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

1. Tony Bruce

2. Jody Rosenboom

3. Terry McCarl

Excellent field of cars. Track sucked but that was to be expected with the hot, dry and windy weather the past couple days.

For those that didn't believe me before, 4 support classes is TOO MANY.

Please don't make us sit through 75 support class cars to see the 25 sprints that I bought the ticket to see.

Make midnight checkered flags too frequent at a track in town and there will be a 10pm curfew regardless of whether the races are done or not.

Maybe things are changing for the promotion efforts at Rock Rapids. They used to wait 6 months to update results. Hard to believe that they already have results posted. Check them out. http://www.rockrapidsspeedway.com/profile/schedule/results.aspx?r=25254&rt=sch

I can only imagine with the hot and 35 mph wind......(and the support divisions), it had to be hard on the track, but there were some good movers in the feature. Must have been multiple lanes to run.

Considering how dry and eventually rubbered up the track was the racing was decent.

Most of the passing was occurring on restarts, which there were plenty of, partly because of track conditions.

I'm pretty sure Josh Holt (part owner of Driver Websites) is promoting the races there now. He is a stand up guy who is very passionate about racing and very good at what he does. Just like everything, it takes time to get things in order.

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Support classes are not there for the fans or for racing. They are there because the promoter wants all their money at the back gate. Those classes are NOT added to make the show better.

without a big sponser they need the support classes to pay the 410 purse. also the support classes put people in the stands. small town dirt tracks are struggling to stay a float. if you don't like it stay home.

And, don't those guys deserve to race also? This was the first night of the season at Rocky and most of the classes are under USRA sanctioning and you have to run so many nights to get the full point payout and your national points. This track has lost two nights already so they have to get the regular show going too.

I did! And it does not sound like I missed much. Rubber down track, 75 back gate padders and a show not over till midnight.

Good luck to Josh Holt this season. It was his 1st night as promoter & I'm sure that he learned a lot from last night & will throughout the season.

Second, I think when you have a big race like this there should be only a couple of support classes, not 4. I don't think that a show (weekly or specials) should last more that 3 hours in length. When you have that many classes, it most likely makes it a long night. Even though the concession/souvenir sales probably did pretty well for the track. Especially, the longer we stay as the night goes on. Some of the support class's purse is usually covered by all of the drivers/pit crew members at the back gate as well. Or as we know it as Backgate promoting.

Also, with new dirt put down on a track & no laps being run since last season, it's usually going to be hard & dry slick. And it doesn't help when it's 90 degrees & the wing is blowing over 30 mph (like Friday's show). When you're running sprint cars, unfortunately sometimes you get a rubberdown track. When it's the 1st race of the new season, a promoter is likely to leave the track hard & dry slick then dump lots of water down on a new surface & have it get rough & tear up a bunch of equipment.

I would say too that there probably was a sponsor(s) for the 410's to help pay for the purse. Especially with over a $15,000 payout for the drivers & only charge the fans $15 to get in. I sure as h*ll didn't complain about it. Most tracks for these kinds of specials would probably charge $20+ to get in. Also, the officials @ Rock Rapids probably didn't know how many 410's were planning on showing up because @ last year's 410 show there were only 13 cars competing for basically the same purse.