ALMS races on infield road coures

[Jared]

I must say that I hate the idea of hosting ALMS races at Charlotte and Texas Motor Speedways. It's the same idea as why people think CART shouldn't race at ovals. The places hold around 200,000 seats for NASCAR, and when the sportscars come there, the place looks empty.
The tracks are not that exciting, and whatever means of slowing the cars on the oval part is usually pathetic (like the tire chicane at Charlotte-destroyed every ten laps).

The only oval infield track that should hold a sportscar race is Daytona, out of sheer tradition. Holding ALMS races at REAL road courses would better serve the series, IMHO.

What do you think?

[KC]

The problem that occurs is when the series begins to run out of proper road courses to hold events at. Holding a road race at TMS allowed fans to at least see in person the race instead of watching them run at Road Atlanta again or Road America again. I have nothing against any circuit. The only road course in and around the Southwest of America is at Waco, Texas World Speedway. It is not up to safety spec and standard and will not be in the near future. The roval circuits do not offer near the excitement as Mosport or Lime Rock or Laguna Seca but they offer a race to fans without one.

[Heeltoe6]

What were the attendance numbers. If they weren't up to snuff, drop 'em.

Infield cours can be dcent. Homsetead is quite good if they run the proper configuration. So is the one at nhis(a;though it is much too short for an alms race). The good rovals(except daytona) use only the straights on the ovals and not the turns, whcich are so unnatural for a true road course, especially when the track had high banking(tms or cms). Plus many add stupid(but necessary) chicanes where there shouldn't be any(and the one at cms....tyres...come on!) because of fears of safety and also attrition, but really the chicnaes often cause more problems of their own.

That ebing said, the existence of of garra(and its low to no snactioning fee) does limit alms' options. Mid Ohio, Road America, Watkins Glen, LRP, all course alms should be running are out of contention. So what does that leave alms. Not a whole lot thast they don't already run at. The only one that comes to mind is Heartland Park Topeka Kansas, and the ability to handle a large race there is questionable(I know they could not handle cart, and Nascar trucks outgrew them). But still, I'd rather have that than say a roval. Virginia International Raceway might be another possibility, but not immediately, they still need some more facilities to suport an alms race I would think.
Brainerd would probably be in the same category as VIR, it might have been adequate for trans-am 15 years ago, but it hasn't kept up with the times, and I don't could even accomodate trans-am now, let alone alms.

Another possibility is to look into running some street races, but I really don't think the confines of a street race would be good for an endurance race with three classes of cars on the track. Maybe a really nicely designed one, but I can't think of one that would allow lmps to pass slower gts easily.

[Liz]

I have just watched the ALMS race at Texas Motor Speedway and it looked to me as if nobody was there. I am sure there were people there but they didn't show up on television. The track itself didn't look that bad, especially when it got dark, but it must have been discouraging for the pilots to have such a slim audience.

I don't think those prototype cars would go well on street courses; they are too big and the track conditions would not be safe for them.

[Chris S]

The stands at TMS were quite full for the ALMS race -- starting at NASCAR T1 and continuing through NASCAR T2 -- my guess is approx. 4,500 to 5,000 people seated. Most of the people in the stands were in this area, and well up in the seating areas, hidden from view under the suites (they could probably see most of the infield from there). Remember, this is not a race you can easily judge how full the seats were. The stadium holds over 200,000, so anything under 100,000 is going to look pretty bad. Also, there are always folks on the infield grandstands, etc. The fence behind our corner (in the SVWC paddock) was completely crowded with folks in lawn chairs. Several other paddock-side grandstands had been set up along the infield section of the track.

Several other problems with TMS -- there was no way of knowing until about 10 days before the race if it was really going to happen as the infield paving was not completed until then. The Dallas Cowboys were playing football that night, definitely not something you want to be up against in Dallas! The temps at 6:00 p.m., an hour before the race, were still well in the 100+ area. Lastly, but not least, the "advertising" for the race was not great; a friend mentioned that there was 1/2 page in the newspaper and nothing on television, although I hear that the Panoz-Sanchez group did a lot of on-site advertising during the week before the race, including shopping malls, etc., with the Trans Am teams and their cars.

All that being said, the prices for the tickets were not obscene -- if I remember correctly around $50 for the three days, including paddock. Compare that to a NASCAR race. The true test will be if there is a good crowd at the March 1-4, 2001 race. According to the Dallas newspaper on Monday, the contracts have been signed for ALMS to be there, SCCA Pro is saying that SVWC will almost definitely be there, but the big question is whether or not Trans Am will be there (the article stated that it was a 50/50 chance, depending on CART's schedule).

This was my first time at any kind of oval race (except the Indy 500), and I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the event. At the same time, there is not the feel you get when attending a race at a road course or even a street course, where the fans are right up against the track. With everyone sitting in "stands", well away from the track, it seems to blunt the excitement a bit. Being used to working corners at places like Mid-Ohio (where the fans are parked only yards behind you in their motorhomes), and the effect of having masses of people sitting on berms just across the track from you, gives a real sense of drama to the racing. However, road racing needs to make concessions to the masses in America, and rovals and street courses are our best bet to increase the number of fans.

BTW, coolest thing about TMS are the condominiums you can buy that sit over the track, just past the exit of NASCAR T2. How about living in a really neat condo, overlooking a race track? Sounds cool to me.

Chris Safranek

[Liz]

The only Oval I have been to is Fontana, and I didn't like it much even before Greg Moore was killed there. But watching the USGP Preview show last night, the Europeans seem to believe that Americans will not watch road course races, that they must be seated in grandstands and be able to see the entire race from one place.

Personally the fascination of Le Mans for me was the opportunity to wander from corner to corner, and the way the race changed from hour to hour as the temperature, light conditions, composition of the competitors, and even the sorts and conditions of people lining the track or scattered about in the ACO Grandstand changed. It was as if I could experience the whole race, instead of having it brought to me by room service and spoon-fed.

Besides, on the superspeedway the cars went too fast for me to have any idea what anybody was doing.

Maybe I am just used to Mosport, which has no grandstands at all and just lets you go wherever you like.

[Chris S]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Heeltoe6
The only one that comes to mind is Heartland Park Topeka Kansas, and the ability to handle a large race there is questionable(I know they could not handle cart, and Nascar trucks outgrew them).

Actually, the NASCAR trucks never came close to outgrowing Heartland (I worked every truck race at HPT, either in timing or on corner). The trucks are no longer at HPT for many reasons, but mostly because Winston Cup is coming to Kansas City.

HPT handles the NHRA Craftsman Nationals every year (it used to handle two of these events). Spectators for the four days are in the mid-90,000 range, and the truck series never came close to filling the completely paved paddock the way the drag boys do. Except for not having garages, Heartland Park could handle any series currently racing in the United States -- the problem is getting the fans to come.

Chris Safranek

[Heeltoe6]

Point taken. I meant more that HPTK wasn't willing to pay an increasing sanctioing fee for the cts(given poor turnout). And, as you say, the fee was probably raised artificially to get out of the situation in prep. for the new kansas city speedway.

Anwyays, here's Brock yates take on attendance:
"Some have gently described the meager crowd that appeared for the recent American Le Mans Series event at Texas Motor Speedway as "small," "limited," "meager," etc. How about non-existent? A friend intimately involved with the race tells me, with a straight face, that the paid attendance was 19. That’s not nineteen-hundred or nineteen thousand, but nineteen Homo sapiens. If this is true, and he swears it is, we may have established a new record in a sport (professional sports car racing in America) where phone-booth-sized audiences have become commonplace.
Somebody better do something quick, because even Dr. Panoz does not have a bottomless bank account.
First order of business: Get the damned things off speedway infield road courses, where they can’t draw flies."
http://www.speedvision.com/pub/artic...s/000912b.html

Charlottw could be almed on Panoi'z lack of promotion and his just basically renting the track. The same cannot be said of TMS, but there were other factors as you enumerated Chris S. I agree, we should wait til next March's race to judge, but if that can't draw substabitally more people, forget TMS and the infield road courses. It was a good idea, bring the show to where the people are(instead of having to attract people to out of the way road courses), but just like it didn't workj with the irl or cart, it is not working with sportscars. Wonder how Veags will do later this year. About advertising, I have heard a lot of positive things, but it seemed it was all very close to the race date itself. The point why every series is running TMS now is that Eddie Gossage is suppose to be the king of promotion(evidence being the largest bgn and cts crowds and also the best attended irl race outside indy). But here, the results were terrible. Eddie better get hopping for nbext year. In the final analysis, the jury is still out on infield courses, but it's leaning heavily to "not a good idea." The only reason was to promote the series better but looks like they aren't doing there job in that respct(as of yet). If it continues the same way, certainly something esle other than rovals can fill out the schedule.

[Liz]

The race at Mosport was very well publicized and I believe they drew a big crowd, although it rained like a *&^%$ the day of the race and Mosport has nowhere to get out of the weather - anybody who isn't into mud and doesn't like being soaked to the bone would not find Mosport in the rain much fun. Plus it is impossible to get there without an automobile, and the access roads are narrow, and there are few hotels or restaurants or anything in the area. The track is perfect for that kind of racing though, so if you can get there, it's wonderful.

The publicity is the key. If you tell them about it, they will come ...