Where Have All The Car Counts Gone?
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Where Have All The Car Counts Gone?
By: Pete MacDonald
It’s no secret that every year around this time car counts dip slightly around this time. Everyone is either out of money or close to being out of money and they save what they can to race the big end of the year races. It happens every year.
But is it me or have car counts, at least in the north east, been down everywhere throughout the year in 2015? Very few race tracks have had an increase in car counts over the course of the year. Some speedways up in New York state have been floating right around the 14 to 16 Modifieds weekly, while other race tracks have had as low as nine to 12. Even some of the support classes seem to struggle with some tracks just barely getting a full field. With the Crate and Open Sportsman divisions it seems to depend on the race track, with some race tracks averaging anywhere between 19-28 cars. Street Stocks on the other hand, it seems that nowhere is getting a full field of them anymore.
Why is it? It could be due to bad surfaces at some places and politics at others, but I believe people just don’t have the funds to keep going back to the race track. And the people that do have the funds are part of the problem. They can destroy whatever they want because they can have a brand new one next week, while the guy they destroyed has to take a month off. It seems to be happening more and more in the Sportsman classes than anywhere else.
A Modified anymore has just become too much money. You need to put on new tires weekly and constantly have the newest, freshest, lightest piece you can get in order to be competitive. End result? Speed costs money. On the plus side, the Modified guys respect each other a hell of a lot more than some of the support divisions so less stuff is being torn up.
Crate and Open Sportsman classes, while economically balanced, you have a lot of Johnny Richkid’s that hold their foot to the firewall for 20 laps because they can afford to knock a front clip off and come back next week. Then you have some guys with a ton of experience who simply can’t afford to run a Modified but can afford a Sportsman car that do discourage a lot of guys from wanting to try it because they are getting beat by experience. And then there are also some drivers out there with $20,000 in a Sportsman motor to win $500. But that’s another topic for another time.
Street Stocks on the other hand seem to be a dying breed. Take a minute and think about it. How many junkyards can you go to and find a Camaro or Monte Carlo that you can bust out the windows, add a roll cage and turn into a race car anymore? Not many, if any at all.
Sprint cars are another place where speed costs money. 360 Sprint cars aren’t what they used to be and what you can build a competitive 360 for, you can go 410 racing at virtually the same price. 305’s seem to be maintaining but those 360 drivers that can’t afford it anymore are starting to trickle down into the 305 world and spending some decent coin on motors. While I was very skeptical at first the 602 Wingless class that Accord and New Egypt Speedway’s have started, it has slowly started to take off with these cars being available for right around $12,000 turnkey and are pretty cool to watch.
The only places I see massive car counts anymore are in small cars. Why is that? They certainly don’t seem to be any cheaper and the payouts seem to be a lot less. But why? Is it more fun? Is there less BS? Somebody fill me in. What is the answer?
I can’t pinpoint one thing. If every race track ran everything perfectly I really don’t think everybody would still have the funds to race and be competitive week in and week out. But that’s just my opinion.
What do you think can fix the car count problem in our sport? Let us know over on the Racers Guide Forum’s or I can be emailed at racersguide@gmail.com or I’m on Twitter @PMacDonald51. Thanks for reading!
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