Forum: Northern California Sprint Car (go)
Moderators: StuDeedooo

if it's on you wouldn't know it from what i have seen. hell i almost forgot we had a race it has been so quiet. great pumping of the bradway by GT ect, that's the way it should be. i know that is a big race and it deserves all the attention it can get. still our little series at ocean needs help to survive these times and to continue to grow. a little help getting the word out by those in charge would be a great advantage to the rest of us in the sport that put so much of our time and effort, not to mention money, into it. i would really be a jerk (which by the way is the usual opinion expressed to-wards me!) if i did not thank those involved in the series, from the sponsor and the promoter, right on down to the loyal fan, who make the GLR series possible. maybe it is just me, but i would like to see this series made as attractive as possible and as public as possible. the more aware people are of what we are doing and when we are doing it, the better the ability for the teams to attract sponsors and promote the great sponsors that are already involved. OK, i'm done, i just hope folks will come out and support the series and catch some great racing. for those that have to choose either the bradway race or the GLR race and end up going to the bradway, have fun, be careful, and catch the next GLR show next fri may 15th.

by the way i have to thank HAWKER for including the GLR series race schedule in his openwheel race calender on www.openwheel.org and BRAD at http://ibracn.com/ for listing the dates in his schedule. thanks guys.

to indy and beyond!!

Buzz you are 100% correct........PR, thats what it is all about. I have mentioned the lack of it to someone at Ocean just casually and will bring it up again tomorrow. They have been great about listening and making changes for the better and I'm sure they will take care of this as well. Don't count them out.

Yes the race is on and I think that their PR guy needs to get on the ball and get something going. If it weren't for Gary Thomas doing PR for GSC 2 weeks ago no one outside of GSC would of known about the race. It was a Saturday night, which normally Oceans runs Fridays, so more publicity should of been out there. Granted it was bitterly cold but I think the lack of publicity is what kept the crowds down, not the weather. I doubt many people go to this forum or even know about it that are just fans who like to attend races! There was nothing in the local paper, nothing besides the usual theres a race on Ocean's website. All Ocean's website has is Friday Nights Attraction....showing 2 stock cars, then below you scroll down and it says coming and the next 2 dates and what is racing. Hopefully we can get them to start promoting all the races at Ocean a lot more and this will benefit them with more fans in the stands.. Maybe their PR guy should take some lessons from Scott at Perris, GaryThomas with our GSC series, Gary Costa and Lance Jennings who cover and promotes just about everything! They are the absolute best!

We'll be at Ocean and also the Bradway......should be a great night of racing.

Check and see if Laguna Seca has an ALMS race this weekend, thats most likely where the supposed PR guy is.

Good luck to the 33e & 09.

Linda/Steve - It is not just Ocean that suffers from lack of PR. I have lived in Fairfield for over 15 years. I have never heard anything about racing that was not at Sears Point. On TV, radio, newspapers, posters.... nothing.

Petaluma is 45 minutes away, Antioch is 30 minutes away, Placerville about an hour. Chico 2 hours. Stockton 99 30 minutes. All American Speedway 45min. Calistoga, 30 minutes. Nothing, ever!

The local A.F. Base has a newspaper that reaches approximately 20k people alone. Advertising in it is cheap. When I go on base with a sprint shirt on at least a half dozen people stop me with most saying they wish there was racing in the area. You should see the look on their faces when they find out how much racing there is.

This is just my little area. How many people in the east bay know about the tracks and the racing? Napa? Woodland? Davis? Dixon. The list goes on.

When I was growing up there were ads on tv the radio and in the local news. I remember seeing posters for special events what seemed like everyweekend. Why doesn't it happen anymore?

Advertising in the markets of the people that are already coming from is not really going to get new and continued fans in the door. Every track and series needs to have someone writing a deadline story and sending it to every paper within a 100 mile radius. This is not a slam against Gary but I will use him as an example: It is great that he feeds us info every week but lets face it. He is giving the same 500 or so of us sprint fans on the internet info that we we really already know. It is the people that have never heard of Jonathan Allard or Evan Suggs that need to know how great they are. If I were in his shoes I would be meeting with the sports editor and marketing director of every city newspaper and radio station that the GSC visits to try to get my teams some press. Anything from a defending champion to a victory lane picture in the paper. Or one of my teams on local sports talk radio (even am).

I know some think the paper won't print the stories but that is were the PR person needs to become a salesman. It can be done but it is a lot of work and it should not have to be done for free. Along the same lines, occasional advertising in those same papers can do wonders to help grease that wheel. Radio stations like doing onsite promotions as much as the race tracks and teams could use them. Auto parts stores love to have anything to do with racing parked out front signing autographs. And believe it or not so do a lot of other businesses.

Off my soapbox now.

Good luck to everyone this weekend. I am looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow and Saturday.

actually, I went with a more viral approach this week. Do you think the Mercury News gets more views than this board? Would that give more visibility than here? More butts in the seats?

Mark Purdy's guide to Bay Area sports bargains

http://www.mercurynews.com/markpurdy/ci_12311534?nclick_check=1

scroll down to the comments...

or go here...

http://forums.mercurynews.com/topic/mark-purdys-guide-to-bay-area-sports-bargains?source=article#comment-243747

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i had not seen anything anywhere. this certainly qualifies as something somewhere. i stand corrected. thanks for bringing it to our attention.

to indy and beyond!!

HAHAHA! snuck one past ya.... And Linda too... (and I think my post beat yer complaint on time stamp but im not sure. This thing has wacky time zones.) Been really swamped with work and highschool graduation wind down festivities this week. Not sure if Im gonna pull off the double next week, the Mustang Challenge takes the track at 4:20pm on Friday and Im jonsin to see those guys. On top of that Wench will be heading in to the track. It completely messes with the 45-60 min drive from Monterey to Wville. On top of the fact that its another potential curfew buster schedule and I have to be back at Laguna before midnight.

Stay and fire pit vs possibly leaving early. Last time I pulled that move, I was at the gate at 11:58...

But I will say, if you want to come down to Laguna on Sunday for the DPs, we do have a pretty good view in turn 5. Its always a knockdown drag out race and more often than not, the SCCA guys have to pick up a ton of bodywork.

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also, I would encourage people to pile on to that thread. The more positive enthusiasm that gets out there the better. I had more to post, but I was trying to keep it short and to the point.

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the time stamp on your post on purdy's guide to bay area sports bargains (the only link of the two that worked for me) is about 30 min AFTER my OP so i couldn't have seen it. lol. i give you an "E" for effort stu and linda may give you an "e" for evan!

to indy and beyond!!

one other thing, if you go to the sports page, click on columns, click on purdy its there. A bit burried now, but it was on the front end this morning.

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I also lived in Fairfield for many years and only once did I see an advertisement for a sprint car race. It was at a 7-11 in Vacaville of all places! It was for a GSC race at Calistoga a few years ago. I was also watching KCRA news and they did a big story about that Nascar type track in Roseville but no one bothers to drive up to Placerville, Marysville, Chico or another other dirt track around and do a story. Dirt tracks get no respect! We went to the destruction derby last year at Placerville and this guy said, " That looks like a track around the infield I wonder if they use it as a racetrack anymore? I was like "yes this a racetrack and they race on it about every Saturday night from March to October." The guy didn't have a clue and he lived in the area! I think he was living under a rock or something, ha ha! Tell someone at your work/in your neighborhood or just anywhere outside of the track you go to sprint car races and they usually will have no idea what you are talking about, ha ha! If they say yes they usually think I watch stockcars or some other kind of fender cars. Ok enough of my rant!

I must admit my husband didn't grow up around racing of any kind and it isn't exactly his favorite thing to do on a Saturday night but he is very impressed with our sprint car scene in our area. His friends asked one day about the kind of racing I go to and he was telling them that they "are really fast cars with a big wing, big crowds, great drivers, and they have really nice trailers, he he" He also thinks it is cool that you can go into the pits to visit the drivers and get the photo cards. He also talked about the 4 wide salute to the fans which he thought was pretty cool! We went to Sacramento Raceway a few years ago and I think he thought it would be similar to a race at Placerville and he was soo surprised that there was only about 10 people in the stands and we were the only ones who weren't family. They don't even have sprint 100 races anymore because because not enough people came

Looking forward to the new Golden State King of the 
West series schedule! 

Winged sprintcars = the fastest and most exciting 
racecars on dirt! 

Doing p.r. work for a race track is not easy work. I know because I handled that assignment back in the 70s for the Altamont Speedway and then later for the Golden State super modifieds - who had broken away from NASCAR. Some may remember "Revolution in the Dirt". Anyway it is a tiring job with little acknowledgement. Back then it involved two to three press releases prior to race weekend and remember there was no Internet then. The releases were mailed to at least 30 area newspapers and some included photos (I remember one phot of Bill Deschamps). Floyd Busby was doing motorsports at the Concord paper and there was the top of the food chain motor sports writer at the Chronicle (name escapes me). Altamont was lucky to receive any notice in the local papers. The ball and stick sports seemed to dominate (what's new). And after the race you have to mail out the results of the race to all of those newspapers. I now live in southern California and believe that Stu is doing a good job in getting the word out about Ocean. I read all of the posts in regard to Ocean. I am particulary interested in the spec sprints and some of the strong, young drivers who are beginning their careers. I plan to stop by the Friday night before the USAC show at Petaluma and possibly again before the two dates @ Calistoga on the Labor Day weekend. Keep up the good work Stu.

"Ralphie, Senor, muchas gracias por una mas cerveza"  -
Scott Daloisio @ the PAS

I think what Buzz and Linda might be saying is the present operators of the track are real good "facilitators" of racing, i.e. the place is beautiful, well run, working scoreboard, friendly staff, good food, clean restrooms, yada-yada but where are the fans?

Yes, it is cold out there especially in the Spring but the racing is EXCELLENT and if it were promoted more effectively everyone will benefit. This board is not promotion. The old saying: Preaching to the chior" comes to mind. Yes, newspaper ads are expensive and TV is likely out of the question but you can not depend on the sprint car "culture" to fill your seats.....there simply are not enough of us. Outreach and growth are the only answers. The community has to be involved, Ocean can be made to be the place to be on Friday nights but fringe and potential fans (who can become hardcore regulars) have to know the place exists. One possible solution, Ocean Honda has the only billboard on southbound 17 and I'd guess 50,000 cars drive by it daily. Now John needs to sell Honda's, thats a given but if it had

a strip along the bottom devoted to the track I believe it would make a big difference. To assign the promoting responsibility to some one who has competing racing interests and what sounds like a 60 hour/week job likely won't work. I really enjoy the place and would like for it to prosper in a big way.