Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
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https://www.knoxvilleraceway.com/Article/2481/aaron-reutzel-dominates-for-6000-at-knoxville-austin-mccarl-is-the-champ

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Have got to find a way to speed up the event. Even before the Goodno incident it was late. More than 1/2 of the fans left before the races were over. MORE THAN HALF! No longer a family friendly event which is a shame. Hope they think on this over the off season. Idk if I need to write letters or attend board meetings to plead with them for some solutions but where we are now is not good. Granted trucks and bikes added more time to the show but even so this has been all year. Lots of complaining online too which of course is expected but worse than normal. Things that grind my gears were: Not needed track prep that probably resulted in the extra crashes in turn three, breaks between each main were horrendous, never a car in staging, clean up of wrecks is ridiculously slow, qualifying 70 cars takes too much time, idk what else. It needs work and I will continue to beat that drum when I have a 6 year old kid who loves to go who asked if it was okay to sleep at the races. She slept from 10:30 - well past midnight when it finally got over. Bless her heart for being a trooper because I should have just left. Lessons are being learned and if no progress is made I'll probably have to limit my visits to the track and I don't miss a single night all season.

And I am commenting here hoping to catch the ear of someone important. I'm not on FB or twitter or "x" or whatever it's all called now tearing down the sport and track I love in front of passive fans who would pile on. I'm here trying to let someone know issues exist and can be improved on. I don't have the answers but something needs to be tried. I'll be excited to go back next year but last night wore on me. On to the next show. Maybe Harlan? Idk haven't heard a lick about this show but would sure like to know more. 10k to win and advertised no where. 

I didn't go last night but I agree 100% with shows dragging out. The unnecessary track work has become epidemic all over. Half the time it makes the racing worse because it's one lane hammer down until it comes back in for the last 5 laps.

Late shows are one reason I don't attend in person much anymore. On dirtvision when they are jacking around i just go do something else for a while and check in when they are racing.

Bingo!   I watch hot laps and time trials, then do something else until I hear the anthem.   Then I watch the heats.   I don't need to see the drivers pull a number out of a hat and then give Chase Raudman the same old cliched answers when he interviews them.   Complete waste of time IMO and I would think most fans feel that way.   I rarely watch the B main either.   I unmute my TV as soon as the 4-wide is done and watch the feature.   

Yes, some of these shows are way too long.   I'm not sure if any of the fans in the stands last night were actually there to see the trucks?   Seems like that would be the biggest waste of time, although the extra track prep might take that prize in most cases.  

My cousins cousin races the dirt trucks (Dutch bingo I know) but he came to see him race and sit with me and the family. First regular weekly show he's been to for years. Passive fan. Goes to nationals and chili bowl every other year probably. He had a good time but said that the night drug on. Way too long and he told his GF he would be home around midnight. He has an hour drive home. Think he got home closer to 2am. Gonna be hard to convonce him to come to a weekly show for a while. But there were probably only a handful there for the truck but I could probably count them on my hands and toes.

I've been saying for years that promoters have been shooting themselves in the foot with shows that drag on forever.   Unnecessary support classes, unnecessary intermissions, track cleanup that takes way longer than it should, wasted time between races, etc

How do you expect to make the next generation of fans if theyre literally falling asleep while you're jacking around for hours on end?

Few years back Knoxville was getting done between 10-10:30 on a somewhat regular basis.   Where has that sense of urgency went?

Every show should be run as if there is a storm coming at 10:00

This isn't just a Knoxville problem, this is a problem at almost every track I've ever been to. 

Go listened to the WoO feature and the reply then was bored so tuned into the KNIA broadcast. They were just into the first of 4 features. I think they are even in different time zones. Have to agree Kville was out late

Even though I may not know you, I 
care what most of you think!

If I remember right the 360 A was right after the trucks. Even after the long interview there were 0 cars in staging. You read that right 0. The first car in staging for the 360 A was Tony Rost who was the B main winner. Kudos to him as I would expect him to be the last in staging. Things like this are aggravating. 

Track was fine before prep and would agree it usually ends up being dominate where worked for a while until it balances back out When it was already balanced to begin with.

Your comment here should be concerning for all promoters in my mind. "Late shows are one reason I don't attend in person much anymore."

Same time zones for WoO and Knoxville on Saturday.

Definitely too much show. And let's face it, while we all love sprint cars, their crashes take a long time to clean up, and they take longer to get going so when you have 3 sprint divisions there is no reason to have a 4th one. 

I know they lose their shirts on the weekly programs but for the last weekend of the season, especially one where there's been so many rainouts, a 2 day show makes sense. 

You could do some combination of 360s, 305s and trucks on Friday and the 410s and whatever else you didn't run on Friday for the Saturday show. Given it's championship night you could get done by 10 on both nights and open the barn to have a celebration event for the championship teams. Invite the fans, grill some burgers, make the championships seem important. 

With Kendra we ran 3 classes and had a grill out in the pits afterwards a few times I think. It was awesome. Multi day shows don't work here. Don't ask me why but they don't. The crowd at 34 raceway for IRA was pathetic to say the least. 100 ppl maybe to watch 35 410s on a racey joint. Amazing. Weather somewhat a factor but high school football started and it's late model country and lots were at Davenport for the WOO LM and Midgets just an hour away. Not convinced Knoxville loses their shirts on weekly nights either. Lucrative? Nah. Losing money? I doubt it very often. 

From the looks of the crowds on many Saturday nights, weekly Saturday shows dont seem like they work there either. Isn't the weekly purse there $55k? And $15 to get in? Just to pay the purse youd have to get 3666 adults, and I'm sorry but no matter how big the grandstands are and how "misleading" it can be to count fans in such a big grandstand, there is no way they get 3600 paying adults most weeks. And that's only the purse, the track has to have a ton of overhead. 

Knoxville has a ton of sponsors. Knoxville has more suites than any other dirt track I know which are paid for whether full or not for the year. Then when you pull 70 plus cars with crews and pit passes you don't need 3600 weekly. We're not privy to all that info but it's not near as bleak as you make it seem.

The moderators here are the same ilk of people who run 5 hour, 30 car shows LOL. Stuck in 1974. 

Really? Not so sure everyone would agree with that.

After working on special events with Jackson VFW Speedway and one in Fairmont in the 80's, after college, I moved to Denver.

As a fan, I went to the 'George Butland school of race track promoting' (ok, the school didn't exist, but he certainly shown how to run a show from a fan-friendly aspect) at Colorado National Speedway.

George knew the importance of getting families to see the featured division at a decent time - in order to get them to return for future events. 

The basic rule of thumb at CNS under his management was that at 10pm, wherever the program was, he would put the A-feature for the premier class on the track and run the feature so it was over by 10:30pm.

That seemed to be the general consensus on what time kids spin out at the track and are ready for bed.

Then he would run the rest of the divisions the same way the rest of the night.

The result was the casual fans and those with families would be leaving the parking lot at around 10:30pm, with the more seasoned fans leaving after the next feature race, and then the rest of the show would resume for the 37 hardcore fans, like me, in the stands…and they’d have so many cars in the support divisions that the final checkers would often fly at 1am.

It resolved all kinds of problems by rearranging the feature running order: fans leaving the property being a big one. Only 20-30% of the crowd left at that point, leaving the rest to slowly trickle out as the night trudged on. There was hardly ever issues with fans sitting in the parking stuck lot trying to get out because of that.

When Ralph Capitani approached me about co-promoting an event at Knoxville in 1995, I told him I'd send him off an event package and he agreed to it with no hesitation and no edits.

When the event concluded that night, in the pits after the races I was standing in a group of people and he walked right up to me and his comments were 'that went so well, we made money and now I'd like to talk to you about promoting a Late Model event here.' And it was held on a Tuesday night. 95 drivers signed-in for one-division and it was over around 11pm. 

The event would continue grow into the future - even after I moved on, without the event structure changing much at all. 

Since then I spent about 20 years either promoting or co-promoting events primarily in TX, the bulk of were sprint cars.

In each contract I wrote for the track, was that the premier class would run no later than 2nd feature out, which allowed them the flexibility to run additional classes, and fans/teams the option of getting back out on the road earlier if they chose to. It also allowed the premier class to have their feature while better track conditions prevailed.

And I'm not sure what moderator you're referring to, but generally I handle 90% of moderator duties on this forum and have for 10(?) or so years...and I can guarantee you one thing, there's never been an event I've been involved with that had 30 cars total at - or even close.

As a matter of fact, the events I've been involved with at various venues are known to have well over 100 cars in the pits (including 117 sprint cars at LSS)...and back in the Cowtown days over 200 total in the pits with 71 sprint cars in one division.

And the OP of this press release I had announce the sprint car portion of each of those events. W does a fantastic job for the sport wherever he happens to be at that day.

Back to the original questions at hand on this forum, I think a few essential things have been left out of the formula as far as getting to the answer to the question/comments posed by various HH users:

1. This past weekend, Knoxville had two premier events going on, one paid the 410 division $6,000 to win and the 360 winner took home $5,750. They each had car counts in the mid-30's.

2. You'd have to search the entire country to find a track that even had one premier sprint car division with 35 cars this past weekend (Butler ASCoC is only one I saw at first glance). 

3. So right there, as a fan, you know that it's not going to be a typical night that gets over by 10:30pm.

4. But then in my world, if it were a race that I was involved with, I would suggest rearranging the show so the 410 feature would be run first - not last - for the abovementioned reasons. So I think that is a legitimate question that the track could review for future instances.

5. Then there's the car count 'situation' again. Outside of Knoxville this past Saturday, there's nowhere in the country a fan could see that many quality sprint cars racing. I think that point in itself is something everyone should be proud of.

The effect of the show running late pales in comparison to the cause of having so many cars.

And when it comes to crashes, some nights you have them, some nights you don't. Unless a track is rough, lending to additional crashes, that's part of the sport.

I remember one night at Knoxville in the 90's, I took a friend there that had never been and it was 'one of those nights." It was also the same night that David Hessmer flipped so high going into corner 3 that it took down the string of lights going across the track. I know the races ended late that night - but that's not what that friend of mine and I have since commented about when he went to the races there for the first time - he only comments about how wild the racing was.

In summary, a lot of these things I've read in this post, I’ve been thinking about publicly commenting about for a while, but now that Knoxville's sprint car season is over, I think their big car counts is a way, way bigger story than what time a race gets over now and then.

Same with Huset's. It's like if the 410 feature isn't done by 10:14pm and 30 seconds after, there's grumbling about it. Huset's has never seen bulging sprint car counts until Tod came along...and I think it's fantastic. And Doug grew up going to both tracks at the same time I did, and he's phenomenal at his job.

Growing up in that area, I would have never dreamed Huset's, Jackson and Knoxville each would have events the size and magnitude that they are now.

Other than maybe rearranging the event order now and then, I wouldn't change hardly a thing.

And regarding the one comment on this post about 'back in the 90's there wasn't the arguing amongst fans'...I'm not sure if it's anything that has changed, or not. The only thing for sure that has changed is the advent of forums and social media for people to comment on. And some times that's a good thing, and in some cases not.

Kudo's to all the track management teams and workers on a job well done...and thank you to the race car teams that support their efforts with such strong turnouts.

Enjoy your Labor Day racing weekend - wherever that may be...great racing can be found from coast to coast.

Been involved in a few promotions and 3 hours is when the crowd starts to leave. The flat trackers were promoting an up coming show and trucks are just not designed for the big track although the last lap pass was good.Wrecks take time and there were more than usual. No excuse for cars not being in staging area. They need to take a few lessons from Boone in that area.We have the best facilities and payout but  miss Kendra helping move things along. The Hi Limit Series is getting along fine doing mid week shows and early ending.

Bill, good write up as usual. 

I was an AR fan a few years ago when we started seeing his name with the JBR from TX. He's one of the best drivers, not on the tour. I wasn't a fan of his aggressive driving, which we've all heard the term Reutzel'd. I'd put the Macedo brothers right up there with the over aggressive driving.

Despite his driving, he's fun to watch, and it sounds like we may get to see him race around the midwest more, with his kids being young and his desire to be around home. Maybe a trend we'll see more often.

The quickest chicken is a stud, and I have a feeling he'll be snatched up before too long. 

The late nights... I'd agree it seems to have gotten worse this year. I've taken my kids to the races a handful of years, and have yet to see an 410 A main, as we've left around 10, which has been when the heats are finishing, a couple of times.

I know Kendra made it a priority to finish earlier in the night, and there's a balance with the fans, drivers, and officials. Lately it feels like we're pushing that 11 - 12 o clock window, and like others have said, including myself, my kids won't last. 

With Jason at the helm this year, I know they're looking for at multiple areas to improve in weekly racing and the special events, and hopefully this is one of them. 

Keep It Real

I've been helping a car since 2014 at Knoxville. The first two years were managed by Brian stickel. We would be done by 11pm weekly. Get out of the pits no later than midnight. 
 

then 2016 Kendra took over. We would rarely ever be racing last 10pm when she was in charge. And never out of the pits later than 11pm. Unless there was rain etc. 

now it's terrible.