Freezing rain covers the roads here in northern Illinois, as another cold, non-racing day clicks off the calendar during our impatient wait for our 1st race of the new year. Time to fire up the keyboard.

During the off season, dating back to the 1980

I first saw this same posting over on another message board and I also responded with a few thoughts.

What comes to mind now is , "just where is this National Midget Forum ?"

Nobody seems to know ... ? :action-smiley-049:

Paul

The location varies from year to year, but it's never publicly announced. I've been involved with a national organization that had an open meeting. Nothing got done, not little, absolutely NOTHING.

If the club(s) you race with don't discuss what went on at the forum at your first meeting or newsletter after the forum (which I think is in January or February this year), this is your chance to have some input.

I think the big item from the last forum was to come up with a "standard" right rear tire for 2008, or 2009.

This is an informal group that seems to have the sports best interest at heart, I just thought this would be a way to try to get some issues addressed. I must admit, I thought there would be a great deal of interest in this topic, and maybe when the power comes back on after this ice storm, we will see some thoughtful suggestion.

Thanks for the input A.M.F.

Does your response mean you prefer no specific tire be mandated, but on head and neck restraints, the HANS device should be the only option?

Thanks for the input.

It is good to know at least one area of the country doesn't think we need to make many changes in midget rulebooks.

We'll add the two points made here to the list from MM and others and pass them along.

Best wishes for a happy holiday season to all involved in our sport!

The National Midget Forum has been happening for several years. It was held in Indianapolis once a year and then it moved to the Chili Bowl a few years ago. Bob Parks from BMARA and Ron Hoettels of SESCO Engines are the two participants that I know personally. Not sure of the other people that attend. And as Pgray pointed out, he has no idea about what this group does and what they are trying to accomplish. I agree!!!! Who knows. The results or outcome of the meetings is a deep dark secret. I have never seen anything in print as to what took place at one of these meetings.

If they have been meeting all these years, I have a question for anybody in the world to answer:

Can anyone name three concepts, rules, changes, whatever that was ever accomplished as a result of this group meeting? Please be specific as too what was decided and how they went about implementing it with all the midget groups around the country.

Suggestions for changing the way we go about midget racing has been discussed endlessly on various forums in the past several years. I can direct you to some very good articles in the now defunct OPEN WHEEL mag that address some very key issues. Those articles were published
back in the 90's. This is now almost 2008, ten or more years later, and we are still stuck in the same rut.

The outrageous costs of midget racing were etched in stone back in the 90's when USAC allowed some key changes. WE used to see one physical car racing for a midget team on both dirt and pavement. Now a team must have at least two cars to compete on both surfaces. Twice the cost. This problem can be reversed with one rule change. A race team is only allowed to run one physical car for all surfaces and the car number assigned must stay with that car. Any other car fielded by that team must have another number. Thus, points $$$ would have to be earned by one car and no switching allowed. Damaged cars, new cars etc would have to approved by the org and the old car would have be taken out of service. There is more to it, but if the rules are written correctly, this change would work. This is a very drastic change and would meet tremendous opposition, I'm sure, from all the money teams. Don't look for this to happen unless the orgs have elephant balls.

Tires. Well, almost all the orgs have tire deals with Hoosier that pay big bucks to keep the competition out. A lot of teams have tire deals. Some of these orgs are tied up for years with a contract with Hoosier and orgs like BMARA who vote on changes have elected to continue with business as usual. So how is the tire problem ever going to change?? Some teams are bailing out of BMARA because they can't afford to keep racing. I would like to see everyone go to a smaller RR tire with a hard compound. This would help equalize the differences in engines and improve the competition for the fans. Wider cars mean less room for passing.

Indoor racing. I would like to see the Fort Wayne races become USAC National events and put an end to all the exceptions that are made for the cars that compete there. A USAC or POWRi national event would attract the all the stars and cars that compete throughout the year.

I have more to say on all of this but those are my thoughts. Unfortunately, I'm not optimistic about any changes that are going to happen soon. As I said before, the orgs would have to really, really have some muscle to reverse the direction that we going at this time.

Finally, step back a bit and ponder how rediculous it is that some teams are spending over a million dollars a year to win $2000-$2500!!!!

There are several places to run your midget D-10! If you can not run with the best of the best there are alterative places to race.The POWRI group is a great little group to race with, there are little midget clubs all around the midwest for you to run your little team. It is a select group that are able to compete at the top level of any profession. The past few years have shown a great increase in car counts in USAC where the cost is the highest.The inflex of the "SUPER TEAMS" seems to give the series a target for those that fill up to the challenge! All you great experts have proclaimed the demise of midget racing since the introduction of the Autocraft VW, then "OH MY GOSH" the Pontiac and the Cosworth would surely put an end to midget racing.It seems to me that midget racing is what THE 500 used to be about, technology, not spec . cars with spec. motors. ect...

Regardless: Ask yourself a question(but please don't post:rolling just what the hell do you enjoy about midget racing? It seems to me that "********" gives you the most pleasure!

Not a driver, owner or have any say in the matter but I think the main issue is EXPOSURE of Midgets.

I say this because at least locally *SW IND all of Ohio* there used to be somewhat regular Midget racing in the area. Back in the 70s it was almost bi weekly at the Burg and other tracks ran them a lot (Queen City) and others. Now you have regionals but those regionals seemed to be very concentrated, WI, ILL, MT. Lawn. Talk with Promotors and Track owners about holding some races, Spread it out and get more people interested. *THEN YOU WILL HAVE A SERIES PEOPLE WANT TO ATTEND* and thusly you will have events that offer BIGGER PURSES*

As a fan it baffles me as to why some Midget races have 15 cars and the next 50-150-275???? Some of this is Schedualling, Some is Location and some is Return on investment *Worthwhileness* of the races or events. I also thinks some of this is due to the many different venues MIDGET type racing has taken, *Focus, Kenyon, Even the Mini, Micro and 3/4 spread the number between many different organizations and types*

Chuck, who'd at least like to see the 3-4 races in the area we had ten years ago instead of ONE.

Don,

Regarding the tire rules. Our club tried the American Racer tire years ago. Club owners insisted they were going to save money running these A/R's. Well it maybe held true for a few weeks, but once again the guys who run up front are still putting new RR's on everynight. The price difference between A/R and Hoosier wasn't much. The biggest thing that sticks out in my mind was the product support from A/R. I made numerous calls to their engineers regarding tire problems and not once was I given an answer that was resonable. Most of the tires we mounted looked like they had camber built into them, I mean on some you could measure the inner circ. and the outer circ. of the tire and get almost 1" difference.

The tire rule we have in UMARA is a "regional tire". It has to be purchased from Don Kenyon, which cuts out all tire deals direct from Hoosier(as far as I know). We run the previous weeks feature tire in the first set of hot laps and also run that tire in the heat race. We scuff a new RR in the 2nd set of hotlaps and then qualify and run the feature on that tire.

Seems to me we almost need to run a few tracks in conjuction with a weekly stockcar program. I know this sounds crazy, but in order to get new fans IMO we need to reach out to "current" race fans. Most weekly stockcar shows pack the stands because people want to see the crash and bang type of atmosphere that stockcar racing presents. If we can get into places like that and put on one really good show, we might drag a few of those fans away. Stand alone midget shows, especially at a new venue, are hard to sell. We went to Madison International Speedway in Wisconsin this summer. It was well advertised and even a USAC show, I don't recall the crowd being that good. The attendance at the Plymouth shows wasn't very good either and I was just there for the USAC/UMARA co-sanctioned events.

Here's a few figures...

Grundy County Speedway runs stockcars on every friday night, they average 20-25 latemodels, 20-25 Mid-Am cars, 40 or so street stocks and probably 50-60 4 cylinders.

The grandstands are PACKED!! sometimes standing room only.
Here are a few pictures of the size of grandstands there.
http://www.stevehardin.com/grundy/GCS36.JPG
http://www.stevehardin.com/grundy/GCS38.JPG

Their charging $10 per adult.

We run on Saturday nights and are lucky to get 300 people on a regular show night. The promotor does ALOT of advertising and very agressive ticket price discounts.

I guess what I am trying to say is this, the track owner will allow us to bring a car to put on display but will NOT allow us to fire the engine. Wonder if he is afraid we might "steal" some of his crowd?

Back to the topic of the National Midget Forum!!

I have several questions about this group:

1. Who are the participants that make up this group?
2. Why are they part of the group?
3. Who is in charge of the group, is there a president and officers?
4. Who is allowed to attend the meeting?
5. What has this group accomplished since its inception?
6. Why are they meeting? What are their goals?
7. Is there an agenda before they meet or do they just show up w/o a declared agenda?
8. Who is in charge of distributing the results of the meeting?
9. Are the results published somewhere for all to see?
10. If there are rules, ideas etc. passed by this group, how are these ideas, rules etc. going to be implemented?

Seems to me that if anything is going to be accomplished with this group that they need some strong leadership (not a dictator) that will keep the group on course and come up with some results. An agenda should be developed before the meeting.

From reading various posts on how to improve midget racing, they may want to zero in on the following:

COST OF RUNNING A MIDGET TEAM
NEEDS OF THE MIDGET TEAM
QUALITY OF THE COMPETITION
NEEDS OF THE RACE FAN
NEEDS OF THE PROMOTER
NEEDS OF THE SANCTIONING GROUP


Here are my thoughts:

COST OF RUNNING A MIDGET TEAM
1. Costs are almost prohibitive for most teams to stay active over several years. What I would do to reduce expenses:

1. Eliminate multi-cars from running under the same registered number. One car would be allowed per number. This would bring back the combo car idea, but the rules need to be very strict and beyond what was recently published for the Focus cars. No purpose built cars allowed. This would need to be fine tuned but if the rules are written correctly, it should work.
2. Eliminate all titanium and carbon fiber parts period.
3. Eliminate all electronic ignition systems and parts.
4. Develop a hard compound tire that would equalize competition and eliminate the need for the super HP expensive motors.
5. Reduce the width of midgets with narrower tires and wheels. Not saying to go back to the 60's but this would allow more passing and better competition if the cars aren't so wide.
6. No computer devices allowed.
7. Develop a new weight rule plan that takes the driver's weight into account.

Don Moore