Atlanta's tradition wasn't enough either

Ed Clark probably had a good idea about what was coming. But he wasn’t sure until he got a call from Marcus Smith, CEO of Speedway Motorsports Inc.

“We were seeing all the things about it on the Internet, like everyone else,” Clark said a month ago, when things were about to change for Atlanta Motor Speedway. “Then I found out when Marcus called me to let me know what was going on. We told the staff two days later.”

What Clark, the track president, was told was that his track would no longer play host to two NASCAR Sprint Cup events.

One would be dropped to make room for Kentucky Speedway, another SMI property, in 2011. The March date once reserved for AMS would be removed, which means the only Cup date it has is on Labor Day weekend.

“Certainly it’s a disappointment,” Clark said. “It is not only for me, but for the staff and for our fans in the area.”

It’s also a disappointment for those who cling to NASCAR tradition and don’t appreciate change. AMS is one of the oldest speedways on the NASCAR schedule. It staged its first race, the Dixie 300, on July 31, 1960 and has had two races per season for 50 years.

“There is a lot of racing tradition in Georgia,” Clark said. “And a lot of the tradition that is NASCAR started in the north Georgia mountains.

“Atlanta is certainly tied to the sport, not to mention many of the corporations in the city. Last I heard, there were more of them in NASCAR today than in any other city.”

Tradition aside, AMS has had difficulty attracting fans to its races. No one has blamed SMI’s efforts – it spent millions to convert the track into the expansive, handsome facility it is now – or the efforts of Clark and his staff.

And the speedway has seen its share of exciting, competitive races, with speeds among the fastest in NASCAR.

But what worked against AMS, for the most part, were the weather and the abundance of professional sports and tourist attractions available in the Atlanta area.

Clark admits the track very often had vacant seats for its races.

“But you’ve got to put that into perspective,” he said. “With the tickets we did sell we could still fill up four or five other facilities that host Cup races.

“If a track has 65,000 seats and fills up, that’s good. But if you have 90,000 seats and sell 74,000 of them and have empty seats, well, people talk about the empty seats.

“Me, I’d rather have more tickets sold and those empty seats.”

The March race was always an especially tough sell. And for years, the track staged the final race of each season in November, when often a champion was crowned. But it, too, seldom sold out.

AMS willingly gave up the November race, often plagued by weather, for the Labor Day weekend last year.

“I’ll buy into the thought that Atlanta is a tough sports town,” Clark said. “But with all the events and facilities that are successful, well, they make it work.”

Clark also accepted the fact that weather worked against AMS.

“No doubt about it, the weather, especially in the first weekend of March, can be anything in Atlanta,” he said. “We’ve seen snow, we’ve seen sleet, we’ve seen rain and we’ve seen cold.

“Even if it was 60 degrees in the afternoon it was still 40 or below the night before in the campgrounds.

“But then, the other disappointing thing about this is that we tried for a number of years to get that first race moved to a more favorable time. We never could.”

A race in March is no longer of any concern to AMS.

“The general feeling we have is that a one-event weekend might do better than either one of the two we once had,” Clark said. “Last year, our first year on the Labor Day weekend, a lot more people attended and a lot more people came from out of town than they usually do. And that was with a two-day schedule.

"Now we’ve got a three-day schedule.”

Clark and his staff intend to make the most of it. Already planned, free to fans who have purchased two-day tickets, are a battle of the bands and rock concerts – including a pre-race presentation by Foreigner - driver question-and-answer sessions, a Late Model race, fireworks and more.

Fans who stay until Labor Day, Sept. 6, will get breakfast – on the house.

“You can’t sit around and be bitter,” Clark said. “We are going to do everything we can to make the one race we have successful.

“We have an event coming up on Labor Day weekend and what we’ve chosen to do is work hard on making it the best it can possibly be. We can only move forward and not look backwards.”

Will that be enough?

In Clark’s words: “Time will tell.”