Originally Posted by
vande07
Back on Topic.
As a local (I live in Knoxville), I can tell you that there are people sick in town, some related to working at the track, others not.
IMO, the outbreak at the track falls squarely on the World of Outlaws. They RENTED the track so they could hold the One and Only event, and then oversold tickets (was supposed to be limited to 3500 on frontstretch (that seats around 13000 or so and 2500 backstretch (that seats 7000), the math for the backstretch made zero sense to get to that #.
When people arrived, if they had kids under 12, they got a FREE Ticket for their kids in the same grandstand as them (this is where the big issue happened, 3500 total should have been 3500, not 3500 and another 400-1000 kids). Same thing on the backstretch. This made social distancing very difficult, even though they blocked off all odd #'d rows and announced endlessly about leaving 3 seats between you and the group next to you.
Secondly, a driver (if you have Twitter, you know which one), admitted he was sick upon arrival, yet the Outlaws did no testing (not even temperature checks) so he raced sick which he shouldn't have been allowed to do, and it broke the protocols that the Outlaws supposedly were following. The other teams that that driver travels with also ended up having positives in their camps.
Fans had to police other fans to keep 3 seats between your group and the group next to you. Since the Outlaws sold all tickets and did everything as GA, fans were showing up at 8:00 PM after time trials and wanted to sit in row 30 and squeezed in in seats that shouldn't have been used because they didn't want to go early like those sitting in those seats did.
Unfortunately, the racetrack took all the blame in the local television media and here we are 2 weeks later and the Outlaws are still not acknowledging their part in it.
This put the Fairboard and track in a tight spot IMO, and there is no answer that makes everyone happy.
Do you continue to race and have the same thing in Mid-September with the Late Models?
Do you cancel and make people mad?
Do you not cancel and have more restrictions put on your business by the state or require fans to wear masks (and take their ire on social media) and then make them more mad when you have security telling people to put their mask on or they will have to leave the property?
IMO, it SUCKS as a race fan that they canceled. As a resident, they likely did the right thing given the current positivity rate in our County (14.9% as of 8/24/20) which consists of Knoxville, Pella, Pleasantville, Melcher-Dallas and Bussey (roughly 20,000 people).
From the rumors I heard during the One and Only event, Dingus got a warning from the state on Thursday about enforcing social distancing inside the bar/fences / On Friday they got fined and warned that if they couldn't enforce it that the state would be pulling their license for a period of one year, effectively putting them out of business.
This puts AJ in a tight spot as well as the State says he can have 100% capacity, but it's up to him to enforce social distancing (not sure how you do that with drunk people).
As far as one of the earlier posts saying the City Council was meeting about it, not true. The City has ZERO jurisdiction on the Fairgrounds even though it is inside the city limits. The Marion County Board of Supervisors has some control, but not much as they have leased the property to the Marion County Fair Association.