Opinion: The Trouble with Asphalt Racing Part 5

By: Jim Foose Speedway Action Magazine

The problem with asphalt racing that’s causing a steep decline in spectator attendance and participation, along with closing tracks, is self-inflicted. In Part 5, we will be looking into how an efficient program keeps the fans entertained and coming back for more.

Take a look at the grandstands at your local short track as the clock hits 10 PM.  The families are leaving or already gone, there might be a few children asleep on the bleachers, and the fans left in the grandstands are the diehards.  For those families who left before the program was completed, a promoter must ask, “Did they get their money’s worth tonight?” and more importantly, “Will they be back next week?”.  There’s no clear-cut answer, but the possibility is that the track has lost that customer for good.  Most race tracks, at least in Ohio, start between 6 PM and 7 PM for a Saturday night show, or we should say are “scheduled to start” at those times.  A weekly program completed in less than three hours is acceptable; bigger races may allow the program to run a little longer.  

Running an efficient program at a race track takes more than just blitzing through the laps quickly.  We all know short track racing is a full-contact sport and incidents are almost certain.  Caution flags and other delays cause the race fans to take their attention away from the track and onto something else, most notably their phones where they are watching a football game, NASCAR race or other event live streaming or scrolling through social media.  What’s not happening is that race fans are not engaged in the action before them, likely because there is a long downtime between races, a lengthy cleanup or other delay.  

The tracks that are running efficient racing programs have cars lined up in their correct positions before hitting the track, running a few pace laps rather than 5, 6, 7 or 10 before the green flag waves.  Those very same tracks are getting drivers in position quickly under caution and working to make the clean up effort more time efficient, not to mention utilizing time limits to keep races from getting completely out of control. 

At the same time, the tracks that race at midnight (and later) lack the time management; they are realigning cars on the track during the endless pace laps, taking their time cleaning up incidents, and have no time limits on their races, and they question why an eight-lap heat race took 45 minutes to complete.  

Veteran Motorsports Photographer Ken Potter summed it up best: “Having been a race fan all my life, I notice tracks coming up with more and more ways to stretch out the show.  These are not necessarily bad ideas, but better execution could be in order.  Things I have seen include Gold Rushes,  Candy Grabs, Bike Races, Autograph Nights, and more.  The named ones usually take place on the front straightaway and delay the racing.  They are aimed at attracting kids and families, but do they work?  Are these events analyzed afterwards to see if they really drew more people, or are they “We do this every year” things?” 

From the standpoint of a general outsider at most tracks we go to, I’m not usually invited to attend track safety meetings and such, the biggest problem is the pacing around the track.  I understand open wheel cars prefer to have a couple of hot laps, especially on cooler evenings, to get heat in the tires before going green flag racing.  I understand that completely.  What I have never understood is how misaligned the cars are when they either come out of the pit area and onto the track or when they do the quick hot laps before getting lined up.  World of Outlaws and High Limit Racing can push off, line up properly, form into the 4-wide salute formation, and get back into the correct order in 2-3 laps total, yet stock cars on asphalt can’t hold their position side by side for a lap.  

The problem isn’t one-sided; race directors and drivers share the responsibility for the show running late, and that’s where time limits come in handy.  No race should take longer in minutes than it has laps at a short track.  This isn’t the Daytona 500, these are 30, 40, and sometimes 50-lap features and they take over an hour to complete.  The drivers control the false starts, cars getting out of order and stopping on the track to talk to track officials.  

All this talk about time management and race fans will give a free pass to major events like the Kings Royal at Eldora Speedway, Snowball Derby at Five Flags Speedway and various other short track events across the country.  Why? Because in the downtime they are entertained with driver introductions, dash redraws and other activities that take their mind off the amount of time that has gone by, we’ll get a little more into that in a future article.  

At the end of the day, race fans want to be entertained with an efficiently run program.  They won’t mind a lengthy clean-up if the rest of the program is run on a tight schedule.  

As we prepare for the sixth part of this series, we look into the Announcer’s Booth and what today’s announcers bring to the track.