I would like to address two related topics: Scheduled practices before race dates and Ford Focus racing.
Scheduled practices before race dates. To make this clearer, I'm talking about, for example, an "official sanctioned practice" a day prior to a midget race at the same track. I participated in the D1 pavement midget show this past weekend at Columbus Motor Speedway. I called the track on Friday (the race was Saturday night) to see what the schedule was and I did this because I couldn't find any info on the internet. One of the Nuckles bros answered the phone. He told he didn't know what the schedule was, so please call back on Saturday morning and he told me that the pits would open at 3 PM. Just reporting the facts here, IOWheelers.
OK...Here's what I found out when I arrived at the track on Saturday afternoon. Literally every midget team was already in the pits when I arrived at 2:30, a half hour before the pits were supposed to open. OK... that really didn't bother me. Fine and dandy. BUT....
When I got in line to buy the pit pass, I heard that there was a practice the night before.
Now let me get right to the point. Why are we having practices the day before for these regional races?
*** This is just one example of the insanity going on with midget racing paying pennies.
I don't get it at all. This is an EXAMPLE of sending the cost of operating a midget team sky high and out of the reach of people who actually work for a living and don't have one of the NASCAR haulers with all the bells and whistles to compete. Now... if you schedule three practice nights, every high dollar team is going to be there all three nights. do you get my point yet? Don't get me wrong, if a team wants to spend zillions of dollars to win pennies, no one is going to stop them. But, to play into the hands of the "HAVES" and pile hotel costs, midget fuel costs, tire costs etc etc etc (and you can bet that those teams practicing were burning up plenty of the purple tires for the "practice" and on top of that trying to get ahead of the Jones at all costs. THIS IS TOTALLY INSANE, people. And then everyone wonders why only 11 midgets show up for this nonsense. Is it not totally elementary what is going on here?? Do we need rocket scientists to point all this out?? *** again.
Secondly, Ford Focus racing. Someone stated earlier that watching the Focus cars race was like watching paint dry. I totally disagree. If you were at Columbus Saturday night, you would not come away with that thought at all. And this has to do also with the misconception that slower cars do not produce good racing. The Ford Focus feature was quite entertaining and I gave it four stars. Very competitive and you didn't know who was going to win till the last second. And as unscientifically proved in a thread on IOW a few years back, to the fans in the stand, speed has nothing to do with great midget competition. furthermore, to me, the Focus cars looked just as fast (even though they actually weren't) as the D1 midgets.