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I started a topic a couple of weeks ago with this title, and was trying to enlighten myself and others as to just where are we now in comparison to years ago in regards to the overall health of sprint car racing in America. I for one, am guilty of being on my soapbox preaching about how bad things are, and that the little guy doesn't have a chance and on and on.....
Well, there just aren't many resources available to us to determine how things are really going. Now, I know that any university professor in the country would bash me for using these research techniques, but hey, it's all I've got, and it's the off season and it makes for some good discussion fodder. I got my hands on copies of the National Sprint Car Anuuals from 1999, and 2006, and counted the total number of sprint car racers included in these editions (by the way, for the $5 cover price, they are a pretty nice full color, glossy page document to have, I got mine from the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame website). Without any further delay, here are the numbers, which could be +/- 10 because it's a lot of manual counting.
Total number of sprint car racers accounted for by this publication in;
1999: 3239
2006: 4447
And, since this is the IOW,
Total number of Indiana sprint car racers accounted for by this publication in;
1999: 146
2006: 230
You can draw your own conclusions. Maybe this tidbit is of some value, maybe not. I suspect with the aid of the internet, collecting racer's names get a little easier each year, but still.....looks like a significant difference.
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