Thursday

Kentucky and the Reality of Artificial Schedules

Here we go again.

First Bruton Smith buys a speedway. Then he reportedly promises to bring a Winston Cup date to that speedway. In the bad-timing race, this one wins, with NASCAR telling him it’s too late in the year to slot Kentucky into the 2009 schedule. Bruton is reportedly angered, and quotes from speedway founder Jerry Carroll critical of the decision circulate.

Yep, Bruton Smith is at it again. The purchase of Kentucky Speedway has renewed debate over the NASCAR schedule and whether some tracks should give up dates. All of a sudden the loose talk is once again of Pocono being purchased and having dates confiscated for Kentucky or even Las Vegas. That Pocono seems to be a constant target of such talk stems from its continued status independent of the two big speedway empires in NASCAR.

It seems unlikely that Pocono will put itself on any seller’s list as Joe Mattioli seems made of sterner stuff than other track owners who cashed in. One also needs to keep in mind that Pocono is a better racing demographic than Kentucky, Chicago, Fontana, Sears Point, and even Vegas, which is strictly a transient demographic - that Vegas Motor Speedway sells as well as it does remains surprising to me.

There is also the issue of some of Bruton’s present speedways, notably Atlanta, which has long struggled with mediocre attendences (one should also note that Charlotte and Texas now close off large parts of their backstretch grandstands). Some blame mediocre attendence at Atlanta on scheduling races in mid-March and early November. This, though, was never an issue when the track had smaller capacity and sold out its races very well. That Atlanta has long been seen as not a particularly strong sports market - I’ve long heard stories of mediocre fan support for all of Atlanta’s teams - should be considered in varied commentaries about Atlanta Speedway and why attendence is so spotty there.

It is especially pertinent with reports that Atlanta’s Dixie 500 will be shifted to Labor Day Saturday in 2009 while the LA 500 at Fontana shifts to early October and the Autumn 500 at Talladega goes to early November. It sees improbable that moving Atlanta’s second race to September will help that track’s attendences any more than moving Fontana dates round will help attendence there. Of course it hasn’t stopped some blogoshere denizens from proclaiming it a new Southern 500.

Realistically only Talladega comes out of this reported 2009 date exchange well, and that’s because it’s Talladega, a race weekend almost immune to other schedule issues because of how much better its racing invariably is. Heck, not even the Car Of Tomorrow could ruin Talladega racing like it has the racing everywhere else.

But amid all this, the larger issue remains of the NASCAR schedule. The blunt truth of the matter is one a lot of people in the sport seem not to want to hear, but must be stated nonetheless - 36 raes a year is not enough anymore. Kentucky Speedway does have weaknesses - it draws superbly for lower-level stock car races as well a IRL but stories abound of miserable traffic control and less than desirable parking situations, this for a 60,000 seat facility; Cincinnati isn’t considered a strong sports market.

But it also has strengths - though an inferior racing demographic to Pocono, it is still a good racing demographic, much more so than Fontana or Chicago. It is also an established speedway whereas NASCAR dates were supposedly slotted into tracks in New York City and the Kitsap, WA area even though tracks had not been built and ultimately were chased away by local opposition.

The fact is the Kentucky Speedway should not have needed Burton Smith to get a Winston Cup-caliber date. But at the same time it never deserved a date at the expense of another track anymore than Texas or Fontana did. This is where the artificial limit on the schedule comes in. 36 races is not enough. The rationale offered is that teams are “maxed out” with 36 races plus two non-point events, but given that teams don’t stop working (or testing racecars) in the off-season makes this argument shaky. Justifying non-point events was always a tenuous case and it becomes more so when dates are the issue. Justifying stiffarming speedways for race dates is also tenuous; no one can make any credible case for speedway fratricide.

The schedule needs to expand beyond 36 races, because the sport can’t keep killing racetracks. A Kentucky date - even two - can certainly be slotted into the 2010 schedule at no other track’s expense. If teams feel they are being overtaxed, they’ll have to live with it - taking dates away from tracks with Winston Cup dates is wrong, and keeping them is more important than what a team says about a workload that it controls.