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7/5/14, 10:44 AM   #1
Where is the history of our sport!!!!
Bill Gardner
Bill Gardner is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 4,077
 

One of my pet peeves when visiting some track & series websites is where is the history. Every now and then I like to revisit old memories or learn something new about each one.

There are some track websites that don't even post race results let alone a little history.

One of the best promotional tools is history.

I checked some of our sprint car tracks and series websites...

Bloomington Speedway, Gas City I-69 Speedway & Lawrenceburg Speedway websites only provide current year information.

USAC website has a news archive that goes back to June 18, 2008 (good luck finding what your looking for fast). I've always felt that USAC has done an excellent job at posting quality race results along with well written news stories. However, the website has nothing about past series champions or feature winners and USAC has a deep history that includes some of the greatest drivers of all time.

Terre Haute Action Track website provides only current year information and nothing, not a thing about the "tradition" of the Action Track. The Terre Haute Action Track logo has "The Legend" written in its logo but... what's "the legend"?

Paragon Speedway website only provides current year race results but does list track champions going back to 1974 and feature winners 2001-2014

MSCS website has race results posted from 2010 - 2014 & a news archives going to back to 2009.

Tri-State Speedway website has race results and news archive posted from 2011-2014

Kokomo Speedway
website has race results posted from 2008 - 2014 & some historical info going back to 1963.

Lincoln Park Speedway website has race results posted from 2007-2014 & some historical information going to back to 1969


When I was re-designing the LPS website, I wanted to put together a thorough history section, I was willing to do this for free, but the problem was no one had any of the older information. If it wasn't for Bill & Lloyd Walls, I seriously doubt the LPS history would amount to anything because the information from year to year was packed away or eventually just thrown in the trash.

Grass roots racing does a flat out terrible job of chronicling it's history!! I know record keeping is difficult when you have an ownership change, the old owner wants out, and the new owners are primarily focused on moving forward with their plans to improve a facility so they can continue a "tradition" that was built years ago or saving a track from death rather than looking back. A lot of information gets lost during transition. The really sad part is there is some incredible historical information about grass roots racing and no one will ever see it, because we are.... a)either to lazy to take the time to put it all together or b)not organized well enough to find it or c)not willing to spend the money to pay someone to do it for us and finally d)to stupid to realize our history is extremely important.

This isn't a matter of websites not having enough online storage space... Every hosting account in America rarely comes close to touching it's data storage limit.

Is there a high demand for this type of historical information now... probably not but for hypothetical reasons, lets say in 25 or 50 years sprint car racing is the most popular form of PROFESSIONAL motorsports in the United States. Dirt sprint car racing gets so popular the events are routinely televised LIVE like other professional sports are today. Tracks will look like gigantic stadiums routinely drawing attendance figures around 40,000 to 50,000 each race.

Again, hypothetically speaking, Where would we get the history of our sport? How would we know the information was factual? and How on earth could we ever really have a TRUE Professional style hall of fame?

Now, I am fully aware the chances of that happening are extremely rare... but the history of our sport deserves more attention than it gets now. When I say sport, I don't mean just sprint car racing... I'm talking about all of it. Every single sanctioning body, every track, and every class of car. All of them have a history and that history should be passed down to the next generation of race fans.

One of my favorite things about going to a race, is listening to people tell their personal stories about past races, championship seasons and etc . If you have one and would like to share it, I'd like to hear it.

Thanks for reading!
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