Two nights of great racing 1/31 and 2/1 14

[shorttrackcar1]

New smyrna charges 20.00 if you have a nascar license 25.00 with out.

[Rick B.]

Pit pass prices around

Auburndale $30 all
Desoto $30 all kids under 1 free
Showtime $30 all
Bronson $25 all
Citrus $30 Kids 6-12 $20 and kids 5 and under free

[Benny The Mule]

More detail on the recap? They must be bought from the track? @ $96.00?

[gary laplant]

Thanks Rick for posting the true fact per other tracks web site on pit gate prices.
Looks like Citrus pit gates are not the highest prices like some people thinkfor a family of 5.




Gary Laplant

[gary laplant]

Benny

Yes it is a track tire 95.60 includes tax and mounted if you like. Yes only sold at the track.

[Mike Bresnahan]

Gary and Rick

My comments were not directed only to Citrus. All tracks are pricing this hobby beyond most working peoples budgets. It's not just about paying a higher purse or pit gate prices. Rules are constantly changing and that puts 100% of the cost burden on the racers. I would encourage any promotor to save the racers from themselves. Limit our practice. Limit what can be spent on certain parts. The only new blood coming in this sport are coming in the higher divisions. Your support divisions (your true money makers) are leaving wayyy faster than new guys are coming in. Almost doubling their cost on tires isn't helping put cars on your slabs. Tracks should be in the business of selling arm bands, not tires. Cheaper costs equals more more cars = more fans.

I would say 75% of racers decide when and where they will race based on what it costs, not what the purse is.

[Benny The Mule]

Benny

Yes it is a track tire 95.60 includes tax and mounted if you like. Yes only sold at the track.

Thanks for the info.

[Doug22176]

And once again good job defending that $5 a week increase...but how about a comment on the $30 mark up on the tires for street stocks? I mean really, the drivers voted for radials...so you said ok, and tried to sell radials from the track only...then you must have realized what a STUPID idea that was so you decided on recaps and then mark them up $30 on the racer! do you really gotta get every dollar you can from the racer? I normally will always support a racetrack but quite honestly I hope you lose your a$$....have a good day!

[Old Sunshine Fan]

WOW.... increase ticket cost....$20.00 to $30.00 for pit pass....guess that will limit my going to Citrus quite a bit....Citrus was the only track I went into the pits to watch the races... never liked the front stands.... I'll still go, just not as often as in the past... OSF

MY BAD... it went from 25.00 to 30.00 (not 20.00 to 30.00).... sorry for the error.... still a bit much.... a race team with 5-6 members, that's a whole lot each week X a whole race season... tracks should find another way to increase their income other than the gate...and tires... perhaps when they see a decrease in interested parties, they will realize the mistake they made...don't forget... people have choices where they want to spend their money......and if they think they are getting ripped off,,, they'll go to those other places....................OSF

[mpf74]

Big Picture

First of all I dont see Friday being Exciting at all, basically you have three classes of racing and some crash up stuff, I really dont think they will have over ten cars finish in any of the actual racing classes and I'm sure that will include cars Gary owns, bad idea at every track I have ever raced at. What they are doing with the tire is wrong. We have 3 Street Stocks, I am the only one in our group that is interested in points so the other cars skip some races but each car brings in a minimum of two and as many as four people through the pit gate, that is $270-$360 for every race we all attend, we will not be taken advantage of. Why wouldnt they be more reasonable on the tires and bring in more cars and more people. wherever I race I typically have 5-10 friends come and watch from the spectator side. I would think $5 per tire plus $5 more if you wanted it mounted would be a sufficient handling fee. If the track feels they need to make 55-60% profit on tires then leave the manufactuer alone so we can buy our tires direct to save what we can, then they dont have to inconveinence themselves or put it on a credit card. Spectators is where the profit margin should come from not the racer. If they dont have enough spectators to make money off of then they are not doing their job as director and promoter to put fans in the seats, that is not the racers fault, but that is the first place they look to make money. So we will set back and wait for it to change because they have to or someone else takes over because of failure.

[Matt Albee]

Actually, the track profits should be coming from marketing, not the racers or the fans. Do you suppose NASCAR relies on ticket sales to pay the bills? With the giant downward spiral they've been in, they would have gone out of business by now. The bills are paid by selling marketing rights, billboards, race naming rights, television and radio broadcast rights, program ads ( though most short tracks don't even bother to print a program ).
Problem is, very few short tracks have anyone on staff that knows how to market racing.
I remember going to Volusia years ago and seeing what looked like 50 small billboards lining the front fence with nationally known race parts company logos and contact info. Some local ones too as I recall. And I haven't seen any track since that did that. 50 signs with company logos and info @ say five hundred a year....that's going to help cover the bills. Here it comes, wait for it.... " but we can't sell ads in this economy" Every other sport does, even local HS football stadiums, so it isn't a question of can't, it must be a question of don't want to or don't know how.

[mpf74]

Profits

Well the only thing I know is they don't need to make all of it off the lower tier classes, we are the ones that get called to dry the track when it rains, we are the ones that get shows shortened or eliminated when time is shortened, we race for the least amount of money. If the profit margin is this high on the rest of the tires then we should be racing for $500 to win in the SS class. But the way they look at it is we paid 120 for radials so they are saving us money, WRONG, you get two or three times more races from the radials than you will ever get from a race tire. The whole way they dealt with it it saying they was going to select one radial everyone had to use and we eagerly waited weeks for the announcement only to find out they decided to use a recap we had previously tested and it didn't have many proponents. Then to get Towel City (track recap supplier) to allow them to be the EXCLUSIVE area dealer so they can do a plus Fifty percent mark up, it's absurd. We all want to race or we wouldn't have cars and we wouldn't be on here complaining and on the Citrus message board trying to get changes made, but at the end of the day I have to justify how much money and time I spend for the fun I have while racing, and can I spend my money doing other things to have the same amount of fun at a lesser expense. This is personal for me because I sold two modifieds because I decided I couldn't keep tires on them to be as competitive as I wanted to be, and I invested in Street Stocks solely because of the tire to be able to race at the level I could afford to be a top 3 car.