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Winged Nation hosted hour long programs every day of the Knoxville Nationals with various guests. On Friday, two of the guests were Matt Wood and Tim Clauson. There were two very interesting comments made during their discussions. Tim Clauson was asked point blank why he would leave non-winged racing for winged racing. His answer (and I have to paraphrase because I didn’t think to record the answer on my phone) was that 1. They had achieved pretty much all they could in non-winged racing and 2. When they looked closely they felt that winged racing was growing in all areas: new drivers, new owners, new sponsors and new fans, while non-winged racing was “ stagnant”. He also stated that on Wed. and Thursday nights of the Nationals there were a lot of new potential owners and sponsors “just salivating to get involved in winged racing with the right opportunity”.
Matt Wood, who was one of the sponsors of Bryan Clauson’s efforts to race 200 times (Elk Grove Ford) and currently sponsors Shane Golobic, promotes the Hangtown 100 midget race and is promoting the USAC Nationals at Husets was asked how sales were going for the 3 day USAC Nationals. His response was “poorly”. He indicated that Husets is expected to sell out this weekends WoO race.
I absolutely LOVE non-winged sprint cars and have been around it since the mid 60’s, and I found their comments disappointing, but also, unfortunately accurate. I recognize the Nationals are a unique event and not completely representative of the status of the sport, but there was no denying the average age of the spectator attendees at Knoxville was considerably younger than I typically see at a non-wing event. Spectator and participant attendance were both up this year at Knoxville, with 98 cars participating over the first two qualifying nights and 71 cars signing in for “Hard Knox” Friday nights last chance session. Spectator seating Saturday night was a sellout.
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