Aren’t really my thing either.But in all fairness I will fall asleep watching just about anything on tv.My wife(god rest her soul) used to get mad as a wet hen when I wanted to stay home on Sundays to watch the Nascar race and would fall asleep 30 laps into it.Being there in person is just a whole different experience be it Monster Trucks,a drag race,road course or whatever.Its just a distinctively different atmosphere.As far as Orlando Speed World goes I don’t know the situation there but even if it was in terrible shape what would cost less?Fixing the place back up or buiding a whole new facility? Festival Park in Zephyrhills might be a good candidate for someone to try to do something with since it apparently rarely gets used.
People Should look into this class Wild Thing Karts very afordible. Stock chassis no shocks. Looks like mini sprint car. Sealed Engine in all classes including Senior Division. They race all over New England. Tires last whole season. As do sealed engines. only drawback i saw was they run on methanol which is safer than gasoline even thou it is more expensive. Thanks Bill Ask any people from Stafford Srpings Motor Speedway who race here now
Bill, thanks for your input. That class sounds like a good way to keep everyone entertained.
I would like to clarify one thing; methanol is 1/3 the price of racing gas. I buy it by the barrel and am paying about $3.70/gallon, but racing gas is $10+.
Those karts look like a 1/4 midget with a wing.The problem there is could they draw much interest in people to build them or people to pay cash to watch them? You have mini cups here now and I have never even seen a double digit field of those in the nine years I’ve been here.Then you have tq midgets here that once again can’t put a ten car field on the track.
The sad and painful fact is… racing is dying… and I have no idea how to save it. It breaks my heart that my favorite entertainment/sport is slowly disappearing. I saw my first “jalopy” stock car race at 16th Street Speedway in Indianapolis in 1954. I drove my first race in a go-kart at Whiteland Raceway (Indiana) in 1961. Built and raced my first stock car in 1969 at Indy Raceway Park. At every one of those venues the pits and grandstands were always stuffed to overflowing. It seemed like every little town of 5,000 or more had some kind of race track - go-karts, jalopies, stock cars, midgets & sprints, motorcycle flat-track, or a drag strip. Half the service stations in every town had a race car sitting out front. It was that way into the late 1960s. Then tracks started closing; why? There are several reasons.
Liability insurance for the tracks skyrocketed making operational costs untenable for some track owners. As race parts manufacturers entered the picture, car costs started rising, driving out a lot of “shoestring” racers (I was one of those). That trend continues to this day, causing car counts to drop. Too few competitors turns racing into a boring parade, the spectators stop coming, the track can’t afford to keep operating.
The bottom line is - money is killing racing! Too much of it in the wrong places and way too little where it’s needed.
[QUOTE=meangreen;176199]The sad and painful fact is… racing is dying… and I have no idea how to save it. It breaks my heart that my favorite entertainment/sport is slowly disappearing. I saw my first “jalopy” stock car race at 16th Street Speedway in Indianapolis in 1954. I drove my first race in a go-kart at Whiteland Raceway (Indiana) in 1961. Built and raced my first stock car in 1969 at Indy Raceway Park. At every one of those venues the pits and grandstands were always stuffed to overflowing. It seemed like every little town of 5,000 or more had some kind of race track - go-karts, jalopies, stock cars, midgets & sprints, motorcycle flat-track, or a drag strip. Half the service stations in every town had a race car sitting out front. It was that way into the late 1960s. Then tracks started closing; why? There are several reasons.
Liability insurance for the tracks skyrocketed making operational costs untenable for some track owners. As race parts manufacturers entered the picture, car costs started rising, driving out a lot of “shoestring” racers (I was one of those). That trend continues to this day, causing car counts to drop. Too few competitors turns racing into a boring parade, the spectators stop coming, the track can’t afford to keep operating.
The bottom line is - money is killing racing! Too much of it in the wrong places and way too little where it’s needed.[/QUOTE]
agree meangreen you forgot to mention what also helped ruined racing the poor teching and the guys that the only they could win was by cheating. the race tracks when they did catch them they didn’t punish them enough they should have taken all their points away suspended them a few races.
[QUOTE=Boneman;176162]Bill, thanks for your input. That class sounds like a good way to keep everyone entertained.
I would like to clarify one thing; methanol is 1/3 the price of racing gas. I buy it by the barrel and am paying about $3.70/gallon, but racing gas is $10+.[/QUOTE]
And they are great for an inside venue.You could put them with tq midgets,micro sprints,mini cups etc and build a whole inside event around them.That part I get.I just dont think as far as the existing tracks go it would draw a lot of interest pitside or otherwise.I can see the cost effective factor it’s the interest level I’m sceptical about.
