Fewer Grandstands and More VIP Suites ~
Recipe for NASCAR Success or Failure?
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Are
you a member of the hoi polloi? (Do you even know?)
Why
this outdated term wormed its way into my head the other day, I have no idea,
but it almost immediately led to the thoughts I’ll share here below.
The
term “hoi polloi” dates way back to Greek and more-or-less means “people,”
although at some point, English upper crust types (and then their American
counterparts) began to use it derogatorily for “the masses,” the common people.
See those people
standing just this side of the grandstand? I’m betting they didn’t pay top
dollar to get into this race. Think they could afford NASCAR today?
Those
are the people our favorite sport grew up with. My guess is that, if you went
to a race at Pulaski County Speedway near Radford, Va., back in the mid-50s,
you might have seen a group of fans that “high-class” folks might have
dismissed as hoi polloi. Same for Anthracite Speedway near Pottsville in
Pennsylvania’s coal country, or the Mason City Fairgrounds in Iowa, the
Texarkana Speedbowl, or El Toro Raceway in Costa Mesa, Calif. The bleachers and
parking lots at those and other tracks weren’t full of people talking about
polo, tennis, or even golf. Sure, there probably were some, but in general
these were crowds of everybody American folks.
“Hoi
polloi,” fortunately, has just about fallen off the map as a commonly used or
even understood term, so today we say – with less an effort to judge – working
class, middle class, mainstream American. These are fans to be proud of.
The
problem is that – like health insurance and retirement – following NASCAR at
the track keeps getting more and more expensive.
We
talk about those bad old days about 15 years ago when NASCAR began to alienate
its older fans – many of whom might have qualified as hoi polloi, and we talk
about the Chase, the Car of Tomorrow, and similar sins as the reasons, but I’ll
add that costs escalated during that period and put attending races
increasingly out of reach.
This is a great place
to watch a race . . . if you can afford it. But we need to keep places at the
track for those who don’t even dream of the money this suite costs.
The
crash in NASCAR’s popularity that began about a decade ago brought some prices
back down, but tracks also responded by removing seats, seeking that
supply-and-demand point where enough people want tickets that you can raise the
prices you charge for them. (One wonders whether the perfect world for
management would be a track with one seat, which sells for $15 million per
race. If only Mike Bloomberg was a diehard race fan.)
To
me, this is a real problem for NASCAR. I don’t think television alone is enough
to turn that many viewers into new race fans, yet attending your first race to
see how you like it can get expensive. When I went to my first Grand
National/Cup race on something of a whim, a ticket was $5 which even then
wasn’t that much for a kid to beg from his dad.
This
is another of the problems that comes with making everything about racing so
much more expensive. I’m glad VIP suites are there for sponsors and others who
can afford them, but I want t to look out for the descendants of those folks
who came out to the races in 1955 and saw Tim Flock win on the Beach-Road Course
at Daytona or Junior Johnson win at Raleigh or Lee Petty take the checkers at
Plattsburgh, N.Y. Let’s make sure they and their children can attend a race and
maybe see the excitement as we did.
I don’t know if this
actually is an old autograph or not, but I know Ned signed a lot of them, and
that personal interaction creates fans.
I
know it’s this way with other sports, too – priced an NFL or NBA ticket lately?
– but I don’t care what happens with them. I care about racing, and I want kids
today to get the bug like I did decades ago, so maybe they can look back on the
sport years from now with the kinds of memories that I cherish.
Frank’s
Loose Lug Nuts
The
recent flap about
Parker Kligerman’s implied criticism of Angela Ruch
and her driving ability, followed by what apparently was her husband’s
profanity-laden social media tirade against Kligerman, was harmless
entertainment for most of us. What I missed, though, in Ruch’s response – which
mainly tried to make it clear that the embarrassing rant was made by her
husband under her name – was any suggestion that he consider some anger
management therapy.
This
is another one of those areas where times have changed with regards to his
options when things go wrong – on the track or in the media – for Angela. Years
ago, Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem had a novelty racing division for
large luxury cars, the Blunderbust class. We were
there one night when that division ran a “powder puff” race for female drivers.
Entrants apparently included a couple of driver wives or girlfriends who set
out to settle scores for their husbands. Somewhere, I still have a photo of a
1970-ish Lincoln Continental spinning wildly across the 50-yard line of the
football field that is Bowman Gray’s “infield.”
I
kind of doubt any Xfinity car owners will loan out vehicles for Ms. Ruch’s
hubby to tackle those he thinks have done her wrong.
Here’s
a postscript
to last week’s article about my racing history research. I’ve since spent a day
at the Eastern Museum of Motor Racing
reading old issues of National Speed Sport News for more info on the
URC-sanctioned sprint car races held in Richmond during the ‘50s and ‘60s, and
that effort brought several other things to mind.
For
one, when you go through racing newspapers from that far back, you can’t help
but be struck by how many drivers got killed. There were issues that reported
three, four or more deaths around the country in a single week. Multiple deaths
in a single incident were frighteningly common.
It
really drove home how successful safety efforts have been, especially over the
last quarter century or so. Yes, racing remains a dangerous sport – ask Ryan
Newman – but there’s no comparison between today and that period just 50-60
years ago – ask Ryan Newman about that too.
For
all our problems, that’s an area where we can raise a glass in toast to the
right moves.
One
final note
on last week’s article. I posted an addendum later in the week correcting myself
on the Royall Speedway race I labeled as unsanctioned – it was in fact a NASCAR
Short Track Division event. Also, I wrote about Bert Brooks winning a sprint
car race and pictured him driving a midget. Apologies to all for both those
slips, but sincerest thanks to John Barrick and Albert Torney for straightening
things out. I neglected to mention them by name in my earlier follow-up. It’s
wonderful to have other devotees of auto racing history covering your back.