[kdobson]

This is painful to do - but it's the right thing and the only thing we can do under the circumstances. We want to get notice out ASAP to the DII and Badger teams that we are forced to cancel their portion of our show Friday due to curfew concerns given the large car count expected for POWRi Midgets, Micros and WAR Sprints. Official notification from POWRi to their teams will likely come Thurs morning as they are completing tonight's event at Belleville at this time. We will find a way to put on a meaningful DII event later this year as a make-up.

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Jacksonville Speedway Shortens Friday June 8 Show Due To Curfew Concerns

Officials at Jacksonville Speedway have made the difficult decision to shorten this Friday’s event by cancelling the POWRi Regional DII & Badger Midget Class that was scheduled to appear on account of curfew concerns. The event will proceed with the Lucas Oil POWRi Midgets, Lucas Oil WAR Sprint Cars and POWRi Outlaw Micros as the three classes racing this Friday. Jacksonville has agreed to add a night for the DII midgets to race at Jacksonville later this season on account of having to remove them from Friday’s lineup. That date will be announced on Friday after a review of area schedules.

“This is uncharted territory for us” commented Ken Dobson Jacksonville Track Manger. “We have never canceled a class in advance and certainly understand that teams that compete in the DII Midget class might be upset by this decision. However, the need to make this decision became painfully obvious after noting the high car count in the Midget and Micro divisions on Night 1 of Illinois Speedweek in Belleville. Last year this event ended at roughly 11:20 with the four classes and this year it has the potential to be even bigger.”
“We take our curfew ordinance seriously and try our best to respect our neighbors and the neighborhood we race in” said Dobson.

“While on rare occasions we have gone past our curfew it was always due to something unforeseen or an unexpectedly large car count that was beyond what we anticipated. We have never come into a race where we felt there was a strong likelihood that we would be in violation of our City curfew. That’s a bad precedent and one we don’t want to start. Our only option to shorten the show was to eliminate a class when it became obvious that time wasn’t going to be working in our favor.”

Dobson also noted that reducing the number of classes will allow the track maintenance crew to keep the track in proper racing condition throughout the night. “Curfew is our number one concern here and it takes priority over maintaining the race track throughout the night. We have always been able to provide a great racing surface for this event that provided spectacular racing action every year. We don’t want to short-change our fans by failing to take the time necessary to have a great event.”

Dobson knows that this may be an unpopular decision for the D2 teams that anticipated racing Friday but noted that those who wish to can still race in the open Midget division Friday. Dobson concluded, “This is the right decision, but we acknowledge it might not be a popular decision. In fact circumstances might result in us having fewer cars than we anticipate which would have left us plenty of time for the D2’s. But given the facts we have at this point and time, it’s our only reasonable option to be fair with our City, our neighbors and our fans.”

Jacksonville Speedway invites you to join us this Friday for three great classes of racing for Illinois Speed Weeks with the Lucas Oil POWRi Midget Series, Lucas Oil WAR Sprint Car Series and POWRi Outlaw Micro Series still on tap.

[kdobson]

I just got a text from a DII Racer asking why we can't just run past curfew since we've done it on occasion before.

This is a pretty small town with a race track in the middle of a neighborhood. Five Aldermen and our Mayor are educated racers or race fans. At least 3 or 4 of them will be here on Friday watching with us. 1 alderman is a current racer. 1 is an ex racer and former partner of ours in the track. 2 others are at the track regularly as fans and another is the daughter of a long time promoter of the track. Those are the ones who have to field the calls on Saturday morning from the neighbors who can rightfully point out that we are breaking the law. Those are the ones who have to dig up excuses for us to cover our rear with their constituents. They look out for us - and its unfair for us to use them and put them in that position. All of them could look at our schedule and the car count in Belleville tonight and realize we have zero chance coming into the event of finishing on time. I'm not going to go into a race knowing we have a zero chance of not breaking our 11pm curfew. Instead we are going to do what we can to get it done in time.

And as for the police cheif who's job it would be to come out and shut us down and enforce the ordinance? He won a crate late model feature earlier this year.

[Crankin]

You just thought about this possibly being a problem 1-1/2 days beforehand?

Car counts are always good, so using that as a sudden suprise seems, well, you know...

[kdobson]

Sounds like "You know... what?" I assume you would have rather come here and run heat races and sit here all night and sent you home for the feature. When Belleville gets done after 11 in a show they rushed through as quick as possible and they have only 3 classes - with the 3rd class being modifieds with starters instead of sprint cars that need pushed, it's pretty obvious that if we run all of that PLUS another class we aren't going to make it. I've always been concerned about curfew for this event but we just missed by 20 mins last year and when I was asked to include the DII's again - which we don't race here regularly - I did it thinking we could find 20 mins through a few fewer heats throughout the night. Casey's WAR deal on paper looks more popular right now than last year when he was getting it started. There were 7 or 8 more midgets and micros last night than we had last year - which is basically another heat race. And the weather looks to be about 10 degrees warmer than last year with a little more wind which means we need to allow for a little more time to keep the track in shape.

We've raced 2 Sundays in a row and have 2 Wednesdays coming up which are never popular with the neighbors or an alderman who lives down the street. My ability to explain away a night where we race 'till midnight isn't too good right now. The chances of D2's actually running a feature on Friday were less than 50% as I kept track of what was going on in Belleville last night.

Our ordinance provides for a fine of $200 PER CAR that races after 11pm. After a late show I've always been able to show good faith and twist some arms and promise a better effort in the future to keep from paying $4,000 for a 20 car field. But chances are the D2 feature would START after 11 - not just finish after 11 and it's tough to argue with a straight face to race-educated city officials that we did all we could and it was an accident. My job isn't only to look out for this Friday night - it's to ensure that we have years of Friday nights ahead of us.

[Crankin]

Never said I didn’t understand your reasoning with curfew issues.
The day and a half notice is... well, you know. 🤬

You just said yourself that this was a concern from the beginning, but wait this long to cancel?

POWRi Speed Week always has a good car count, and Casey’s deal has been strong for a while now. None of this is new.

What is new, is teams coming from Wisconsin that took days off of work and reserved hotel rooms (some guaranteed), and get this in return.

Bottom line, if this was a concern from the beginning like you said, waiting to see the car count at Belleville 2 nights before was not the best choice.

Hope you have a great show tonight (and that is not being sarcastic)!

[kdobson]

And also want to say that I meant no disrespect by referring to the cancelled class as D2 midgets later in my release and in my comments. I didn't know until 11:30 last night that POWRi Regional Midgets was a thing instead of D2 when I was asked to put that name in my release which I did in the beginning. I reallly didn't think it was that big of a deal. We refer to our 305 sprints as 305s, our Crate Late Models as Crates without any problems.

Understand that if I were to simply say "I have cancelled the POWRi Regional and Badger Midgets" and put that all over the internet that I'm going to have at least a couple hundred fans who assume I've cancelled all of the midgets - aren't I? Please don't get your feelings hurt so easy over what kind of car you drive. It's a race car. Until you can educate the average fan... or even this race track promoter in advance... you are going to have to allow us to make some type of distinction that doesn't confuse the fans.

Also... If any of the POWRi Regional or Badger Midget teams actually have a hotel reservation in Jacksonville or South Jacksonville that they are being told can't be refunded... please text (please text, not call as I'm at work) me at 217-371-3653 and I will work with our Visitors and Convention Bureau to help get that taken care of and change the hotel's mind on it. Now if you purchased a non-refundable reservation through some online booking site there's not much I can do about that.

[Crankin]

Originally Posted by kdobson Also... If any of the POWRi Regional or Badger Midget teams actually have a hotel reservation in Jacksonville or South Jacksonville that they are being told can't be refunded... please text (please text, not call as I'm at work) me at 217-371-3653 and I will work with our Visitors and Convention Bureau to help get that taken care of and change the hotel's mind on it

Nice. 👍

[SpfldMile]

Sounds reasonable to me. Keep up the good work Kenny, I look forward to a great show.