great for us race fans that can’t make it to all events, but first you have to make a product attractive enough for a network to take on….or be able to sell sponsorship to take care of the cost of buying TV time. Right now neither of those is an option….on a big scale. You have to work on the product first and then TV will come. TV is an easy sell for people on here. Problem is there are not enough of us who love it. So, it’s hard to get on TV as such a niche. Most of my non race friends think that racing is Nascar because that is what they see on TV. I have to explain what an open wheel car even is because they have no idea. TV should be the last piece of the puzzle, not the first IMO.

The main thing right now is that it costs too much to run pavement to justify the means to do so for most teams. You can’t buy a pavement car and go run “local” with it. So if you can only run it a few times a year, why buy one? When you do run the car, again, it costs too much to do so. I realize it is going to cost money to race. Seems that the tire bill alone is one major thing that kills the car counts. That is the first step that should be taken. I know the bigger teams will spend what they want to, but something needs to be done so you don’t “need” a new set of tires every time you hit the track. This goes for midgets too. I have heard several teams’ reason for skipping a pavement race is that the tire bill is just too large. To me, that seems like an easy fix. Bottom line is that the cost to race pavement needs to come more in line with dirt or it will never take off again. You can build your own dirt car if you want to. You might not be able to compete with the big boys, but you can be in the game. Pavement racing does not work that way because it does not make sense to build one (hard to compete with a Beast anyway) that you can only run a few times a year…..when you do it costs so much more. Something has to be done to bring the cost down or the count will continue to dwindle. A car that can run both would be good, but you don’t want to cause the same problem on the dirt side. You don’t want “local” drivers to have to have a different car on dirt than they can run now. Then you are transferring the problem to the dirt. Any way the current dirt cars could be run on pavement with some modifications you could add on (then take off when going back to dirt)? I know that is not ideal and they would not be as good of a pavement car, but anybody that wanted to run could. I don't know if that would be possible as I don't know the mechanics of it. The problem then becomes what do you do with current pavement cars that would obviously be a better car? Really tough situation to change and make all sides happy.