Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
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It's 2019 so I haven't vented about this since last summer.  I was informed yesterday that LaSalle Speedway (IL) is ceasing operations and read the news this morning about yet another track in foreclosure.  (gonna wait to be sure that one is true) 

Everyone is on this forum and social media trying to figure out how to fix the problem.  The problem being no butts in the seats for weekly shows.  Big shows seem to be getting their fill----at least the ones I attend.  

What's the problem?  Is racing boring to kids?  Teens?  Young adults?  Nope.  

I have about 5 or 6 races scheduled in June-August.  Over the years, I had a large group of friends and family that all attended the races together.  They would bring their sons/daughters, we would camp on the grounds and would have a great time.  This year?  All of them, for every race, have club sports committments for their kids. 

Don't get me wrong, busy kids don't have time to get in trouble, I know.  My kids are in plenty of activities.  But summer is sacred to me and I'm passing that on to my kids.  They are playing in a couple of organized games with their high school teams throughout June, but that is it.  Both asked to be on club baseball/softball/basketball teams.  I said no.  I said HELL no.  Summer is not for splitting up families, sending mom to the East side of the state while dad goes to the West side of the state (or out of state) with the other kid.  Summer is not for $1000 weekends 12 hours away because the teams in our area aren't good enough for some reason.  Summer is not for sitting in unairconditioned gyms playing basketball tournaments all day.  

Summer is for camping, fishing, a reasonable amount of baseball, catching an MLB game, cook-outs, going on a family vacation, kayaking, and yes-----------going to the races as a family.  Kids that go to races, become young adults that go to races, become parents that take their kids to races.  Kids that spend all summer chasing baseball tournaments 12 hours in every direction will never become race fans.  And, unfortunately, that is where all of the fans have gone.  Taking with them their parents and grand-parents.  I'm not saying every family has to be a race family, but insert any other activity, and you have the same result.  

When I was in junior high, we had little league---in a town of 2000 people.  6 teams.  3-4 games per week.  Done in 6 weeks.  Never left town.  Saturday nights?  At the races.  So were a lot of my friends.  Kids were all over the place.  Now go to a race.  Kids make up 10% of the crowd at best.  Just a bunch of aging old men (like me) sitting in the stands with a pissed off wife at home because they didn't go to little Johnny's baseball game in Timbuktoo.  

I'm usually an optimist about these kinds of things.  Cars seem to be showing up.  But, I don't think the fans are going to return.  JMO of course.  If you like dragging your kids all over the country to play the same sports they could play at home, and still enjoy summer like a kid, then that is up to you of course.  

One other point.  My kids are now 15 and 17.  The 17 year old is on her 3rd year working a summer job and the 15 year old is on his first.  How do you get kids to understand work if you do nothing but pay their bills, tote them all over the country eating take-out food, and never allow them to schedule real work because of a busy sport's schedule.  

I told you it was time for my rant.  Sorry if I offended anyone.  

I think some of the issues are young people nowadays need to be entertained, mostly by video or computer games rather then going outdoors and being hands -on. I live in York, Pa. This week is Street Rod Nationals-East weekend. More then 3000 Street Rods cruising the streets and country roads all weekend. This morning I talked to a guy with a 40 Williys with a 572 motor in it, been working on cars his whole life. When I was a kid I studied Auto Mechanics and have been a mechanic for over 50 yrs. Worked on and helped to build Modifieds and Sprint Cars. Most kids today only see cars on video games or in movies. The love of working on cars and being around the garage isnt the same as it was back in the day. Most people want to go see races but not get dirty and be home in 2-3 hours, I am not a fan of 5 division shows but 3 divisons with 3 heat and feature for $15 is fine by me.

I lived in Allentown,Pa as a kid. Went to a great 1/5 mile asphalt track at Dorney Park. Best sportsman and late model racing ever. Everyone knew each other, grew up and went to school with lots of the pit crews. Today its a freeking amusment park with a water park and NO race track. JMO

You're not wrong on the scourge of travel sports being completely unnecessary and a waste of money for nearly everyone involved, but there are several additional things that attribute to things like this happening. 

Even if the purses haven't raised in some time, the costs to run a track have to had skyrocketed over the years. The primary one I'm thinking of is insurance. I'd hate to see the numbers that some of these tracks have to cover, especially for a sprint car show. 

Additionally taking away from attendance is just the sheer amount of alternative entertainment to do nowadays. I'm not tremendously old but even as a child, I seem to remember there being far fewer options for competing entertainment. 

It's just a perfect storm for weekly tracks. 

The biggest positive right now seems to be that the WoO is absolutely flourishing. Maybe not from a car count standpoint, but man, it seems like the stands are jammed packed everywhere they go. Hopefully that can have a cascading effect to help people get more interested in their local tracks on a regular basis. 

Correct and correct. 

SprintFan16---I was merely pointing out what I see as the #1 contributor to the massive decline in weekly show attendance--at least in my area.  You may be correct in the alternate entertainment as well.  I live in a very small community and county so I don't see those options as much. 

willf270--agree with most of what you say.  However, I'm 45 years old and when I was a young teen, video games were just exploding onto the scene.  My buddies and I spent more than our fair share of time glued to a TV screne playing video games.  So, I will disagree that this generation knows nothing but video games.  It has been a solid 30 years of video gaming.   Good points though

A lot of this should be attributed to car manufacturers directly. Their anti-repair stances do no favors to newer generations, whether it be actively lobbying against right to repair legislation or designing systems that make repair inherently more difficult and expensive through a combination of measures. All to pad their own and dealership pockets. 

A lot of validity in the whole topic of parents & kids being booked into all of the extracurriculars. Back in 2004 when I was 18 I worked at one of the hockey rinks here in town to help pay for college. All during the year but particularly in the summer kids aged 6-13 would come into the rink wearing either their Soccer or Baseball uniform, their parents were carrying their hockey bag for them, they would have a private lesson and come out in yet another uniform and go to another practice. We had several parents talk about having their kid in Baseball, Hockey, Lacrosse, Soccer, Martial Arts, guitar lessons, and they would do Football in the fall. A lot of us who were not that far removed from that age would just think when do they have time to be a kid? Everything seemed to be on a schedule for them ran by the parent and the parent seemed to have to tell the kid what to do all the time. Most likely because the parent was trying to do their work while doing this and instead of parenting or teaching their kids how to do something, they just did it for the kid because it was faster that way, the job/chore was done quicker and the parent could go back to what they wanted to do. So when kids want to play video games whenever they are not a practice it does not shock me because for once they actually get to control something.

I grew up basically in the 90's. At that time racing was presented as a dangerous sport where at any moment something bad could happen. The drivers were basically daredevils risking their lives at every race. Now every race (at least as of 2016 since that was the last time I watched Nascar/Indycar really) they talk about how safe everything is. I don't care how many safety advancements they make, you hit a wall at 150+ plut its going to hurt. You go into a turn over 180+ its hard to control but now its just oh that driver is a little loose or tight and the crew will adjust. 

Kids growing up now, unless they have parents who are race fans do not understand the difficulties of racing a vehicle. Since they only experience stick & ball sports and have other entertainment options they never will understand unless they experience it. I used to get laughed at in middle & high school for being a race fan. To the kids who grew up with parents who got them into other sports & weren't fans motor sports was just a bunch of guys going in circles. I used to tell them they are going in circles at almost 200mph with G forces 2-3 times their body weight. Their answer would be "So"?

Then you add to the fact that dirt & sprint car racing are such a niche market then it makes it twice as hard. I have taken several colleagues & friends of mine who really weren't race fans but as a way to go do something. Almost every single one of them that I have taken talk about how much fun they have and how cool the race was. That is because when you are there you see the difficulty, you feel the rush, you hear the sounds. I took my son when he was just over a year old to his first race, he is 3 now and wants to go every single day now. He knows nothing about cars nothing about the complexity of how they work but to a young kid a car going around a dirt track side ways over 100-150mph is friggin cool!! Get them while they are young, if you know friends with kids offer to take all of them to the track once maybe even pay for them and let them experience it. We took one of our neighbors last year to Eldora and their 9year old loves to play video games. He still plays video games but now he asks when we are going to the races again and if he can come with us. Racing is cool & fun no matter what the type/brand. You just have to get people there to experience it that is the hard part but can be helped by those who are already fans.

Traveling sports teams are definitely on the rise in the past few years, at least in IA. With baseball, locally, little league is shrinking and the traveling teams are increasing. Games are played in towns that aren't just the 10-15 minutes away, and often times hours, and on the weekends vs the little league games played during the week. 

I have a friend that has a few kids and during ball season, they have games / practice evernight of the week Monday - Sunday, so this leaves little time for other activities. 

My home track is Knoxville and a few years ago they started offering discounted tickets to kids, and now almost all races are free for kids 12 and under. This helps out quite a bit with a family of more than 1 kid, especially after you consider concessions. There are quite a few kids running around the grandstands, waving flags, running to get the tee shirt fired from the cannon. 

Ever since the internet is common place and always in our hands we have been conditioned to constantly need info fed to us, so those tracks that recognize this appear to be doing well. 

Like it or not, that's the new normal. 

Back to the topic,.... I agree with the points mentioned previously. All of us on here, at some point were sprint car fans and attended weekly shows, so it's up to us to support the tracks, taking our neighbors, family members to the tracks when we can. 

I'm not a huge NASCAR fan but have watched from a distance for the past 20 years. IMO the racing is better than it's ever been, however the races are SOOOO long. Our attention span is now shorter, ( b/c of the internet) so I think this is in part why we're seeing dirt track racing flourish in some areas. Hopefully we as fans can do our part and keep that momentum going. 

Keep It Real

Racing has to be exciting and to the point. Too many classes, too many intermissions, no real stars, poor announcing, unclean rest rooms, music so loud you cant think, people get tired sitting 5-7 hours. Prices.

Those are issues I hear all the time about tracks.

Problem is: a 66 Chevelle SS (or substitute your favorite 65ish to 72ish car here) is still way more fascinating than any other car since.

And all the 65ish to 72ish fascinating cars are in the garages of guys about the same age as the years of the cars. And what's even more fascinating now -  more than the car itself  -  is their value.  So valuable that it's risky to take them out of the garage - or the owners opt for the fuel injected car or truck than starts right up, rides real nice, has air conditioning that works, ..........

Pretty much spot on there. My issue with the travel sports is that most of the time they are forcing kids to choose at a young age which one sport they are going to play year-round. No more football in the fall, basketball or wrestling in the winter, and track or baseball in the spring. At the end of the day you have parents obsessed with making their kids year round AAU athletes in the hopes that they make it to a D1 school or the pro's, and the more talented athletes are going to still come out on top. What you end up with is a kid who gets burned out on that sport and never wants to play it again. 

On the weekly shows vs specials I think part of the problem is the number of special shows and the cost. Here in PA we had the All Stars in April, then Outlaw tuneups, then a week of the Outlaws, followed by Memorial Day specials. Coming up we have USAC followed closely by our "Speedweek", and another weekend of the Outlaws soon after that. If a family has to attend races on a limited budget a lot of times they'll sit out the weekly races to go to the specials. 

Lots of really good points! Three different reactions to points made above....

In the fall of 2017 I went to a silent auction to benefit my nephew's little league trip to Williamstown. I bit my lip and let no thoughs of my own be known. Lots of teams within a 20 mile radius to play but let's spend a pile of money because a few parents thought it would be fun. Summer budget blown. No money to go out to the local speedway. There is a tourney a couple times a month and practice year round....for 11 and 12 year olds. Way too much emphasis on sports in our culture but that is another topic. 

Dwindling car counts are mostly due to expense. Less cars, less back gate, less fans, tracks close. Just one of the reasons less people are coming to the short tracks but one none the less. Crate sprints have done well in MN and WI. RaceSaver in other areas. Big time sprint car racing is very regional now. Are there 7 weekly 410 tracks now in the entire US? VERY expensive to participate.

Poorly run facilities. Biggest pet peeve as stated by Purple73 is the noise. I love engine noise but I'm not so f&%#ing stupid that I can't talk to people around me or enjoy a few minutes of silence durning a pause in the racing. Knoxville is the worst at this, blaring those commercials at every opportunity. My local track gives you exactly 4 seconds of peace before they blast the same, tired songs in your ears thes same way they have been doing for what seems like a thousand years. Bad food, drawn out shows and literally piss poor restrooms deter folks as well. My local track interviews the winners of every race now, even the heats. Annoying as hell.

Good topic egras.

Kids are LAZY today.

I racing has a ton of drivers

There are no more gas stations for a kid to get a job, hang out, watch the owner work on his race car

Parents don't want to let kids out of there site today until they go off to college.

Texting is there new pastime 

How many kids out there even no what a fight is ? Remember the rival hi school.

Kids today are nothing but a bunch of nut huggers

Go to a race ? A dirt track is dirty, yuk, not me. A race track is loud, they don't make fashionable ear protection. 

Yea, you wonder why young people don't go to the races ? Look in the mirror ya nut hugger

Another thing that doesn't help is some series' wasting time and dragging shows out that don't end until 11pm or later. Issue on multiple levels. One, parents don't want their young ones staying up and out that late generally and 2, the kids are so dang tired they can't even meet their favorite drivers in the pits afterwards. I remember going to the races when I was younger and the best part of the night was getting to sit in the cars and meet the drivers afterwards. Now series' want to spend extra time doing driver draws and track prep (I know track prep is needed sometimes). If hot laps start at 6pm, a show should RARELY go past 10pm at the latest. I've been to or seen multiple nights of racing this year where the sprint car heat races don't start until 9pm. That is completely unacceptable

Real race cars don't have fenders...

Ding Ding Ding!!!  We have a winner!    I'll agree that kids can have multiple distractions including sports and video games, but if you do get one to the races then you're going to need to put on a pretty great show for them.   I don't go to weekly shows any more because I'm not sitting through seven other classes to watch 305 sprints race.   That's the way most tracks in North Texas operate anyway.  

Ha, these always make me laugh. It's been the next generation's fault dating back to Socrates.

It has never been the right answer, and never will.

Spot on.....my wife and I fell into the travel sports thing with all three of my kids. Coaches were upset if each didn't follow one specific sport....Although all three played a sport in college, now that they are in their 20's they now ask "How come we didn't take family vacations when we were young? As a Posse fan, I find myself only drawn to the special races and am willing to save my money and pay extra for them. I just dont feel the same vibe or atmosphere anymore for a regular weekly show the older I get.

Kids are lazy?

Blaming children for the world they didn't have any hand in creating is just plain stupid. I understand your frustration, but quit blaming children. Point your level of dissatisfaction at those making the decisions. 

Jus trying to make my 66 Chevelle theory stick.

Here's a bunch of race fans:

https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2019/06/03/west-salem-ohio-1967/?refer=news

I guess my wife and myself and our son are lucky.  Our track is River Cities Speedway in Grand Forks, ND.  Johnny Gibson's favorite track.  They get lots of kids to the races.  How'd they get them involved.  Though they don't come every Friday night, a while back they started having school bus races once a year.  Area schools were encouraged to get an old bus, paint it how they want,put their school name on it, maybe even the kid's names and get a locla driver to race it (yes not exciting for adults) and the place is jam packed every school bus night.  Full of kids and their parents.  The kids want to see "their" bus race.  Think River Cities seats a little over 4500, maybe over 5,000, not sure.  I mean jam packed with people.  And this type of thing rubs off onto young kids getting interested in the "super-fast" race cars/sprint cars they see on the same night.  But, this is only one type of promotion that gets "butts in the seats".  The WoO race in June, July and August obviously sell themselves.  Yes, its sad to see tracks close.  

Lawlessness + liberalism = HELL -  NYC, Detroit, Chicago, 
Seattle, LA  Who the H runs those cities. 

They do the same thing a few hundred miles down the road from you at Cedar Lake every year in mid May.  I don't attend since I stopped doing photography out there but I read a post that this year's crowd was the largest ever.  By largest ever I'm talking World of Outlaws Sprints and their annual crown jewel for Late Models the USA Nationals.  Like I said, I wasn't there this year but shot this event in the past and after the buses run their Feature the place empties out for the other classes.  Stop and think about that for a minute, high school kids today would rather watch school buses than real race cars.  That says a lot about how much different young people are today than we were.  I graduated in 1969 while Sprint Cars still ran without cages and I'd have damn sure hung around for the real races if they had such a thing as school bus races back then.

Anyways, I spent a good number of years writing racing articles and taking photos but I don't feel any obligation after stepping down to "support my local track" on a weekly basis.  I'm not wishing any bad on any tracks, I still go out and take in a few shows and occasionally drag out the camera and take some photos.  When I was totally immersed in racing doing the work I sat through my share of six and seven class shows the effects of which were somewhat mitigated by a media pass.  I'd stand there watching the Pure Stocks and Hornets and those types of classes thinking about all the work I wasn't getting done at home.  Now I'm in a good place after stepping down a few years ago.  It was a painful decision at the time but in retrospect I'm glad that I did it. 

My point is that with the writing and photos I spent countless hours during the week "supporting my local tracks" and with all the classes everywhere I went it burned me out on weekly shows.  Today it's not just the added expense but my time has become much more important as I approach 70.  Consequently, I have become a "Specials only snob" and have absolutely no guilt about not sitting through a half dozen classes every weekend.  If supporting my local tracks involves watching Pures, Hornets, three classes of Stock Cars and two or three classes of Modifieds to earn my "I support my local tracks" badge of honor I hate to dissapoint but it ain't happening. 

Stan Meissner