New Smyrna Speedway Results 5/30

[Phil Jacques]

This is fun! lol

[Weftracing96]

I don't think I am proving your point. It sounds like you are using circular logic. That was actually going to be my next point. Nobody down here owns anything outside of NSS. Makes your ability to generate a profit margin that much harder. I never heard of a slab fee before I moved here.

So I wanna hear it. Give me your top 5 ideas to help FL racing and ilm give you my opinion as to the viability of those ideas.

[Weftracing96]

Healthy debates are always fun.

[Patrick Thomas 25]

This has been an interesting post, to answer a couple questions, I normally run most of the bigger money races put on for the Sportsman cars all over the state. I had a sort of silent sponsor that I lost over the winter which made me make the decision to race Newsmyrna speedways sportsman division for points. While I am actually racing more this year 18 races at Newsmyrna plus it looks like 2 at 5 flags in Pensacola later in the year, normally I would run 10 to 12 of the big money races and call it a year. I have not raced for a weekly division track championship since 1999 at Columbia motor sports park in the streetstock division. I am having fun with the racing I am doing this year, but really prefer the longer races. Hope this answered your questions.

Patrick Thomas 25

[Weftracing96]

So Patrick, give me your opinions as a guy who loves and races here. Where am I wrong? Where am I right. No absolutes, your opinion. I think these are 2 vastly different worlds. I like to hear different people opinions.

[MJM10]

I just wish the tracks in Florida would listen. I was at a track up here a few weeks ago talking to some tour mod guys, when I mentioned NSS was my "home track" two of them said they don't go down anymore just because of how (let me clean it up for you southern guys)...poor the facility is. They said they would have to clean dirt and rocks out of their trailer for a week when they got home, everything was beat up from the car to the equipment and trailer. Little things can change the entire feel of a facility. I could name ten of them but I am tired of beating that dead horse, they won't listen, so then what do you do, sell your racing stuff and get a boat? That may be my next step. I am pretty sick of spending my money and them not spending any of theirs, and they may not have any, but if that's the case someone needs to go to business 101 and learn a few things.

[Weftracing96]

Also, to expand on something Patrick pointed out, a lot of racers cherry pick money races here. He wouldn't have many races to cherry pick up north. FL suffers by and large from low backbone class car counts aside from
showtime. And even they get less than what they get up north. They are just the standard bearer for car count at the moment. It's hard to pay bigger classes when you have no backbone class to subsidize them. If you have a 4 cyl coming in with driver and 3 crew, that's $120 plus fuel, tires, food. You pay that 4 cyl $60, you've made money. That helps you offset the more expensive classes.

[Phil Jacques]

Top 5 ideas to help FL...

1. Fair Tech - Doesn't seem to be a HUGE issue but there have been instances recently that have made me question integrity of tech there. If drivers feel they are treated equally they are generally much more content coming back. Every car in tech should always be teched equally each week. Change it up from week to week, not car to car. If you check one guy's intake and the other's carb, but the guy with the legal carb has an illegal intake and vice versa, how fair is that? It's not. I never understood why tracks down there do that. It does cause problems.

2. Better Payouts/Division Title Sponsors - This takes work, but can be done. Get a sponsor for each division to kick in some cash to boost the payouts, mainly in the middle to lower half of the field. An example is NSS Sportsman... $450 to win is great and $50 for 20th on back, but between 8th and 16th the purses are a little thin. When you race for $50 from 8th on back, it doesn't really encourage guys to keep showing up if they know they are a 10th place car in a field of 10...

3. Minimizing/Combining divisions - There are many divisions that contain very similar cars that are just different enough to keep guys from racing different tracks without decent expenses. Make an attempt to align rules in similar divisions and it will allow guys to do different things and race where they want more especially if one track rains out and another is till running, guys are likely to pick up and go to another track if they can make it. I've seen it done many times there in divisions like OWM or Sportsman. Tracks like Desoto also seem to run 2 or 3 similar divisions of 6 or 7 cars on many nights. If those divisions were combined it's 12 or 14 cars per division. Fans don't want to watch strung out follow the leader stuff. More cars makes more racing 9 times out of 10. Get some of these divisions combined and it will up the car counts and give the fans more cars to watch per division. Otherwise it's glorified practice.

4. PROMOTE PROMOTE PROMOTE!!! - I follow every FL track on social media, and have many friends who I talk to about what is done for promoting... It's minimal effort at best down there. A lot of people I know wouldn't know tracks exist in some places if I didn't mention it to them. Spend a little money once in a while, print ads, media outlets, public appearances. Have some more local drivers to the area of an appearance bring cars out to display and give them free pit passes for them and their family or crew for compensation. Get the eye of the public on the track and the cars, draw up some interest. These are all things done here throughout the year that really help. I work in Boston, 2hrs from Waterford and I hear ads for the track on the radio from 6am to 9am and from 4pm to 6pm... Drive time radio ads do reach a large audience.

5. Smarter Scheduling - Tracks step on each others toes too much down there... Conflicting big events, every track running the same night etc. Fridays Saturdays and Sundays CAN work if done right. Again, it's not easy. But there are definitely some guys who can not only afford to race 2 or 3 nights if they wanted to there, which would bump car counts a bit but it gives fans variety too. I've seen tracks TRY different nights and if the first time they try it isn't a huge success they just write it off completely. Rome wasn't built in a day, some things take some time and effort.



Everything is always worth looking at and considering. Not just shooting it out of the sky at first sight. Unfortunately everyone is so hard headed the latter happens most often.

One side note... A clean facility and smiling staff is much more inviting and attractive to fans for a family atmosphere. A lot of the tracks there for lack of a better term, are dumps... Thompson, Stafford, Seekonk and now (glad I can say this) Waterford are very clean and friendly. That first impression keeps people positive from the start. That is absolutely HUGE in ANY type of business no matter what it is.

[OldSchool+]

" But you gotta have the right hand in place to roll that ball."--Phil

No comment necessary...Clearly, Phil has got it going on.

"MONSTER ENERGY Mini Stocks, XTRAMART SUPERMARKETS Limited Sportsman, SUNOCO RACE FUELS modifieds... Is this really that hard for you to comprehend?"--YankeeDoodleDandy

No, I can pro-nounce all them words, thanky. Who is getting their money? Not me, not you, not the racers (if it is to be part of the purse).

And thus far, in spite of all good intentions and northern suggestions, Bithlo doesn't even have the sign lit.

The beat goes on, it is capitalism, it is self leveling. The tracks pay what they wish, the racers go if they like, as do the fans.

The North has more jack, and more interested Jacks than the south. Am sure you can comprehend that too, eh? (might as well work the Canadians into the mud-slinging)

[Phil Jacques]

Also, to expand on something Patrick pointed out, a lot of racers cherry pick money races here. He wouldn't have many races to cherry pick up north. FL suffers by and large from low backbone class car counts aside from
showtime. And even they get less than what they get up north. They are just the standard bearer for car count at the moment. It's hard to pay bigger classes when you have no backbone class to subsidize them. If you have a 4 cyl coming in with driver and 3 crew, that's $120 plus fuel, tires, food. You pay that 4 cyl $60, you've made money. That helps you offset the more expensive classes.

Florida actually does have a large number of backbone cars if you look track to track. They are unfortunately spread so thin by taking similar cars and spreading them out into ridiculous subdivisions even though it's pretty much the same car. As I said, combine them and counts will go back up even though the number of divisions is fewer.

[Phil Jacques]

" But you gotta have the right hand in place to roll that ball."--Phil

No comment necessary...Clearly, Phil has got it going on.

"MONSTER ENERGY Mini Stocks, XTRAMART SUPERMARKETS Limited Sportsman, SUNOCO RACE FUELS modifieds... Is this really that hard for you to comprehend?"--YankeeDoodleDandy

No, I can pro-nounce all them words, thanky. Who is getting their money? Not me, not you, not the racers (if it is to be part of the purse).

And thus far, in spite of all good intentions and northern suggestions, Bithlo doesn't even have the sign lit.

The beat goes on, it is capitalism, it is self leveling. The tracks pay what they wish, the racers go if they like, as do the fans.

The North has more jack, and more interested Jacks than the south. Am sure you can comprehend that too, eh? (might as well work the Canadians into the mud-slinging)

You sir, are clueless... I am sorry. Bithlo hasn't really done SHIT in 20 years. That place hasn't been worth a damn since at least the 90s. So what does it even matter. There is no reason to bring OSW into the conversation, it's not an operational track and therefore insignificant to this discussion.

Again, sure we have more money. We also have higher living costs, expenses, taxes etc. Even though we have more money, we have higher costs of everything. For the most part it really all equals out... Economics are NOT the problem... There is at least one track in FL that has it figured out so that absolutely destroys your moronic theory right there. Don't forget I lived there 14 years... I have personal experience.

[OldSchool+]

Clueless? I could make the same statement, but I think we are having two discussions.

Phil: "This is what y'all should do. Look how good it is working."

OS: "What who should do? Nice sweeping generalities, but there is nobody to do it."

Repeat. So what?

Gary Laplant tried. Bobby Diehl is currently swinging the bat, as is apparantly Yoho. Am pretty sure NSS is comfy right where they are.

So who are you talking to? Not me, not Scott, and them guys is the choir.

[Patrick Thomas 25]

Racing down here is tough, this is my 20th season, I love the competition. I started racing quarter midgets in 1985 at 8 years old. I bought my first full size stock car when I was 18. When I started we had full fields every week at the 3 dirt tracks I raced at for my first 2 full seasons. I have watched the turnover at so many of the Florida tracks, and have watched several open and then close only to open and close again. Worse than that 5 tracks that I have been too are now closed, 4 of those are completely gone. It's depressing, but there are 3 factors as to why I chose to race for points this season at Newsmyrna.

The first is a driver change in the super and pro late model division, Brad May who I went to kindergarten with and am still best friends with picked up the Sears racing ride which races at Newsmyrna almost exclusively.

The second is the Nascar affiliation, you have the opportunity to race for a nascar division title just by racing at Newsmyrna.

Third as I mentioned in the other post, I lost my only sponsor, and this is the closest track to me racing my type car.

I have no sponsors, not that I have tried extremely hard to find one, but I have spoke to several what I thought were potential sponsors and most don't know there is a race track around, or just don't see the benefit with the amount of exposure they would be getting.

The payouts at Newsmyrna are the lowest in the state, but it is the nicest track to race on anywhere around. The surface is smooth and fast, there is an excellent outside groove, and we are treated well as racers. I wish there was a magic answer to improve the show, car counts, and fan counts.

Patrick Thomas 25

[Matt Albee]

Again... MONSTER ENERGY Mini Stocks, XTRAMART SUPERMARKETS Limited Sportsman, SUNOCO RACE FUELS modifieds... Is this really that hard for you to comprehend? Another simple thing is Don Hoenig OWNS Thompson... Bruce Bemer OWNS Waterford, Vendetti OWNS Seekonk, Arute OWNS Stafford... Nobody leases... a lease limits you because it's added overhead, so right from the start the leased tracks have their backs against the wall. Intelligent business finds a solution to this problem. We all know this isn't EASY by any means, but with some effort it can be done.

According to Larry Mac, it's Snoko fuels.

[Phil Jacques]

Clueless? I could make the same statement, but I think we are having two discussions.

Phil: "This is what y'all should do. Look how good it is working."

OS: "What who should do? Nice sweeping generalities, but there is nobody to do it."

Repeat. So what?

Gary Laplant tried. Bobby Diehl is currently swinging the bat, as is apparantly Yoho. Am pretty sure NSS is comfy right where they are.

So who are you talking to? Not me, not Scott, and them guys is the choir.

First off old man, if you are going to attempt quote someone, use the accurate quote. You are going to start pissing me off real fast with your bs. I've been patient, but enough is enough. I've never told anyone they have to do anything, All that Scott and I have EVER done is provide suggestions of things we know work solidly. We are having two discussions here, one between two people with experience in both places, and one person butting in to a conversation where he is biased (you) and just want's to hear himself talk. I am more than content keeping my racing up here, but we both try to help. Pull your damn head out of your ass and look past what YOU want to see/hear for once. You are no different than the rest of the ignorant hard headed track owners and promoters in my book right now. You take it how you want to interpret it, not how it's actually said (which is very clear).