I’ve never been an advocate of back gate promotion, but I know there are promoters (and others who comment on social media) who don’t value the opinion of someone who doesn’t own a racetrack. I respect the choices of promoters who do what they think is necessary to make money. There are plenty of examples of tracks and promoters where back gate promotion has helped, but there are probably just as many examples of back gate promotion being ineffective or even hurting profitability. In most cases, it’s not a significant loss of revenue on a single night. It’s the accumulation of competitor and fan fatigue with running too many classes that leads to the eventual decline in attendance.

My preferences are:

Weeknight - 2 classes (LM and Mod, Sprint and Midget, Winged Sprint and Mini-Sprint are natural pairings). 50-60 cars is a sweet spot in my opinion. Enough for 3-4 heats, maybe last chance race, and a feature for both classes. Everything done by 10 pm local time.

Weekend - 3 classes if they each have healthy car counts,same format as the weeknight shows. 4 classes if less than a full field is the norm in more than one class. The goal should be 80-100 cars. 2-3 heats unless a class has less than 12 cars. If there are less than 12 in a class, qualify them for starting position rather than run a heat race. Put the top 4 qualifiers in a dash for a few extra bucks, then invert the starting position of those 4 in the feature based upon their finish in the dash. Saves a little time by not running heat races while still giving the fans something competitive to watch from the class before the feature. Everything should be done by 11 pm local time.