Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

Open tire rule:  several top racing groups have tried open tire rule.   I believe that in the major sanctioning groups, with in their divisions that tried "open tire" or gave a choice of different manufacturers, were not pleased with the reults and went back to a single source and type(s).  

I don't know enough to agree or disagreel with your post. I do know I've attended 3 Chili Bowls. In recent years I've relied on Flo. Whether I'm there, or not, those stands are full, especially later in the week. Streaming lets those of us that can't attend see the action. Maybe some of us will attend a future event. I think the same situation is true with the Knoxville Nationals. Full stands but many thousand more watching online. Traveling series can use streaming to entice people to come to an event near them. Flo is a bargain and I expect to see an increase in the annual fee sometime soon. DirVision is way too expensive for me so I completely miss at WoO events. I don't see the value, especially compared to Flo.

Flo will not raise their price as the have the luxury of thousands of subscribers for all the other sports they cover.  Basically Flo is a streaming sports channel, Dirtvision is a streaming racing channel that offers one sport.  FloSports has deeper pockets.

Flo will not raise their price as the have the luxury of thousands of subscribers for all the other sports they cover.  Basically Flo is a streaming sports channel, Dirtvision is a streaming racing channel that offers one sport.  FloSports has deeper pockets.

I've started reading Strowser's posts in the voice of Pee Wee Herman. They're easier to put into context that way.

I've started reading Strowser's posts in the voice of Pee Wee Herman. They're easier to put into context that way.

Any thoughts about what they weren't pleased with? 

I've always wondered why a simple rule that required a minimum tire hardness before and after a race wouldn't work.

I've started reading Strowser's posts in the voice of Pee Wee Herman. They're easier to put into context that way.

Murphy, I almost always believe that a "free market" aproach means that everyone wins.  Since businesses need to be competetive with each other, typically better products with better prices will come out.  The one (or the only one I can think of right now) exception is racing tires.  This youtube video is a very interesting watch as to why it doesn't work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu5b8oYwiQM .  If you don't want to watch it, I'll try to remember the main bullet points.  Goodyear was purchased by some company and NASCAR was concerned that this company might not want to make racing tires anymore.  They asked Hoosier to get involved.  They allowed both Goodyear and Hoosier to provide tires at every race, I think the years were 88-89 and then again in 94.  But the one rule they had was BOTH manufacturers had to bring enough tires to every race for EVERYONE.  It was not just the people who had contracts to run their tires, EVERYONE.  As I'm sure everyone can see, this is a huge expense to bring semi truck loads of tires that might not get used at all.  Not sure how much they got into it but the "competition" started coming out, and both Goodyear and Hoosier were trying to make faster tires.  We all know what a faster tire means.  The thing I still remember about this video that I think is hilarious is niether Goodyear or Hoosier would call their blowouts "blowouts", they would refer to a blowout as a "rapid loss of air".  Basically to sell tires, BOTH manufacturers had to sacrifice safety for speed or tire sales.

I know some of you might be thinking "these are taxi cabs, were talking about real race cars here".  But these are still the issues I see that will correlate to sprint car racing.  I assume it's very expensive to develop a sprint car tire.  I think you would still have to mandate that all tire manufacturers bring enough tires for all the cars (just look at all the conspiracy theorists over certain drivers getting longer in the work area, imagine if only Brad Sweet was allowed to run American Racer tires on championship night and won by 1/2 lap?).  And then you get into the competition side of things.  two things the manufacturers are going to do to sell tires is by speed and price, which is great usually, unfortunately with racing tires both of those are going to sacrifice safety.