No way!! 100 lap races are terrible with few exceptions! Two day shows are even worse especially for fans.
The trend seems to be 40 laps now and thats about right IMO.
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I love how Fairbury does the PDC, good show for the fans and not as much wear and tear on equipment for the teams. 25 lap qualifying features on Friday with no heat races. I used to love how Cedar Lake did the USA Nationals back when it was a 2 day show as well - time trials and 20 lap heat races Friday, each heat race was like a mini feature.
Dirt LM racing is alive and well. Don't mean to rain on anyone's parade, but there are plenty of LM racing everywhere. Now as far as the series like Lucas and Woo, I am surprised to some degree how many teams still follow them.
Dirt LM racing at local tracks has slowed down because weekly purses are competing every week with an assortment of added purse races in their areas. I have been around racing for seventy years and its healthier now than its ever been.
As a final thought, the days of large car counts are going to remain limited. Reason, drivers have other opportunities to run for added purses the same days as the big shows. Maybe the World 100 might be the last race where most promoters choose not to compete against it, but even that seems to be changing
You are fortunate to live in an area where it's not dead, but even there, I can't agree at all. When you have 10 cars taking the green at Florence Speedway, something is very wrong.
That's not even taking into account places in the Southeast where large super counts became large limited counts became meager 604 fields.
Keep paying $10,000 to win but add $10,000 to the rest of the purse. My god everyone needs to make more money to keep running.
I had a car owner tell me it cost 5-7k a weekend to unload his race car on the lucas tour. We're talking traveling to, pit passes, full paid crew, etc. Granted they haven't fielded a car now for a few years, but it gives ya an idea of what it costs to run a race team. Their shop wasn't in a ideal location for most races.
The guy I helped regionally would make a few hundred bucks when he won moler on a normal night (1200.) His shop was about 30mins away from moler.
I guess I'm the exception, but from where I live in central Kentucky, every Lucas Oil or WoO race (or any big late model race for that matter) in a 4 hour drive from me is packed to the point it's difficult to even find a decent seat or sometimes a seat at all (and I arrive when the gates open), and I won't even get into trying to park and get out. So much so that I rarely go anymore (even though I'm recently retired) in the post-Covid world. The reason I'm the exception is I'd GLADLY pay twice or more what I've been paying just to get the crowd down to a manageable size. I know this will probably ruffle some feathers, but that's just my opinion. Everyone keeps talking about running fans off, but it seems like every race I've been to in the past few years they announce a record crowd. Even if that's not the case I personally SURE haven't noticed any crowds dwindling.
There are a number of team owners and drivers not thrilled with this year's schedule. Many of them think the Midwest road trips should be combined together like this weekend and next weekend. They've made several trips that way only to get rained out.
anyone know the sanction fee a track has to pay for Lucas and WoO ?