Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

I know it was supposed to be $60k total w/ $10k to the winner and $1k to start, but I don't think a breakdown was ever published.

I can't find a full break down for the life of me anyplace. Not even Knoxville has it. They have every other break down on Friday BUT for the RoC.

$60,000 purse with $10,000 to the winner and $1,000 to start the 20-lap race is the only thing I can find too.

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A healthy diet of dirt in my nachos and beer.

They didn't know how many cars they were going to have for it, how do you publish a full purse breakdown beforehand??

I have been going to Syracuse every year since 1986, and the grandstand has not been sold out for that race in probably 20 years. That race is a shell of what it used to be. Last year's attendance was somewhat better than it has been for most of the past decade. But there have been years at Syracuse recently where even $50 general admission grandstand tickets for the whole week only filled the stands about 60-70 percent of capacity.

The other thing about Syracuse is that the state fairgrounds is a $100,000 rental fee for the week right off the top. That number comes from WRG's financial filings from when they were still a public company.

Syracuse used to be a gigantic money maker in the Donnelly years, and while it's still probably a decent profit for WRG, it's nowhere near what it used to be. Good lesson in what not to do can be learned from the New York modified scene.

As for Knoxville, the Nationals have to continue to be a very profitable week for them. The 360 Nats crowd was way up from what I saw a few years ago, USAC had a good crowd for them, and Wed-Fri seemed up from prior years. Sat was down for some reason, but overall, mega profitable.

I grew up as a Northeast Modified fan. My father crewed for several different Modified teams, and my biggest passion in racing was always toward the Modifieds. But I really can't argue with the end of your first paragraph. Like I said, I started going to Syracuse when it was still the mega event that attracted every top notch Modified driver in the region. Some of my most fun memories of my entire life were of camping in the infield at Syracuse for the week. No promoter anywhere could adjust a schedule on the fly the way Donnelly could to deal with inevitable awful Syracuse weather.

As the race really slipping in the mid to late 1990s, I left the Fairgrounds feeling sad many times because I could see how much the entire event was starting to fade away. For the most past, I always go to that race every year because I have done so for my entire adult life and I know the race doesn't have many more years left at the Fairgrounds.

The one thing about Syracuse that really has fundamentally changed is that the race wasn't always just a fuel mileage race like what it is now. Sure, guys have guys always tried to stretch fuel mileage on the Mile. But for about the past decade, the race has turned into whoever is the first guy not to run out of fuel wins. Last year, winner Stewart Friesen was clearly off the throttle even before the flagstand to conserve fuel for many laps.

As for the traditional Fourth of July and Labor Day races that were a staple of Syracuse for decades, I saw those events probably half a dozen times each. I actually saw some half decent races there on Fourth of July - at least as decent as racing ever is at Syracuse.-- due to that race being at night and the draw for starting spots. One of the best promotions Donnelly ever did was making the Fourth of July show $20 a car load for fans.

Donnelly helped kill the event by getting rid of the sprints in 1995. The sprints were getting too fast for the Mile, yes, but he should have replaced it with a big event at Rolling Wheels on Sat night to keep the weekend being 1st class. Bringing street stocks and sportsmen into the fold cheapened the weekend, equivalent of putting 305s on the Saturday night Nationals card to increase the back gate.

I actually went to the event last year for the 1st time in a while. I had a blast, going to the satellite events, but the mile racing was pretty bad, with the exception of the show Phelps put on at the end.

Like I said, I can't really disagreee with your points. I have actually had that very discussion about bringing in Sportsman and Pro Stocks as back gate filler divisions making the week seem less "big time" on a couple different message boards. I usually end up getting blasted by posters that would rather watch their neighbor run his Pro Stock on the Mile for $150 to take the green than see a national division share the billing for the weekend.

Donnelly also did no favors to the Modified car count with the purse structure at the Mile, even when the car count kept dropping year after year. The heat purses were/are ridiculous -- $4,000 to win and $100 to start. IMO, $2,000 to win and $400-500 to start and a decent payoff in the NQ race would at least help offset what a money pit Syracuse is.

I guess it is a statement of how low my expectations have become crowd wise at Syracuse when I looked around during the 200 last year and thought that was the best crowd I had seen at the Mile in maybe a decade. There were some real ghastly years when I stood in the infield as the Sunday race was about to go green and the entire bottom half to two thirds of the stands were empty.