TO ED ARCURI
I respectfully disagree with your analysis of the Pikes Peak International situation.
I totally agree with you about there not being an “encroachment problem” (five yards, still first down!).
Unlike hard core fans of any form of racing, who will drive whatever distance is required to get to an event, tracks can’t survive without regular attendance by casual fans. They might come out but once a year, but that can be enough to keep a facility going. Without them it’s doomed to failure.
People simply won’t drive from Denver and its environs or from Colorado Springs to PPIR even though the drive isn’t that far. It’s just “too far” for them, hence the track’s impending failure.
If the planners of PPIR had studied the results of Ontario Motor Speedway they might have changed their minds on the location. When Ontario was built it was a state of the art facility, perfect for round track racing, road course operations and drag racing, BUT at the time of its construction the massive bedroom communities that now surround the area were nothing but empty fields, and people simply would not make the 80 to 100 mile drive from the even-then heavily populated areas of the San Fernando Valley or Orange County or even Riverside.
Look at the now successful California Speedway in Fontana, which is no more than a few miles from the old Ontario location. It “works” because there are literally hundreds of thousands of new residents living within 30 miles of the track. There were no such communities in the days of Ontario, and that’s why it failed, not from mismanagement or anything else. They just couldn’t get the fans to make the drive to the track.
The same thing is impacting PPIR. There’s nothing wrong with the track or its location, but people are basically lazy, and driving what they may consider to be “too far” is a track killer.
Jon Asher
