Promoters--Insight into Illegal Car Owners Mindset

[OldSchool+]

Racing is a tough game. Routinely it involves working on the car during the week, spending money that could (and maybe should) go to the family, and spending time away from the family.

Race day involves getting up early, loading the trailer, and heading to the track mid afternoon. In the typically gawdawful heat. Setting up, testing, getting the weight and car checked checked by tech, more testing, and a degree of concern over something. Handling, motor, time, something.

So, finally there is a chance to race. If, IF the front of the car is not knocked off, and IF one is lucky/good enough to get a top three finish, there is the final gauntlet...post race tech.

Now, if you have a bucks up team, and they catch you with traction control and you knew it was there, those are the breaks.

But if you are a owner financed deal and struggling to just make it to the track, failing tech over something you were unaware of is a helluva kick in the shorts.

Ask yourself, track owners and promoters, do you have too many cars? Do you think guys that fail tech are more or less motivated to return to your track? Is that really the goal...?

I would suggest not, that the goal is to simply have a level playing field, and maintain order. Fair enough. So what to do?

Consider having extensive tech before the event, and adding weight whenever possible to let them race for that evening. Of course, they simply cannot race again until the "problem" has been corrected next time. Keep a log on who needs to correct what and check that first the next time they show up.

Everybody wins. The racers get to race, the fans get to see a good race with a full field, and those fans and racers will be back to provide you with good gate sales in an ongoing fashion.

Thank you for your consideration.

[zerofor]

It is great that a track makes rule enforcement a priority

I think in the case of Citrus this past weekend it seems like poor timing of when they chose to do it. The weekly tracks aren't staffed well enough to look for and catch everything every week.But in the same vein you shouldn't choose the marquee event for a particular class to play hardball in tech after letting things slide the rest of the season.Things should have been enforced that way at least the previous event to fire a warning shot.It makes the track look almost foolish to DQ over half the field the night of the biggest race of the year.Adding finishing money into a trust is fine but it still doesn't take the sting out of things for guys if they received nothing for their nights effort and investment. You are burning bridges between you and over half a division. Why would you do that rule enforcement or not?Enforce the rules is what I'm trying to say here but ultimately be a little wiser on how and when you choose to do it.