[QUOTE=randyrad;59567]just one fan's crackpot opinion:

I still think a national tour of SC dirt cars on 1/2 mi tracks is USAC's best hope for a return to national prominence.

This I agree with there are a bunch of 1/2 Mile tracks around the country. USACs SC division currently runs on three of them Manzi, Terre Haute and Eldora. Now I would think that Williams Grove, Knoxville.
one they could run on paved Bristol would be SWEET!!!!
Where else?

DirtyWhiteBoy: Be aware that there are a few posters on here with phoney identities or screen names that are either employees of USAC or have strong political ties with that organization.

We have your phones tapped and a stakeout on your house too. :rolleyes:

Well Don, if I worked for USAC I would have a phoney identity too.

:rolleyes:

3:07 A.M. was the time stamp for that post. Isn't that way past your bed time?

I'd rather be a blowhard then a suckup.

[QUOTE=1BIGracefan;59577]
Sedalia, MO--either the half or the mile--might be a good track for the SC cars.

But why limit it to half-miles? High banked 3/8ths like Tri City or Lawrenceburg would allow the big cars enough monentum to put on a decent show. Plus they're both relatively close to metropolitan areas.

a place like DuQuoin has a lot going for it already; the night race, the fair, the tradition...

Terre Haute has some similar positives besides the fair, but when we start talking about Sedalia, Tulsa, OKC, Knoxville, the Grove...(which I would love to see champ cars at all those places)...it's going to take some creative scheduling, marketing, and maybe even packaging of support races with the champ dirt cars, in order to put enough butts in the stands to pay for the deal.

If the series could get several 1/2 miles on the schedule, then that would make the dirt miles even that much more special. The diversity would be cool...

Iowa, 7/8 pavement
Sedalia, 1/2 dirt
Richmond, 3/4
Indy, 1 mile dirt
Knoxville, 1/2 (or is that 5/8) dirt
ORP, 1/2 pavement
Springfield, mile dirt
DuQuoin, mile dirt
Terre Haute, 1/2 dirt

now we're getting a schedule

[QUOTE=illiNOISE;59591] I would have to draw the line at 1/2 mile tracks. And only those with the seating capacity to allow the races to be major events. Dirt tracks to fit that mold would include, of course, Terre Haute & Eldora. Also Knoxville, Belleville, and Williams Grove. Among paved tracks Stafford, Thompson, Oswego & ORP. SC is a premier division. To run them at every Tom, Dick, and Harry track would lessen that.

[QUOTE=Dwight Clock;59594] Dwight, I went to the PRA race at Stafford in '06 and thought that was an ideal track for those cars. It was a good show IMO. I guess Santos winning both the Nema (wingless!) and Big Car races and the $50,000.00 challenge money that night was an added bonus.

Another track I wondered about for the SC cars was Rockingham. Would it be too fast? Probably. I'd also like to see Irwindale run SC again.

I guess you can tell I'm a pavement fan, whether it is sprint, midget or SC. You'll get no apologies from me on that.

I lived in Iowa when they had the first of the two Silver Crown disasters at Knoxville in 2000 and 2001. They were held as part of the Hall of Fame Weekend, and both drew weak grandstand crowds -- not enough to pay the bills. I don't remember the figure, but Cappy estimated he needed a certain amount of people in the grandstands -- in addition to those in the pits -- just to break even and did not reach that point.

That was one part of the disaster. THe other was that the track was rolled so hard because of the Masters Classic the night before that the Silver Crown drivers could not even use three-quarter throttle. Track started taking rubber before the end of the first hot lap session.

Point is, what looks good on paper is not always good in real life. Many of the people in the Knoxville area had no clue what a Silver Crown car was; just a big sprint car without a wing as far as those folks were concerned. Silver Crown cars had last ran at the half-mile in 1982.

What the track really needed was a great event in 2000 that thrilled fans and got them excited for the next year. It didn't happen. That killed any hope for the immediate future.

Jim Morrison