I truly fear that nothing can be done to save USAC pavement racing.

A promoter needs more cars to be able to afford to pay the purse and the sanctioning fee. Car owners need to be paid more money to be able to afford to pay the expenses associated with fielding a pavement car. Without more cars, the promoter can't pay more. I'm not even mentioning that fantasy of getting sponsorship to pay the bills. That's a very hard sell for sprints and midgets in the best economy.

When promoters book a USAC pavement race, or any race, and take in insufficient revenues to pay the bills, they seek other options. Some pack on extra divisions the next time, some decide not to book USAC again. USAC brought only 20 cars to Iowa Speedway. It had only 22 at Knoxville. Hawkeye Downs will gladly lease their track so sprint cars can race there, but they are not taking on that financial risk again on their own. As far as dirt, how were the car counts for the Pennsy swing?

We just might have reached the point of no return.

What can we do to save it?

1. Swallow our pride and ego.
2. Accept a smaller profit margin for the time being. (Many race promoters probably already are.)
3. Stop living in the past. (TV royalties for USAC sprint and midget racing on ESPN are gone and are never coming back.)
4. Reduce the cost of competing. This might mean opening the tire rule to any manufacturer that contributes a per-tire fee to the point fund, or just opening the tire rule to any manufacturer. This might hurt the points fund for the time being but if it brings in more competitors and encourages more promoters to book USAC pavement races, it would be a small price to pay. Having more races would encourage more potential car owners to make the investment.
5. Pay tow money, and not to just the regulars like some sanctions do.
6. Pray that God wants USAC pavement racing to continue. It might need his divine intervention to save it.

Jim Morrison
Editor
Hawkeye Racing News

[wbr]

Originally Posted by RichC Random Observations - Outside of European football/soccer fans, I can't think of a group more passionate about their sport than racing people. Perhaps there is something that can be learned from that.

Does that make some of us "sprint car hooligans" just joking- Thanks for your thoughts Rich


Rob H. has it right, a combo car would only kill the series not help preserve it. If USAC would mandate the car, then the (old) series would be picked up by someone else and USAC's car count would just be lower and sprint car racing would be all the more fragmented once more.

A spec car wouldn't fair much better. ie IROC...

Thank you for reading my opinions and rest assured I have enjoyed reading the prior 150 posts.
We are pulling into RIR now, everyone have a nice safe weeekend and God bless.

[DonRacer]

[QUOTE=RichC;113635]Random Observations -

"I've always been intrigued by the stadium motocross series. I worked for Yamaha motocross years ago and was part of that circus. I've always wondered why some of the same principles couldn't be applied to some open wheel special events. If you note, they always run monster trucks or something the week before/after the supercross races. They do that because it lowers the cost of converting the stadium. Why not piggyback on that? I acknowledge it would be a hella big risk but you possibly could hit a 11 run home run as well. How many of you can honestly say you've heard of the AMA until Supercross?"

If you were the Open Wheel Stadium Czar, what would you run,
Sprints, Midgets, or Both?

[Bobv]

I am trying to understand what the $ difference in car owner expenses are between running USAC dirt and pavement events. It seems that there are quite a few people that can afford to run dirt so either there must be a big cost difference or do more people just have little to no interest in running pavement.

[snoopy]

Pavement tires and neck restraints are both costly, but I feel that we are missing another point. Experience.
A guy can learn on dirt locally. IE Kokomo, Gas City, Bloomington, then go to USAC or Eldora. We have run winged pavement for years, but never topless. To go USAC, we would take off the wings and go to Winchester or Toledo without ever racing non wing. Some independent non wing races would be helpful. I guess we could try the little 500 with no experience!

[sprintcar64]

I have read all 150+ replies to the original question and there are some great ideas. The combo thing could work if the rules were written right and enforced properly you could increase car counts. But as Leader's Edge states there is not a shortage of pavement cars out there, but only the ones chasing points can afford the tire bills. To be honest I doubt many can afford the tire bills but swallow it just to be able to compete.

Having built and raced dirt and pavement sprintcars for Dynamite Race Cars the only major difference between dirt and pavement is the tire bill. The cost between putting together a dirt or pavement car is minimal (few thousand ie, shocks, brake system etc.). When we ran with HOSS/AVSS it was pretty easy to set up a tire rotation system to maximize the use of your tires without losing an advantage. They would stamp the RR tire as you go out for qualifying and that is the tire you had to run for the feature. You could do this for the RF,LF also and leave the LR open for stagger purposes. When we ran with USAC we picked up our pace every time out due to chassis adjustments but everyone else was too but also picking up even more time due to putting new rubber on evry time out. If you did the stamping you would only need 2-3 tires a night instead of 2-3 sets a night thus greatly reducing the cost to compete.

[TQ29m]

Jim, ain't it hot in that Santa suit? I know it is here, I went to whiz a while ago, and scaulded myself! Bob

Bob,
Ever heard of a cool suit. Santa was up on that decades before racers. They probably thought WWSD (What Would Santa Do?) when they developed it for racing.
lololol
Jim

[dant]

OK, alotta you guys got money,sure you dress down at the track,but you got coin....Look you know your investments are gonna go to heck,so do the best thing...Build a War chest for USAC...half a billion dollars and we'll have races on every form of communications possible...worst case scenerio..it'll turn into a ponzi scheme..and devour itself...but it would be a hell of a ride wouldn't it

Thanks for the opportunity Kevin - No Wings!