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I was just going to ignore this thread. I told myself I had more important things to do. You see, I am getting our car ready for one of these non-existent pavement races at Fort Wayne tomorrow. But it kept gnawing at me, so I finally had to stop and set down in front of my computer.
To paraphrase, the demise of pavement racing is greatly exaggerated. In the Midwest alone, we have the Auto Vale Super Sprints, the King of Wings series (which is technically a national series), MSR, the Illini midget series, the Kenyon Midget series, MSA and IMSA. Add into this, stand-alone races like the Little 500 (my favorite), The Glen Niebel Classic, and the Tony Elliott Classic. Plus the pavement part of the USAC Silver Crown series. I’m sure I’m forgetting some, so forgive me if any of you are running or watching anything other than these.
Yes, we have a pavement sprint car, and we also have a Maxim dirt car. Believe it or not, there’s no rule against running a dirt car on pavement and we do it all the time. And depending on the track, it can be competitive. We just came off a three race weekend where we ran both cars on all three tracks. Teams have had pavement only cars dating back into the 50’s.
If we wanted to, in just the three state area, (Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan) we could run our sprint car about 25 times if we chose, but since we both work 55-60 hours a week, we chose not to. We will probably run about 10 races locally. But it’s a time factor, not a money factor.
As I mentioned, we have a dirt car. But we actually run the pavement car more. Why? It’s simple. MONEY! I know this will surprise many of you, but we can make more money running our pavement car than running our dirt car. Many times running our pavement car has given a bit extra money so we can run the dirt car for the lesser purses that most dirt series pay. Not a shot towards dirt, I love dirt track racing, just most shows pay less than pavement shows.
Contrary to popular belief, we are not buying 6-8 tires a night. In fact, I don’t know any teams that are. We budget 1-1/2 tires a night. (Before any of you smart a$$es start up on the ½ tire, we buy one tire one night and then two tires the next night.) The used tires go on the dirt car when we want to run it on pavement. With a good driver, you can run up front on two tires a night. I ran third in the Auto Value Super Sprint series points last year using this budget.
Two weekends ago, we ran with the King of Wings series. We ran Kalamazoo, Toledo and Auto City Speedway (Clio, MI). We had full fields and good crowds at Kalamazoo and Toledo. We had 20 cars at Auto City, but sadly got rained out.
Is pavement racing as strong as it once was? No, but what is? Crowds are down everywhere and so is car count. Just look at Gas City only running a couple of races a year opposed to them having 30+ cars in the pits every week just a few years ago. I hate to use them as an overused example, but I remember people pulling in there with new cars and big toter homes just to go home with $25 tow money and come back the next week for more.
If you truly want to see pavement racing, it’s real simple. Step away from your computer or get off your couch and go. I’ll be in the yellow #11 or the white 100 depending on who wins the team coin toss!
Tom Paterson
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