Originally Posted by :
You can have your own opinion, but that doesn't mean you know what your talking about.
Frankly, I think as a sprint car driver who lives within an hour and a half of the track in question, JRacer2m does know what he is talking about. I would assume that for Flora to draw cars, a decent percentage of them would need to come from the Springfield, Il area. I would say that this is a good representation of the location of most sprint car drivers from Illinois.... either wing or non-wing.
http://midwestopenwheel.com/our-drivers/
They have options. For some of them the non-MOWA Saturday option is Farmington. For others it's probably an IRA show in Wisconsin. For JRacer2m it's often Knoxville. Some of them will choose midgets if a race is nearby. Regardless, each of them has to evaluate the travel vs. payout... and I think he is saying that the proposed purse wouldn't be among the better options for most of them on a Saturday.
Draw a circle around Flora about 60 miles out and see how many sprints there are within that radius because those are the ones who would tow and race for the convenience of it. Much beyond that radius and it's going to have to pay more to get them there because other options come into play. The best option is to pick up the phone and call them and get commitments at certain purse structures so no one is surprised by low car counts. Racers as a group are pretty good at keeping their word.
As an owner of both sprint cars and a nice Modified, I beg to differ with your belief that the costs are the same. The sprint is more expensive no matter how you cut it. Sure, a piece of crap sprint can be cheaper than a top of the line Modified, but if we are comparing good sprints to good Mods, and junk sprints to junk Mods, the cost to operate the sprint over the course of a season is a fair amount more.
JRacer2m also brings up the safety factor in the payout. A risk vs. reward decision. Guys can get hurt a lot easier in an open wheel car. A week past a pretty serious concussion that set his work back several days, I'd be thinking about that side of things as well in making decisions if I was him.
At the end of the day, a lot of factors have to be evaluated in to making it 'worth it'. As much as I'd like to see it succeed in Flora and having personally offered my help to make it work... at the purse being mentioned, there's not a lot to make it worth it to a large number of drivers given geography and other options. But I think with a few phone calls a happy medium could be reached that could ensure an adequate car count and a sufficient purse to get them there. And JRacer2m as a guy who runs wing or non-wing, sprint or midget and one of the founders of a drivers' sprint car organization in the area would be among the first people I'd call.