Chris Madden on dirt on dirt!

[MasterSbilt_Racer]

There is nothing wrong with the invert, if your the best prove it. The elephant in the room that never get solved is the cars need less aero and a more racey track, if the track is racey you will see passing, if not you see a boring race like we saw Saturday. It wasnt enough to spend 40,000 on engines, now its 65,000, the outrageous shock packages, 200,000 dollar plus hauler set-ups. All the extra money that has be spent to discourage the weekly drivers and potential new drivers to enter the sport has really done nothing to make racing any better. It has hurt it. I see a day in the not so distant future where the Lucas and the WOO will have their cars and the regional tracks will have their cars. You will see Lucas and WOO become like Nascar, getting 15 to 20 cars a race reguardless of its prestige, look at the hillbilly 100, 35 cars there, in the valley of 90 plus cars within 2 hours of that track. It may be the only thing left to save this sport or encourage new talent to spend their money to race. The other question is, what format does Eldora fall to for the World and Dream, my hunch, not Lucas or WOO , but that wont keep the big names away, it might actually be good for the sport. who knows. We can all keep on saying the health of the sport has never been better, How many on here support their local track, check out the dwindling late model counts everywhere, even a lot of tracks in Illinois,Ohio, PA, and Kentucky (where car counts were never a problem) cant get more than 10-15 on a regular basis and a lot of empty seats.

I'm still not following "the crazy shock expense" cries, but you are spot on about aero woes hurting the product on the track.

[play4kps]

I did some research and compiled a list of car counts recently for a few tracks.
Oakshade 24 cars (pretty good)
Fairbury 24 cars " "
Atomic 17 cars
Portsmouth 14-20 cars
Florence 13 cars
Moler 8 to 15 cars
Farmers city 15 cars
Merritt 13 cars. not sure about special event last night.
Spoon river 11 cars
I 96 14 cars
Tazwell does not even run supers anymore.
Clarksville 6 to 8 cars.
Bulls gap has gone to Crates.
That list does not look too promising.

[dirtcrazy4u]

Many guys now run regional series races. Today's costs limit a lot of guys to race 1 night a week anymore. In some area's there are just to many tracks and not enough cars running multiple nights anymore. Some have gone the route of only racing regional series extra paying shows.

[JabberJaws83]

Some drivers seam to forget that the fans pay their salary.

[lw82]

Invert should be 4. No wheel. 5 or 6 like it always seems to be allows one good night and one finish in teens put you on pole like pierce and 0 with a 4 your guaranteed 2nd row start so better chance than row 3 where more bad can happen

[popk77]

Watched the NASCAR race at Indy today on TV & World 100 at Eldora last night on DOD. Indy had a lot of empty seats & Eldora was jammed packed. NASCAR lines the starts up the way Mr. Madden says to do it. I think is how many fans that come to the the race is a good way to decide who is doing it right. I was surprised that Mr. Madden wasn't racing at Indy today! They are the ones who would treat him fair!

[Mason87]

That's like saying a high school stadium was more packed than an nfl stadium. Whole lot more seats to fill

[popk77]

Jammed pack is jammed pack, empty seats are empty seats, Are you saying that NASCAR is setting a attendance records like Eldora did last night

[Mason87]

Your right packed is packed but I think you missed the point. Everyone knows nascar is losing attendance but to compare the biggest latemodel race of the year to a normal nascar race doesn't exactly tell anything. Go to Daytona its jammed packed I've seen more waiting for the bathroom than at eldora

[popk77]

WOW now the race at Indy is a normal nascar race, You are the one missing the point' Late Model Dirt fans love what Eldora is doing, this is the way that Earl did it.

[jr29]

Politics in this thread ? What a joke.

A few years ago a crate beat Madden for a win in Georgia or SC and Madden whined that it wasn't a super late model and he actually won the SLM race. That told me everything I needed to know about him.
He said his car wouldn't go for the first few laps after a restart. Maybe if he had fixed that he would have been closer to the front.
And good for Dustin Jarrett for telling him the invert has been in place forever.

Perhaps the greatest group of asphalt short trackers ever were the guys in Wisconsin in the 1960's-1980's. (not a nice word)(not a nice word)(not a nice word)(not a nice word) Trickle, Tom Reffner, Scott Hansen, Alan Kulwicki, etc...... Those guys dealt with huge inverts every race and viewed it as a point of pride that they were able to get to the front. Why such a different attitude from so many of these dirt guys today ?

[dirtcrazy4u]

It has been proven many times. Inverts make for good racing.
Nascrap, sends guys to the back all the time, and what does tv do, they report on that guy coming thru the field. Busch has done it repeatedly. Personally I think to cut costs they should eliminate time trails and have them pick a number.
Indy car is nothing more than crate racing with engineers getting the most speed out of a car. Your time means everything, the rest of the field has to find tenths of a second to even make a race of it.

I think the heat races at major dirt shows should be a minimum of 15 laps. You pull a pill for your heat race, line em up and race your way to a good starting spot. Forget passing points, a guy coming from 2 rows behind you automatically has a advantage.

[late model chaser]

Anybody hear any numbers on how many people were there?

[fryefan]

Inverts, keep it in the minor leagues. Gimmicks to set a starting field is wrong wrong wrong and unfair. Handicapping a driver in these crown jewel events is not what competition is about. Madden is right as was Davenport after Cedar Lake.

You need to stick with NASCAR racing. They are right up your alley. Fast cars up front and freight-train racing.

[fryefan]

I did some research and compiled a list of car counts recently for a few tracks.
Oakshade 24 cars (pretty good)
Fairbury 24 cars " "
Atomic 17 cars
Portsmouth 14-20 cars
Florence 13 cars
Moler 8 to 15 cars
Farmers city 15 cars
Merritt 13 cars. not sure about special event last night.
Spoon river 11 cars
I 96 14 cars
Tazwell does not even run supers anymore.
Clarksville 6 to 8 cars.
Bulls gap has gone to Crates.
That list does not look too promising.

The future of weekly late model racing is crate racing (it has been headed that way for a long time). There will still be open late models that run regional and national special events.