Lack of cars on pavement
 

Usac has done a fantastic job of rebuilding their Silver Crown program on dirt, but for some reason it is not working with the pavement.I know you used to have two cars. One for pavement and one for dirt. If this is still the case their is the problem.Same car on both dirt and pavement. End of story. Same car runs at Springfield runs at Salem.I remember many back to back races at Eldora and New Bremen. It is not that difficult.Minor adjustments and you are ready.If someone else has a better explanation for this please post.

Re: Lack of cars on pavement
 

What if teams don't want to change over and run pavement?

Then nothing changes.

Re: Lack of cars on pavement
 

Why don't they Brent. The car makes nothing when it is just sitting. No cost of tire argument either, have a spec tire rule. More importantly,why don't they want to run pavement.

Re: Lack of cars on pavement
 

You can get nearly 40 cars on dirt now. Yet only 13 at Salem. Those cars are out there .There is a reason they are not running. Again, someone tell me if you have to have a pavement car to be "competitive". Bring out your dirt car . You are going to finish in the top 15 it seems.Are entry fees so high and the purses so different from a mile to a half. I think they are, but to that extent.Someone please post a well thought out reply.

Mile purse

Half-mile purse

The costs of running pavement, first of all, tires in particular. You heat cycle a pavement tire and it will never be competitive again, so you're down two sets a night minimum. Most teams that do run pavement also test. More tires, more money. So eliminate testing you'll say. It's such a different animal from a car stand point and a driving standpoint, If you're just starting to run pavement you'll never be competitive against the pavement specialists who've done it for years without testing. Times have change, most of today's dirt silver crown cars are just longer dirt sprint cars with big tanks. Wouldn't even be feasible to run them on pavement, and perhaps not even safe. It's a catch 22. Between the death of all other pavement there's no opportunities for laps and with the expense and for the same reasons it's why the other series have died. Fan counts at these races aren't what they are on dirt, but nobody is going to watch 13 cars in which maybe 5 are competitive. And not very many people are going to go through the time and expenses to run 10-20.

Re: Lack of cars on pavement
 

Number ! Many looked at the radar.
Number 2 It's not a mile track
Number 3 Cost of tires
Number 4 The car makes nothing even if it races. It always loses, Cost of towing, fuel, motor rebuilds, tires etc etc.
5 Most teams can only field one car and most chose dirt.

You have so many different parts you have to use on pavement versus a dirt car. So using same car is out if the question. There are several dirt owners who are contemplating pavement cars. Just need USAC to make sure it stays. It does cost more for pavement as well. If someone out there wants to help, then help get a sponsor for the series.

Re: Lack of cars on pavement
 

I have a question for Dustbowl. He raises many good points. I want to ask Dustbowl if he was at the helm of Usac what would his plan be to bring pavement Silver Crown back to where it was in the mid 1990s. Or is Dustbowl saying that basically pavement racing is history.Is there a plan that could be implemented to save it.

Rules can be made to require dirt cars on pavement. You simply don't allow the sort of changes a pavement only car runs. For some reason USAC would rather have it die out than do that. This is probably the last year for any pavement in USAC.

Re: Lack of cars on pavement
 

throwback racing hits it on the head.Dirt-Pavement-same car. No different parts are needed . USAC has the power to dictate same cars, spec tire, no testing, etc, but it seems they do not want to do anything.Why don't they.

Kevin Miller killed pavement sprint cars and midgets,so why not pavement silver crown?

Believing that making a same car dirt- pavement rule would magically repair pavement racing is living in fantasy land. It's not that simple first of all. Today's dirt cars are specialized for dirt. It's not 1990 anymore. They would be so ill handling that you would probably see a bunch of tore up cars and then there wouldn't be any dirt cars for the next dirt race even if people did take them out. There's plenty of pavement only cars out there right now, people choose to let them sit. They can be bought for pennies on the dollar because nobody wants them. They would be much better off focusing on their dirt series, making it bigger. For all intents and purposes, pavement open wheel racing is gone, and there isn't any rule or fix that's going to correct it that's feasible.

Re: Lack of cars on pavement
 

usac 99 has it right. Instead of saying no special cars on pavement and implementing a tire rule USAC did nothing. That has been their way though. They would rather throw up their hands and say we can't do anything than deal with the situation.

.....and then the car count would go to 8 cars a night. You can not force teams to compete. Perhaps the reason that the car count has gone down is because the product is not good?

Re: Lack of cars on pavement
 

The product was good in 1995 at IRP when they had nearly 50 cars and big crowds. What is the difference.

What's 2 sets of tires cost? I bet a 4th place finish wouldn't pay the tire bill alone.

Re: Lack of cars on pavement
 

Restructure the purse so 13th thru 30th get 1000 dollars instead of 700.They could start there.

We're would the money come from for that? All pavement racing has been on a downhill spiral for the past 8 years. The stands are proving it.

Where's that extra $5100 going to come from?
You?

Are you at Salem?

Re: Lack of cars on pavement
 

You take money off the top and spread it down.It is not that difficult. It is called purse restructuring. By the way I just read in the August issue of Speedway Illustrated magazine that Mike Bliss won the 1993 Silver Crown title with one car. They made a few adjustments on the car between dirt and pavement but that was it. Hmmmmm.

Re: Lack of cars on pavement
 

USAC pavement racing was dead for several years after the last economic recession in the early 1980's. It took Thursday Night Thunder and a commitment from USAC as well as the owners to get it going again. Seems like it will take the same forward thinking to do it now.

Re: Lack of cars on pavement
 

Forward thinking we do not have.

Re: Lack of cars on pavement
 

This is why we are starting the new IILNI/Midwest Midget Pavement series which will making its debut this next weekend at Grundy County on Saturday and at Kalamazoo Speedway on Sunday night. On Sunday night the Must See Racing Wing Sprints and the Michigan Non Wing Sprints will also be on the card.

Some key points about this series. We are running a spec American Racer tire with a one set rule each night. This is a D2 series and we will make sure to keep the cost from slowly rising like it has happened in the past with the national cars. Yes we are allowing some national cars with the stipulation that they must use a restrictor to ensure they are equal to the D2 cars. I would like to invite everyone to check out our Facebook page it has tire and engine rules along with a full schedule.

The purse will also be a fair purse that places emphasis on paying from the bottom up. Not going to have the huge payout for first then offer a real small amount of money to the last ten cars. It cost the same to win or lose you have to get to the track buy tires and other stuff to keep the cars running. Then the travel cost is also the same for everyone so we intend on keeping a smaller footprint to keep travel cost down and build up car counts.


https://www.facebook.com/ILLINIMidwe...homepage_panel

I am not any way questioning you because I have no idea. I am asking solely so I can learn. What are some of these different parts. Most of my knowledge about open wheel cars come from the days when u could use the same car for dirt and pavement.

It's not that easy given the differences between the modern dirt and pavement cars. Given a rolling chassis is not that expense, and switching the same chassis back and forth takes a lot of time and effort. If your paying a mechanic, which is common place today, that also cost money. The race tonight at
Salem was good. Unfortunately the fan base is shrinking to new lows. The stands were 3/4 empty. One of the biggest problems, from the competitors point of view is the purse money. Adjusted for inflation the price money has fallen dramatically over the years. I think the fix to gain car count is paying a decent purse. The only way I see that happening is through fan support. That's the only way it will work. There are no TV contracts or other means to attract sponsorship. Compared to many forms of racing, USAC Racing is relatively inexpensive. Since there are not enough "sportsman owners" who want to do it at a loss, which seems to be the current case, bigger purses will help if not fix the problem. Running for 10 k to win when the Hulman Classic paid 12k to win in the 1970's pretty much tells it all.

People do not care for the pavement races near as much as the dirt. USAC should throw all their efforts the SC dirt cars.

You are exactly correct. My father was the Chief Steward of the midgets then and tech inspector for the Sprints and Crown cars. USAC had to guarantee a certain number of cars per race to keep TNT and Open Wheel Wednesday on the air. The owners were heavily involved and pulled some big time sponsors for it. It was very tough to keep it up for everyone. It was shortly after this time when certain owners made dedicated pavement and dirt cars and the cost difference started to show. A lot of the smaller budget teams couldn't afford the dedicated pavement cars to stay competitive. Guys like Eric Gordon, and Robbie Stanley who were masters of the pavement really helped keep it going as long as it did. I would love to see it back to its glory days but without some work from all ends it won't happen over night.

Just my 2 cents and some things I remember from conversations with my dad.

Which people? If you look at NASCAR, Indy car (The Indy 500 sells the most tickets of any race in the world) and Formula 1, all pavement races, have huge audiences compared to USAC. Where are the dirt fans? A few more than the pavement races but not enough to pay a decent purse. In today's dollars the Hulman Classic paid 38,000.00 to win and 3300.00 to start in 1979. The purses are way too low when you look at it in this context. That's why car counts arei low.

That would be a start. In today's dollars 2000 to start is nothin special.

I thought USAC has done a decent job so far with the Silver Crown series on pavement in 2016. They had 18 and 17 cars at the two races at Lucas Oil.
The problem here tonight was the track. Guys don't wanna run Salem and WInchester with SIlver Crown cars.
I figured there would be a dozen cars but missed it by one. If they decide to try it again next year it will be the same but maybe a car or two less.
Does anybody remember the outcome of the last visit there in 1988? They had 12 cars and cut the laps from 100 to 50. nothing has changed in 28 years.

Could the weather have played a role in car count?

The only thing pavement is good for is getting to the dirt track.

First I believe he killed sprints, then midgets, now it's SC. Without doing a damn thing!
He saw it coming! Any idiot saw it coming. That is total lack of leadership! IMO!

Re: Lack of cars on pavement
 

Folks,

We ran SC in 2014 and absolutely loved it. We ran dirt only for a variety of reasons, which are outlined below:

1). Licensing - At the time (as memory serves) there was a "Dirt Only" license which offered a small discount. It wasn't much but every dollar counts.

2). Not only are different tires required between dirt and pavement but different front wheels and different right front hubs are required due to the additional load the RF experiences on pavement. While we could have used pavement RF hubs on the dirt, we used what we had, which is direct mount sprint hubs.

3). On dirt you can get away with the standard sprint car brake system, with minor changes. On pavement the brake system needs to be more robust due to the additional braking necessary.

These are only a few of the items that differentiate dirt from pavement racing. While USAC could change the rules to mandate using the same "car" for both, rule interpretation and enforcement would be, in my opinion, next to impossible. First, we have to define "the car". Is that only the chassis, or does it include the rear end/driveline/front axle/right side vs left side steering, brake system, .... As you see this can be daunting. And please understand, many of the differences between the pavement and dirt cars are derived from safety concerns due to the different loads the cars experience between the two.

So this is why we decided on dirt only and I believe there are others who are in our same boat, from an expense standpoint. While we sold our car this year I am contemplating getting back into it. If I do, I'm seriously contemplating equipping ourselves for both surfaces just to help bolster the car counts in an effort to get and keep SC healthy.

Tim Simmons

Re: Lack of cars on pavement
 

Um,
pavement aint nearly as fun, destroys tires and engines.
Hmmm where am I going race maybe dirt with having to go sideways and slide jobs and a real chance at passing slower cars or the pretty much fall in line don't get sideways of the asphalt car, hit all your braking marks type stuff. Yuk. Around here we always thought the pavement guys just don't like to get they're cars dirty.

I agree that they, Andy Hillenburg, are doing as much as they can given the lack of fan interest and therefore money flowing to the promotors from ticket sales. The big question I think is how do you attract the money to make it viable?