Why have Legends cars collapsed in Florida?

[fred23]

And if they are planning on a serious career in racing they or their parents better have a lot of money or great marketing skills......

Just like every other youth sport in this country, except football and basketball, the parents have run the price through the roof and out of reach for most people...like Phil said, and the discussion that Dave started a few weeks ago, kids go from quarter midgets or karts to a truck or LM and then to K&W or ARCA or NASCAR all on their parents dime.....no more mini stock, street stock, sportsman, LM ,local track then maybe touring......as soon as legally possible they are in a national sanctioning body.....

Just like in baseball......used to have Little League that everyone played, then JR High and High School and Legion ball......now there are 5 different leagues, and mostly everything involves paying monstrous money to travel all over the country to play 12U baseball.......

I will BUY my child an opportunity......not let him earn or achieve it......

I know it is the way of the world these days and unfortunately I have 3 young kids and have to live it daily just to keep them active and out doors....I don't want scandanavian kids.....LOL......welcome to the 21st century.....better for a few, crappy for most.

[Lurkin]

It is a shame that the Legends seem to have died out, they were huge and I saw some really great races. There must still be a buttload sitting all over FL in storage. I never liked the whole door opening thing, that always spooked me.

Same with TQ's, Gimmlers can still name at least 40 cars and exactly where they're at and 20 more that they've lost track of.

Mini Stocks too.

All outstanding cars to learn in because it was so much about momentum.

:-(

[egspeedway]

Fred raises an issue that is critical to this whole scheme. Parents and money. My grand children participated in youth baseball and softball this spring. Their levels were well before little league or fast pitch softball. What I did observe is not only do the kids show up with a glove they also have a bat, their own personal batters helmet(holds down lice II guess), two batters gloves and their own personal equipment bag. Stick and ball games are infinitely simpler and cheaper than racing or are they. We are truly a nation of excess and the game of keep up is getting treacherous.

[Don Nerone]

Once again, everything Don USED to do worked out great....

It was everyone ELSE that screws things up.

Jerry some did and some didn't buy I did swing my bat and sometime hit the ball.
You have been swinging ur keybord and bottle of beer for years and didn't hit anything..lol

don 62

[SeminoleWind]

In my case, I recently traded my Pro Truck for a Legends car. Main reason is Lanier Speedway is shut down and Gresham Motorsports Park is a 2 hour drive from my house.
The only place in Georgia to currently race the Legends are the 1/4 miler at Atlanta Motor Speedway, but I was attracted to the year round race schedule which allows me to race when convenient and also some dates during the cooler months.
Of course, the Legends car needs about a 1000 bucks worth of newly allowed parts before I get on track.
At least in the garage, the Legends car is awesome because it takes up about half the space and I'm able to get a smaller trailer to haul it. Another plus, if I'm feeling ambitious, I can make the 4 hour drive to Charlotte or the 5 hour drive to Bowman Gray or bring the car to Showtime when visiting relatives!? Also get to race with people my own age. The kids I raced trucks with were very talented, but I was not real thrilled going door to door with 12 year olds.

I still think the key to survival for ALL types of asphalt racing is tire cost management. There is absolutely NO reason to have 2, 3 or 4 new tires each race. 1 new tire should be the maximum purchase allowed for any division other than Super lates or Sprints. My last season racing the truck at Lanier I used the same set of tires for all 12 races (yes, I was soaking them) and lap times and finish position actually improved as the season wore on and I was going home with a few more bucks in my pocket than what I showed up with.

[cake]

Went to Atlanta for the Nascar race a few years back. They were running the legends cars in the quarter mile in the front stretch. I saw multiple double decker toter homes/trailers with a face and picture of his car on the side of the trailer. I thought at first it was one of the lower budget truck teams since it wasn't a full fledged nascar hauler but nope it was a 11 year old legends car racer. Easily half a million right there just in the Rig, multiple cars, personnel, gas, parts. FOR A LEGENDS CAR DRIVER 11 years old!

I kept track of the Kid and he ended up making a few K&N starts last year and hasn't been heard from since.

[andre]

Same thing everywhere. 30 years ago, people went camping in tents, now they go in half million $ + motorhomes.

We went fishing in wooden 14 feet homemade fishing boats, now SOTA fishing boats price are as high as you can afford.

Exotic cars use to be 250,000 US$, now it's in the millions!!!!! World has changed.

Use to take a week to notified everybody you knew you just had a baby. Now, before his(hers) first cry, the whole world knows about it.

Remember when you would walk 3 blocks to go check if your friend was home???????????? When was the last time you did that????

We can like it or not, world has change faster than we can swallow it.

[Lurkin]

Nashville Fairgrounds had a $1000 to win Legends race last night on the 1/4 mile and they had 8 cars. :/

[egspeedway]

I am beginning to think this class priced themselves out of the market early on in their development. I know when we looked at them one of the first things we were told you bought brand new tires and paid to have them cut down to get the needed camber, so you lost a third of the tires life just to make the car handle. With a sealed motor rule yes the engine purchase was less but the cost to get your set up "competitive" was quite high. In go karts it was cheaper to run modified than box stock as the parts did not have to be hand picked and dynoed to get max performance. Unfortunately in any level of racing the bar is usually set by the deepest pockets. On dirt your driver is so much more a factor there is some wiggle room. On pavement it must be a nightmare especially if you have a clean driver.

[joeyazzata4]

Legends decline

As a legends driver from 12/2012 to 5/2014 racing at Auburndale, Citrus, DeSoto, Orlando, Bronson I can say I know I missed the good times, watching in 2006 a field of 30 legends at Orlando, but 2013 was a good year, every week we had a place to race at and cracked over 20 cars a few times that year. In winter nationals 2014, I totaled my car in practice, by the time we had the money... YES money to get it rebuild (Rebuilding a Dennis Lambert car was 20 grand to those who say legends racing isn't expensive), it was May, when we came back everyone was gone. Everyone as in (No offense to others) Baggette, Cataldi, Abbott, Black, Torres, Coker, Adams, etc... My point is, coming from someone who probably spent the most on legends cars is that once the other ACTUALLY competitive drivers left (those named above) It was not worth the money even for us to come race with guys who "can keep up with the lead pack" ... It wasn't worth it to drive 4 hours to the track, get the trailer the car all ready to go all the maintenance throughout the week to come and run 2-3 tenths faster than the field... towards the end of my legends career we had races where we lapped all but second place, thats not worth it.

I think from personal experience legends declined because Auburndale kicked us out which we were okay with because they'd do things like invert the field for fan entertainment, Legends Cars of Florida drivers Black and Torres moved on to other teams, Baggette totaled 2 cars from August to September, Abbott didn't see the competition because Black and Torres went on to bigger things in North Carolina and Baggette was out, Showtime wouldn't organize races, Citrus had us on 5 times a year, non of the actually competitive guys were showing up (that was 8-9 cars) so all that was left was me, and a bunch of old guys running every 3 weeks as a hobby... Is it expensive to race a legend car, NO.. Is it expensive to be competitive, YES all this crap that if you have money it doesn't matter blah blah, You will get beat by new tires, by the setup guy from the carolinas, by rebuilt USLC engines, by new cars, sure a great driver can make a crappy car go fast, but they can make a good car go even faster. If they can make crappy cars go fast were are all the competitive cars? Because it was only top notch equipment up front ill tell you that. It just plain got too expensive, at times even "Spoiled Azzata" could simply not afford to go race that weekend... it isn't what it was.

So in my opinion;
tracks not scheduling us
competitive drivers moving on/getting too expensive
no one to race against
Most of the time $200 to win... not cool either
No organized schedule or points system
Thomsons getting out of it
were all reasons

Sorry for ranting, just really really miss racing. couldnt afford to race anything after legends, but i feel as if i bought one right now I would have nowhere to race/no one to race against. I wish it was still a good class because they were unreal fun to drive.

[racin24dev]

I wouldn't say it's the cost as much as most would think...legends have been the same way for years, and people have always been doing them. They are working well in other area of the country.

The problem with them is the people that have ran the "series" in Florida over the last few years...they have run it into the ground and left it for dead.

We used to average 18-20 at auburndale a few years back, and the prices haven't changed much, if any, since then...

P.S. I haven't read any of these posts, so this may have been said before...just giving my opinion with personal experiences with these people.

[bowlegs]

I saw on the new senoia website, that the AMS legends guys are racing their (on dirt) once or twice a month. The track is, I don't know, 20 or 30 miles west of AMS. A lot of the south FL dirt tracks might be too long for legends though.

Also, why run a legend on dirt if you can run a mini sprint? Pretty much the same cc motorcycle engine?