[darnall]

I would love to see tracks acquire a show car... not a new top notch ready to race car by any means... a tweaked 10 year old chassis, with enough parts to make it sit on wheels and tires and something to have headers bolted to. Put a new Earl Schieb paintjob on it and a little flashy vinyl advertising the track. Make sure that show car is on display somewhere every day of the week, at your sponsors places of business, any local trade show, car shows, festivals, ball parks on little league nights, etc etc. Beside that showcar should be a stack of flyers/schedules, a sign that tells what it is and how fast it goes, and a DVD playing some video of some wheelies, slidejobs, and yes even some flips on a 3 minute loop (basically any jac kslash promo commercail would work great). People who don't know what sprintcar racing is will see those big dang tires, some crazy action, and learn where to go see it live. If one viewer out of 100 comes to see the real deal and brings a family you have introduced hundreds of new potential fans to the sport each year.

When we started racing the winged outlaw karts in Missouri in 2003 we took a similar approach. Ran a couple local commercials during some nascar races, took karts everywhere we could to get people to see them. We grew our local active car count from 8 karts in the spring of 2003 to over 120 by the fall of 2005. Granted we were focused on growing participation, but we did attract several one off or regular spectators to watch a small scale motorsport. I have never seen actual "fans" buy tickets to any sort of kart or mini racing but we frequently had our limited bleachers full of folks who were there to check it out, not to watch their grandsons or nephews race like most kart races get.