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https://www.knoxvilleraceway.com/Article/2457/rico-abreu-sails-to-8000-all-stars-score-at-knoxville

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Is Knoxville that empty every Saturday night? 51 410's and 52 360's. Knoxville was the best show in the country last night. I would have thought the frontsretch grandstands would have been at least half full. 

A

Please remember that those grandstands are built for the Nationals crowd.  I would estimate they hold around 20,000 in the frontstretch.  So even a 5,000 person crowd looks small and has plenty of room to spread out.  And a 10,000 crowd for an All Star race isn't realistic.

Signature here.

RIght, & who engineeered it this time?

Macri's old man?

Yeah,  nowhere close to 20,000 seating capacity on the frontstrech...

The All Stars being in town isn't going to make the surrounding population larger.  All those fans at the Nationals plan their vacation around those dates and flock to Knoxville from all over the US and to some extent all over the world.  They increase the popoulation something like four or five times.  Where were all of those extra people supposed to come from last night?

Stan Meissner

Frontstretch 12,969 capacity

Backstretch 7,386 capacity

From Knoxville Raceway's web page

Ok, so I guessed wrong.  Stan made my point for me better than I did.  Large capacity grandstands with a slightly larger than normal crowd is still going to look tiny.

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I know they are large grandstands, I've been there, but from the flo cameras it looked like a few hundred people. Maybe the camera angles missed some but it's sad that 2 great fields in 2 great classes doesn't draw a big crowd. 

A

I was not there.  However, I've been there quite a few times for the World of Outlaws in June.  While sitting in the crowd, it is relatively packed during these shows and I always think "wow, what a great turnout!"  Then, when I watch the replay on TV, it looks like no one is there.  As I said, I cannot speak for the crowd that was there Saturday night.   I can tell you though, whatever the crowd looked like from TV, it was likely much, much larger than it appeared!

Parents said it was above average crowd. Say it was 40-50% full that's 5000-7000 ppl roughly. To put in perspective Jacksonville Illinois hosts a WoO show and the grand stands sell out at 2000 tickets. Then some pit stands and standing room only are sold. I was watching on tv and had to explain the the wife's family the exact scenario that has to be described on here usually yearly for those not familiar with the track. It's really confusing to those on the outside to see the bottom rows bare. Mind you that with 100 plus haulers in the infield the bottom 10-15 rows had probably 1/2 the track blocked from being able to see the track.

{ was there, went to the Lake Ozark Speedway, I-70 and the Knoxville portion of the midwest swing. The racers in the pits and people with fan pit passes seemed to me to out number the fans in the stands. I-70 looked to be a much larger crowd in the stands looking at them from the pits while the Knoxville fans in the stands seemed to be smaller. I did notice the top of the Brian Clausen Suite Tower was packed as  well as most of the suites in the tower as well as over the Sprint Car museum. I have no idea what they all would hold but it had to add a decent amount to the total attendance. I agree however that  the crowd in the stands looked small to me also as observed from the pits.  

The older I get the faster I was

I've seen it treated both ways, a very solid attendance get bashed because not every seat is filled in a large grandstand, but conversely sometimes it's a bad crowd no matter how big the grandstands are. Like night 1 of the 360 Nats will make yesterday look like a Nationals type crowd in comparison. I've also seen pics of the frontstretch grandstand at Knoxville for a regular show and it legit looks like than 1 thousand are there. 

I don't doubt that last night was a solid crowd and hopefully a money maker, but let's face it the Nationals now more than ever cover the bills for Marion County. 

Just to note and also cant see on tv there are 33 front stretch suites, 20 Suites at the Hall of Fame, and 12 Suites at the Bryan Clauson building adding another 1,000 people or so. 

It actually was impressively full earlier before the Features. Seems like after the crash or maybe even a little before with Sammy & Franek it really thinned out. It got to running late and I imagine a lot of people opted to leave before the Feature...

It was above average crowd... A quite of few left early after it started getting real late.

Here comes FatAlbert on here to say all I do it bitch but Knoxville has got to figure out how to speed up the program... it was late even before the Franek incident. Hard to watch and stay up on TV but luckily the late models at FALS were exceptional to keep me entertained. My parents said lots of people from Weilers there (free tickets) that left early. Not good for making new fans. Sure they had 100 cars but 360 qualifying is a drag. These ppl show up at 6:30 wait around and see hot laps and qualifying until almost 9 then a few heats and it's 10 pm and they are ready to go home. We can all agree mains are where it's at but these type of people rarely get to stay late enough to see that. It's just an observation and constructive criticism. I love racing and am there till 4am for a one lane rain delayed show during nationals weeek and still work in the morning. Most are not like me though. 

I thought the crowd was larger than a good "regular" Saturday night race. I saw a few Aussie's walking around too, which I don't think is uncommon for this time of year. 

Like everyone else has said, you put 5k people in a probably the tallest grandstands that the sprints race on, it looks like not many are there. However from someone who's there weekly, there were more than a normal Saturday night's race, plus the Weiler team members.

IA DIRTY: Yes, I think the night dragged on but remember there were a few reds in the 410 feature alone, which delays things at least 10 mins, even for a rollover. How long was Franek's red? The 410's could have been ready to go and in the staging area before the 360s were over, but idk how much this is the All Stars, and how much this is Knoxville, or a combo of both. 

I don't really think there were that many delays throughout the night, excluding on track wrecks, jumped started etc. If I were to suggest an improvement is for the cars to be lined up, after one lap, after push off, not 2 - 3 laps. I know a lot of drivers are doing double doody, so maybe this is why less push to speed up the program. 

Keep It Real

I already know you always side with the track or organization no matter the circumstances   but first heat green flag was 8:51 pm. That's my point. Your a couple bad wrecks from a 1am finish with that many cars. Agreed on the multiple laps after push. Keep it to one. Also when the heat is over push the next one immediately. Qualifying has to get quicker. Just does. Lots of wrecks yes unfortunately and made lots of the races have very little flow to them.  "double doody" haha idk if that was on purpose or accident but well done. See you this weekend. whats your schedule for work and races like?