[Jonr]

Welcome back Don. It has been a while since you have been on this forum, and even though I promised not to play your games anymore, I cannot resist.

A couple points.
1. When USAC and Badger announced that they were going to introduce the chip rule, it was announced as a way to save money. For some reason POWRi has decided not to adopt this rule. Which is somewhat surprising because it would seem that the POWRi guys would want to control cost as much as anyone. While several of their teams deffinitely have big budgets, overall the budgets in the POWRi group is less than the USAC teams. Not having co-sanctioned events has hurt both groups this year, and may kill off a great midget race in the Gold Cup.

2. Tire deals help this sport. Do you really think there is enough demand for midget tires that the manufactuers are going to have a price war? By having a tire deal, the manufactuers know that they are going to sell a decent number of tires. Since they know that they are going to have a decent number of tires to sell, they know what price to set to make a profit and how much to "sponsor" the series. If we did not have a tire deal, in the long run two things would happen. The price of tires would go up because the tire companies know have to compete in the market place which means that they would need to adverstise more. Eventually, the tire companies would realize that the midget tire business does not have the profit margins of the other groups, and would leave the market. For the racer, it would mean a bigger tire bill because they will have to buy more tires. Brand X works better on dry slick tracks, Brand Y works better on tacky tracks, Brand Z works better on black clay.

3. A series of cars with $10,000 motors would work great. There are a ton of "outlaw" Modified drivers already spending 10k on a race motor. It would be great if we can get some of those drivers to trade a modified for a midget. However, we need to be realistic. Don't stop with just the motor. Have a realistic weigh rule. Ban exotic metals. Look at every piece of equipment on these cars. Is the cost/speed benefit worth it? Now that we have created this class, we need to understand the pecking order. This class is not the top midget class in the country. This title still belongs to USAC. This is going to be a level below USAC. We need to think ASCS versus WOO. The ASCS series is very popular and has good car counts through out the country. The larger national shows at the right venues routinely bring in 50+ cars. The ASCS never tried to be the WOO. They tried to the ASCS. ASCS cars routinely run with the WOO and routinely get beat. A couple of the bigger ASCS teams will have a spare 410 in the trailer that they pull out for the WOO shows. This would work in the midgets as well.

4. We need to some brave people to make this class grow. We need a fearless person who be the leader of this group. We need some brave promoters who will book the shows without knowing how many cars will be there. It would be great if we could get one brave track to agree to be the home track of this series with races every other weekend. We need a brave people to build some of these cars without knowing the purse structure, where they will race, or how often will would race. The guy who owns the "outlaw" modified is the exact guy we should be going after. However, in most markets he can race his car at a home track on Friday night, a choice of tracks on Saturday nights, and if he is lucky some special events on Sunday nights. It is going to be hard to convince him to sell his car that he can run 2-3 times a week for our class.

5. There are some success stories out there for us to learn from. ASCS was formed because of the WOO costs. 305's were formed because of the ASCS costs. Crate motor divisions were created from the ******** of the 305 series. IMCA modifieds started at one track in Iowa, and now they are everywhere.

All we need is someone with a vision that is brave enough to make it happen. We also need team owners that our brave enough to make it happen. These people need to understand that this is a new series. We are not going to make USAC conform to our class. This is a new class for all of the drivers that had a car parked in the shop that could not afford to race at a nationl level. The WOO only comes to my area once a year and I go to that show. The ASCS comes 8-10 times a year, and I go to all of their shows as well.