tool name
closeKentucky track deal in jeopardy?
THATSRACIN.COM OPINION
DAVID POOLE
The Charlotte Observer
Wednesday, Aug. 06, 2008
A midweek peak into NASCAR and other motorsports, along with some thoughts on other topics from the Observer's beat writer:
OBSERVATIONS
No sale at Kentucky Speedway?
Speedway Motorsports Inc. may not wind up buying Kentucky Speedway after all. SMI has until Aug. 18 to decide whether to complete the $78 million deal that includes the assumption of $63 million in debt.
"I can't answer definitively whether or not we would go forward with the transaction," Bill Brooks, the company's chief financial officer, said during a conference call with financial analysts Wednesday.
The track in Sparta, Ky., isn't going to be on the 2009 Sprint Cup schedule. Marcus Smith, chief operating officer and president of SMI, said the the company would consider moving a Cup date from one of its current tracks to Kentucky if the deal does close.
"It's one of the potential options that we would have," Smith said.
More isn't always better
It's 126 points from Kasey Kahne in seventh to David Ragan in 14th in the current Sprint Cup standings. Only 12 drivers will make the Chase for the Sprint Cup, so the five races before that field is set should be interesting.
How much more interesting would those five races be if only 10 drivers made the Chase? That's how it was in the first three years of the new format, and I still think NASCAR made a mistake in increasing the Chase field to 12.
MY TWO CENTS
It fascinates me how two or three times each year I get lectured about how great road course racing is and about how the fact that I don't care for it shows I am out of touch.
It makes me wonder why all these wildly popular road racing series that offer up this tremendous kind of racing on a weekly basis aren't far and away America's favorite form of motorsports.
How in goodness' name can it be that NASCAR, which stages 36 of the 38 annual events in its top series on oval tracks, has emerged as the country's dominant form of motorsports?
The IndyCar Series runs several of its races on road or street courses. The Grand American and American Le Mans series run on road courses. Competitively, or so I am told, that form of racing is vastly superior to oval-track racing. It's a much better test of a driver's abilities and skills, I am told. It requires more skill, more talent and more concentration, I am informed, to turn right AND left.
And yet, if you combined the television audiences of the typical races from IndyCar, from Grand Amercian and from ALMS, you wouldn't get close to the average audience for a NASCAR Sprint Cup race.
Some races on street courses, like Long Beach and St. Petersburg, Fla., draw nice crowds. But the fans who come to those races spend a greater portion of the time not seeing cars during a lap than they do seeing cars.
There are some NASCAR tracks that are so big fans can't see all the way around them, but that's not how it is most of the time.
On average, there's no question that more people buy tickets for and watch NASCAR races on ovals more than watch all kinds of American road racing combined.
But road racing, I am told, is so much better.