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This whole thread (and others before it) reminds me of something that happened last year (2009). I was standing in line to get a pit pass at a Baer Field HOSS race late in the year.
The gentleman in front of me gets a phone call. He talks a little bit and I could tell he was excited. He hangs up and turns to me and says. "A buddy of mine just talked to a "reliable source" with USAC and there's not going to be any pavement races next year!"
Remember, this was in 2009 and there was certainly pavement USAC racing in 2010.
But let's say for argument's sake that the USAC pavement series will be a regional series with a reduced purse. USAC tried this a couple of years ago and had races scheduled at Illiana and Plymouth as well as a couple more. They paid a greatly reduced purse ($200 to start, I can't remember what to win) and at the first race at Illiana, they only had something like six or eight cars. They ended up cancelling the rest of the races. Hopefully, USAC learned from that.
So if USAC reduces the purse much, all they will get is a bunch (a relative term) of kids spending their father's money hoping to get to "the next level." And if you look at the schedule, you'll see that it is full of big fast scary places. No short bull rings. You want experienced drivers at Winchester, Salem, etc. Even slow cars go 120-130 mph in the straights at those places. That's zipping right along in a non-winged car.
Scott is right. It takes slow cars to make the fast cars fast. And one thing some series' seem to forget, they need the slow cars as much as they need the fast cars. If you have a guy that is a feature winner at track "Y" and he goes and runs with series "X". And he is consistently running 10-12 with series "X" rather than running in the top five at track "Y" and sometimes winning, he not going to hang out just so he can see his car on TV for five seconds. And I don't care where you run; winning almost always pays more than 12th.
One of the reasons that USAC car counts suffer is that us poor guys can't show up and come even close to break even. But if I go to a HOSS race, as long as I can make the feature, I come close to breaking even. When the day comes that I can't make that feature, it's time to do something else.
Tom Paterson
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