Ms. St. Pierre, without in any way meaning to insult you, your comments simply ignore the marketing aspects of drag racing. If racers were allowed to determine when and where the races took place we might have one venue hosting five races – which would be disastrous in every respect.
You suggest giving extra races to zMax Dragway in Charlotte, yet the overwhelming evidence from the two races in 2011 is that they were financial busts. The fans clearly could care less about four-wide racing, which they’ve demonstrated by their unwillingness to purchase tickets. I don’t believe it’s a stretch to suggest they’ll have the same pathetic turnout of fans in 2012.
As to the fall race, there has never been a financially successful drag race in the Southeast after Labor Day. High school and college football rules, and motorsports suffers as a result of that shift in area fan interests.
Toby Graham is correct in pointing out the numerous ways in which Southern Californians can spend their entertainment dollars, and yes, they darn sure are fickle.
And yes, they need to change their marketing efforts, because even with new plans and concepts, they aren’t working.
There is something else at work here, and while I don’t have a single shred of statistical information to back this up, I suspect that a lot of people are so thrashed out from dealing with the traffic Monday through Friday, that it will take something extra-special to get them back in their cars on the weekend. I lived out there for 25 years and cannot understand how anyone can deal with that mess on a daily basis.
I wonder how many prospective ticket buyers, already emotionally used up by their daily drive, looked out the window on Friday or Saturday morning and said, “I’m not driving all the way out there to sit in the rain.” There’s no excuse for Sunday, when it was gorgeous, but maybe by then a lot of them simply said “The hell with it. I’m too tired to go.”
Chris Cook, if your scenario of Pomona somehow going away were to come to pass, NHRA would not wait until mid-March to stage its first race. By then every single bit of media momentum would be on NASCAR’s side.
Bakersfield needs far more than “nominal improvements” to bring it up to national event standards. It has lousy access, not nearly enough area hotels to accommodate the competitors and out of town fans, the pits are far too small and badly need repaving. Not now or ever a national event venue. If NHRA thought that place would work they would have done it long ago.
One final point. It’s incredibly easy to sit back and suggest we start the season here, then go there, then over here, and close out the year with the Finals at that place over there.
While you’re making up your schedule in your head you’re not even thinking about competitive NASCAR events within a reasonable driving distance of your race, you haven’t considered the fact that on your date is the State Fair, which draws 2 million visitors in 30 days, you haven’t considered the massive rock concert around the corner, nor have you considered that weekend is Rivalry Weekend, and your event town and everything around it is already booked by 70,000 crazed football fans.
In other words, there’s a heck of a lot more involved with making up a schedule than just slamming out dates. I know that NHRA works closely with other forms of motorsports to construct a schedule that works best for the racers and the organization. We may not like every aspect of it – I know a lot of people don’t – but by and large it’s a compromise, and we have to live with those adjustments.
Jon Asher
Senior Editor
CompetitionPlus.cm
