I've been watching the weather all day and didn't drive to work so I had to ride my vanpool back to Forest Lake. If I had drove today I could have gone to Menomonie but the grandkids are here and I've got work to do around the house to get ready for the weekend. Hopefully they'll dodge the bullet and get a show in this Saturday.
I posted to a discussion on one of the local boards about the Masters vs a race up in Hibbing. I'm a Sprint Car, open motor Late Model and USMTS fan so I'll take the Masters over anything else that's going on around here. I've never been to Hibbing but I thought that place was on it's last legs a few years ago. Somewhere I heard that it was a dust bowl and the community was trying to shut it down. I've never gone up there, no desire to, it's just too damn far to drive to see a bunch of guys who used to run weekly at Cedar Lake. They're good drivers but I've been watching them darned near every Saturday night for ten years now. Nope, no way I'd skip a big motor show on a high banked 3/8 for a limited show on a dust bowl with less banking.
I think maybe what has a lot of those hard core Late Model fans upset is that they don't have a national sanction anymore and they added Sprints. Adding the Sprints brought in a whole new group of fans and I'm seeing good crowds at the Masters. As far as the WDRL and their purse/sanction fee requirements, that's the business of the track. As long as they're meeting those requirements, and I think they're paying a standard WDRL purse, that's alright with me.
The USA Nationals is a long standing traditional event and it's very difficult to replicate it's success and add another big paying race a few weeks prior to the Nationals. I think that was the idea of the previous owners but the crowds and fields dictated these changes, not promoters trying to screw the fans. There's a lot of racing fans out there I'd swear never pickup a newspaper or have a clue what these tracks are dealing with. It's easy for armchair promoters to risk somebody else's money.
Personally I wish the weather would mellow out a little so we could get to racing in earnest. That way I think a lot of this negative chatter would subside. So far this spring I think people have spent almost as much time indoors posting on message boards as they normally do during the winter.
Give the rest of the tracks time, they'll cut the purse or make a scoring blunder and incur the wrath of the discontents.
No comments:
Post a Comment