You misconstrued my words. A good race is almost always a good race. But sometimes a race that looks bad on TV is actually a good race that you may not be seeing because it’s not happening in the front.

Let me try to explain with a personal story. I was running in a race that was televised (tape delay) and I had to run the B-main. We’re a pretty poor team and we really needed the feature start money. The B-main, as most are, started straight up (fastest in the front) and the guy who started on the pole walked away with it. I started farther back and was in a race long battle for the last transfer spot. We ran side by side for most of the race and we actually swapped positions three times on the last lap. I finally prevailed with a slide underneath coming off the last corner of the last lap. We won the transfer spot by maybe a bumper.

Good race or bad race? I’d say it was a good race since several people came down out of the stands after the races and told me how exciting it was. Some told me I barely squeaked it out. Others said they thought for sure the other guy beat me.

Does it become a bad race if I tell you there was a wing on the car? I don’t think so

Does it become a bad race if I tell you it was also on pavement? I don’t think so.

But a couple of weeks later when it was on TV, when they showed the B-main, all they showed was the leader going round and round. A good race became a bad race.

Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t watch racing on TV. (I don’t need angry letters from Dave Argabright or Brad Doty). But I’m saying is that you can’t judge a racing series or genre by solely what you see on TV. And watching racing on TV is a lot better than watching old re-runs of Jake and the Fatman .

If that makes me simple, so be it. I’d rather be simple, happy and at the races then angry and on the couch.

Tom Paterson

Ps: Revjim, Did you mention you live in Colorado?