Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
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Long night on tap for WoO at Beaver Dam.

Friday night 305 feature makeup and remaining 28 laps of WoO feature to start the night, then a full program for 305s, 360s and WoO.

I'd usually be salivating for this program but my worry is that this amount of racing will either require excessive track work or the track will be awful. That's a lot of laps being tossed at it. 

Hope I'm wrong and it's a good night of racing, but feel like this is an ambitious card. Seemed screwing around with the undercard last night didn't help get the WoO feature in. 

Just my opinion, but when the World of Outlaws are the main attraction, a track only needs one support division.....three divisions on the card is too many. The fans came to see the Woo......to me this sounds like a "backgate" mentality.......

Cedar Lake*

I also think There will be some time for track prep in between. 

5:30p central is remainder of last nights feature, right?

Sometimes it sucks but you have to have the back gate mentally alot of the time.  Gotta make money. Think about all of the street stock teams that bring 5-6 crew members. 25 a pop. It adds up.

Good race. Nice to see Sheldon get a win. 

Oops. Guess I swung and missed at that one!!! Good catch.

I agree. I get the need for having a support division for an Outlaw show so that you can give the Outlaw drivers time between races and not have an empty track. However, like you said too many of them can really do a number on the track and make the race that everyone really wanted to see not as good as it otherwise would have been. Plus, depending on the track, too many divisions can make for a long inefficient night. I know the backgate can be important to a promoter, but if they try to make too much money from the backgate, they will eventually find themselves with not much of a frontgate

I was there taking photos until tonight's heats were done.  I sat in the pit stands until the 360's were lining up for their feature and decided not to hang around for the last two features.  I know guy that runs the limited series and this was a good oportunity for them.  I drove home and when I tuned into dirtvision audio.  Cedar Lake announcer Chris Stepan served as victory lane interviewer for Johnny Gibson and that was cool to see my two favorite announcers working together.   

Stan Meissner

My last post was a failed attempt at 1am doing one letter at a time using the fire stick.  What I meant to say was that I got home in time to listen to the Outlaw Feature do the 360s must have taken a while to run theirs.  Late night drives aren't my thing anymore so that is why I.decided to get an early start.

Cedar Lake is my "home track" so I was just adding some inside observations on the track and support classes.  Their announcer isn't well known in Sprint Car circles but has a.lot of experience with big Late Model and Modified shows.  

No more posting from the fire stick.  

Stan Meissner

He’s a pretty good announcer.

The 360 main took forever. 

+1 ...and I might also add, run the headline division's feature first. That way the fans that came to see the outlaws(or whomever) can leave after their feature and not be forced to sit through divisions they didn't come to see. It also makes for less of a traffic jam leaving the parking lot. Every time I go to the track when it's getting to be a late night, I see people(usually with kids) leaving before the headline division feature is even run. What a waste. I have to wonder if those fans will come back.

A

I hate driving at night too, getting old/middle-age and can't see very well in the dark. That's the main reason I don't go to nearly as many races as I used too. I hated to miss the Hodnett tribute last night but I wasn't going to drive an hour with that forecast, knowing that I would probably have to sit in a rain delay for several hours and get home at 3 in the moring or later, if they were even lucky enough to get the show in. Done that too many times in my day. I'm glad they got the show in and it looked like it was an awesome tribute, really neat to have all 5 of his PA rides pacing the feature. OK, now back to the inlaws....

A

As someone who grew up in PA watching the "top" class run their feature first, it was shocking to me to see the Outlaws run last most nights, until I saw/heard/read how many complaints the series got the times we DID run first and fans had to wait for a support feature before going to the pits.  We still get FAR more complaints for running before the support class/classes than we do from people who would rather see us run first. 

Good point. I never thought of that. In PA, 99% of the fans leave after the features as do the teams. It seems like a popular thing in the rest of the country to mingle with the drivers and crews in the pits after the races are over.

A

Agree. The diehards forget that for people who only go A few times a year or less, part of the appeal of the Outlaws is seeing those cars and even the haulers up close. Plus when you run first many of the teams load up by the time the support class is done.

This is a very valid point and can see this happening. I started taking my son to Sprint car races 3yrs ago when he was a year and a half old. he's now 3 and a half. From the very first race he has wanted to go to the pits and if nothing else see the cars up close. He also likes to just say hi to a few of the drivers like Gravel, Sweet, the Shark Boys, and others. 

Not sure if it was the September or October Outlaws race at Eldora last year but, they ran the Outlaws race first then the support division which was stocks or modifieds. The support feature lasted so long with the cautions that by the time we got to the pits that most teams either were loaded up or pulling out to leave. A lot of kids including my son were sad and disappointed that they couldn't see the cars and drivers. So some of those things are damned if you do damned if you don't. 

Definitely a good point brought up by Johnny. Unfortunately the common fan probably doesn't mind a rubbered down race too much - I imagine most are there more for the spectacle of the Outlaws themselves.

It's just unfortunate that most tracks that bring in the WoO have no issue putting the on-track product at risk above all else. I don't evny promotors at all - I've seen tracks ruined by too much track work and vice versa. Last night they did some minor work off and on but could never move the top down far enough - it seemed like guys effectively pounded on it all night. Unfortunately that led to not only rubber, but rubber that moved down probably the top third of the track. Was quite an interesting visual watching the cars move further down off the fence as the rubber went.

The first feature was great - good action and passing all over. 

Just seems like the overall weekend could have been ran with a different mindset that would have given the Outlaws a much better opportunity to put on more of a show. 

I remember some of those early Cedar Lake shows where they'd run to he Outlaw Feature first and half the top drivers would leave during the support division Feature.  T-shirt hunters and autograph seekers were in an uproar because that happened more than once. I understand how grueling it is for these guys and that was back when we used to have the Monday night races.

You and Chris made a formidable team with those victory lane interviews.  He does a lot of big shows on the Late Model and Modified side and has gotten to be a pretty darned good announcer.  You guys knocked it out of the park with your post race interaction.

Stan Meissner

     Here's an idea: Have just one support class. Start on time, get the show on the road and be done at a reasonable time.