[ryoung99]

In the interest of being fair and ensuring that all the facts are presented accurately I spent a little time today looking at the "results" for the USAC races. I did not do this to point fingers, but to post the statistic that I think most of us think matters the most, the results speak for themselves.

At this point there have been 20 USAC National Races, 13 on dirt, 7 on pavement.

Using the results page on USAC's site, they have averaged 28.75 cars per event (not that bad).

Dirt races have averaged 31.15 cars with a low of 20 and a high of 41. Strangely enough the best car counts were for the races out west to start the season which averaged 39 cars (that is great by any standards).

Interestingly the races that have had the lowest turnout have been joint races with SMRS and PowerI (Knoxville and Belleville) which saw counts of 22,20,22,31 well below the dirt average for the other races. Maybe you can say it was that the races are in 1/2 miles tracks, but the 4 races out west earlier that saw an average of 39 cars were all on 1/2 mile tracks.

Pavement races have averaged 24.3 cars with a high of 38 and a low of 10 (most recent race). The only races where you have seen more than 30 cars were both at ORP. The rest have been in the 20's (or below in 1 case); 22, 29, 20,20,10.

So what does this mean, really nothing. I would be curious what the benchmark is for car count at a USAC National Event? The World Of Outlaws (from results on their website) have averaged 35 cars per event with a high of 54 (Chico) to a low of 18 (New York).

With that being the case, averaging 31 on dirt is really not too bad. One thing that these statistics would support are more races out west. In almost every case the races out west for both organizations had car counts well above the average. Who would have thought that would be the case.

I realize I am making the arguement for Mr. Miller, but with these statistics (ones that are actually tangible) one could argue that the "status quo" is ok and with exception of an abnormal event (Salem) their series is either meeting or exceeding expectations.

Another thing these statistic infer is that in the midwest the larger tracks have not done as well, thus to increase car counts (on average) they might want to limit the number of times they go to the big tracks and focus on some of the smaller venues. But they very well might be an excellent business reason whey they are happy to keep the "satus quo", it would be interesting to know the position. But in all cases the races on 1/4 mile dirt tracks pulled greater than average car counts (36,38,33), that does say something. With exception to the races out west the races on 3/8 and larger dirt tracks have not fared as well (22,20,28,20,22,31).

I really do hope this helps shed some light on the actual numbers that are showing up at the track. One thing I will point out is that the USAC stats were based on the number of cars that qualified, the WoO based on the number of cars that started a main event (as their site did not show qualifing).

Obviously I need to get back to real work.

Rick