Quote:
Originally Posted by ronmil
Back when Foyt, Unser, Rutherford, et. al. were running they did will to get eighteen cars many years. They never had 40+ entries and they never ran a consi. They qualified and ran the 100 miler. That was it.
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Really? If you freeze the frame the video (1970 Tony Bettenhausen Memorial 100)at 00:43 seconds there sure looks like a hell of a lot more then 18 cars there.
Also starting in 1971 (first year of the Silver Crown series) the events had 24 participants at Springfield, Du Quoin, ISF and 23 at Nazareth. 1972 saw only 20 at the first Du Quoin race and 24 at the same three tracks raced at in 1971 listed above. 1973 saw 24 cars at all three dirt mile races. 1974 there was 24 drivers in the field at every race of the season: Syracuse NY, Sedalia MO, Du Quoin and Springfield IL, and ISF. Those are just the ones that took the green flag.
As time went on into the late 70's and throughout the 80's and into the early 90's the fields grew. Recently those numbers are way down.
Looking back at the mid 60's there were fields of anywhere from 20 to 29 cars when only 18 started the race.