Racing Road Trip:
Let’s Head to… Where?
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12/06/2016 Frank Buhrman |
Did it feel funny the week after Homestead? Suddenly, there was no upcoming race to talk about over lunch or drinks, no picks to make for the office or neighborhood pool, and worst of all, no plans to make for going to – or at least watching – the race.
There’s a void, but it wasn’t always that way.
NASCAR’s Grand National/Winston Cup/Nextel-Sprint Cup/Monster Cup schedule has evolved a lot since 1949, and unfortunately (from my standpoint, at least), that evolution has removed December races. For anyone who’d prefer not to shift focus to football, basketball, ice hockey or curling, that’s a shame.
With that thought in mind, I’ll pick up my Don Quixote lance and take on that schedule windmill: let’s have some December racing again!
First, some history.
In NASCAR’s so-called “modern era” (starting with 1972, when we got Winston and eliminated shorter races), there has never been a December race. For most of the early years, now-defunct tracks at College Station, Texas, and California’s Ontario and Riverside brought up the end of the season, mostly running on the second or third weekend in November - we won’t talk about 2001 when Loudon, N.H., ran the weekend after Thanksgiving, because that would require another article entirely. Atlanta then took on the “last race” mantle for a while, and in 2002, Homestead became the final stop, and it’s held that role ever since, always in November.
The tracks in Texas, California and Florida might have been able to run successfully in December, but they and NASCAR have elected not to try.
Actually, College Station – officially, Texas World Speedway – did try earlier, and it holds the distinction of being the last track to run a December event for NASCAR’s top circuit. That was on December 12, 1971. It also ran in December of 1969, but that’s an odd tale, too, at least for younger NASCAR fans.
You see, for about 15 years, NASCAR ended its season in late October or early November, then began the next season the following weekend. (Actually, there was one much stranger schedule quirk, about which more will be said later.) For instance, the 1967 Grand National season ended on November 5 at Asheville-Weaverville Speedway in western North Carolina, and the 1968 season began November 12 (still 1967) at Macon, Ga., and also included a race November 26 at Montgomery, Ala.
That sort of thing went on until 1969, when all GN races run in ’69 were counted in the ’69 standings. Thus, the Texas World Speedway event on Dec. 7, 1969, was the first GN race run in December that counted in that year’s standings, rather than the next year.
Got that?
For most of the ‘60s, this somewhat odd approach still had the latest (if not last) race of the season run in November, but the 1964 season was different. It featured four races run in 1963, including Wendell Scott’s only career victory, which came December 1 in Jacksonville, Fla., and four weeks later, it included a race in Savanna, Ga., at a now-closed half-mile dirt track on December 29. Richard Petty won that 200-lapper by a lap over Jack Smith (with Tiny Lund four laps back in third) after six of the top ten qualifiers failed to finish. No cases of frostbite were reported.
Earlier December races were run in West Palm Beach, Fla., in 1955 (for the ’56 season) and in 1956 (for the ’57 season) at Concord, N.C., and Titusville, Fla. The latter, run on a temporary airport road course, was the latest GN/Cup event ever, taking place on December 30. The Concord race seems to have been the northernmost GN event ever run in December.
So it can be done . . . although none of the tracks that have tried it still exist, and you can draw whatever conclusion from that you wish. I think we can do it again, but before I present my possibilities, let’s talk about that strange schedule quirk I mentioned earlier.
When you use Racing-Reference.info a lot for really old results, you’ll notice – and I’ve mentioned previously – that NASCAR had a habit in the “old days” of scheduling two Grand National races on the same day, one on each coast, usually. That was the case on November 11, 1956, when races were run at Hickory, N.C. (on the still-existing Hickory Speedway) and at the still-existing Willow Springs Speedway, a road course in Lancaster, Calif.
But here’s the weird part: the Hickory race was counted in the 1956 season, as was an event the next weekend in Wilson, N.C., but the Willow Springs race was counted for 1957 (as were the two races in December that are mentioned above).
That retelling has my head spinning, so I can imagine that I might have lost you some time back, which makes this a good time to leave the dusty archives (well, my keyboard is a little dusty).
I see two ways NASCAR could realistically run into December these days. The first would be find a track in a resort-ish location – Hawaii, the Caribbean, Mexico/Central America, Australia – and make the race part of an overall vacation package. Since people already pay outrageous sums for those, another hundred bucks or so per person for race tickets wouldn’t even be noticed. There could even be some extras for the drivers/teams… back in the old Northern Tour days, Oxford Plains Speedway would hold a clambake for racers, and that idea could be updated.
The other possibility would be to go indoors. I went to see one of the old midget races in the Atlantic City Convention Center 40+ years ago, and other than the fumes getting so bad that you couldn’t see across the place by race’s end, it was lots of fun. They still run there, although with smaller cars. At the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis, they’ve run full-sized sprint cars, but I don’t think you need bigger cars.
In my proposal for a “Classic” racing series on short tracks with rich NASCAR histories, I said cheaper cars could make it affordable with smaller audiences, and that could apply to indoor racing, too, especially since the tracks also tend to be (a lot) smaller.
We’ve even got the whole thing already set up. Down at the Richmond Coliseum, Ricky Dennis (son of long-time NASCAR driver Bill) runs his ArenaRacingUSA series and has 11 dates scheduled for this winter. I would love to see another one of these and may try to get down there in February or March.
The series’ aluminum track is modular and can be installed-torn down anywhere in a relatively short period. The cars are pretty cheap; NASCAR Cup teams could add a couple to their inventory and pay for them by buying cheaper coffee. It would give us something fun to do, and it might keep NASCAR on the radar – something our sport desperately needs these days. (Could we call ‘em “Mini-Monsters?”)
Arena Racing is pitched as a “developmental” series, and had one winner in its first races last month who wasn’t even 10 years old, but grown-ups fit in the cars, too. I’m ready to see the Coca-Cola ArenaRacing 200 reverse NASCAR’s decline and make it all fun again.
There’s a void, but it wasn’t always that way.
NASCAR’s Grand National/Winston Cup/Nextel-Sprint Cup/Monster Cup schedule has evolved a lot since 1949, and unfortunately (from my standpoint, at least), that evolution has removed December races. For anyone who’d prefer not to shift focus to football, basketball, ice hockey or curling, that’s a shame.
With that thought in mind, I’ll pick up my Don Quixote lance and take on that schedule windmill: let’s have some December racing again!
First, some history.
In NASCAR’s so-called “modern era” (starting with 1972, when we got Winston and eliminated shorter races), there has never been a December race. For most of the early years, now-defunct tracks at College Station, Texas, and California’s Ontario and Riverside brought up the end of the season, mostly running on the second or third weekend in November - we won’t talk about 2001 when Loudon, N.H., ran the weekend after Thanksgiving, because that would require another article entirely. Atlanta then took on the “last race” mantle for a while, and in 2002, Homestead became the final stop, and it’s held that role ever since, always in November.
The tracks in Texas, California and Florida might have been able to run successfully in December, but they and NASCAR have elected not to try.
Actually, College Station – officially, Texas World Speedway – did try earlier, and it holds the distinction of being the last track to run a December event for NASCAR’s top circuit. That was on December 12, 1971. It also ran in December of 1969, but that’s an odd tale, too, at least for younger NASCAR fans.
You see, for about 15 years, NASCAR ended its season in late October or early November, then began the next season the following weekend. (Actually, there was one much stranger schedule quirk, about which more will be said later.) For instance, the 1967 Grand National season ended on November 5 at Asheville-Weaverville Speedway in western North Carolina, and the 1968 season began November 12 (still 1967) at Macon, Ga., and also included a race November 26 at Montgomery, Ala.
That sort of thing went on until 1969, when all GN races run in ’69 were counted in the ’69 standings. Thus, the Texas World Speedway event on Dec. 7, 1969, was the first GN race run in December that counted in that year’s standings, rather than the next year.
Got that?
For most of the ‘60s, this somewhat odd approach still had the latest (if not last) race of the season run in November, but the 1964 season was different. It featured four races run in 1963, including Wendell Scott’s only career victory, which came December 1 in Jacksonville, Fla., and four weeks later, it included a race in Savanna, Ga., at a now-closed half-mile dirt track on December 29. Richard Petty won that 200-lapper by a lap over Jack Smith (with Tiny Lund four laps back in third) after six of the top ten qualifiers failed to finish. No cases of frostbite were reported.
Earlier December races were run in West Palm Beach, Fla., in 1955 (for the ’56 season) and in 1956 (for the ’57 season) at Concord, N.C., and Titusville, Fla. The latter, run on a temporary airport road course, was the latest GN/Cup event ever, taking place on December 30. The Concord race seems to have been the northernmost GN event ever run in December.
So it can be done . . . although none of the tracks that have tried it still exist, and you can draw whatever conclusion from that you wish. I think we can do it again, but before I present my possibilities, let’s talk about that strange schedule quirk I mentioned earlier.
When you use Racing-Reference.info a lot for really old results, you’ll notice – and I’ve mentioned previously – that NASCAR had a habit in the “old days” of scheduling two Grand National races on the same day, one on each coast, usually. That was the case on November 11, 1956, when races were run at Hickory, N.C. (on the still-existing Hickory Speedway) and at the still-existing Willow Springs Speedway, a road course in Lancaster, Calif.
But here’s the weird part: the Hickory race was counted in the 1956 season, as was an event the next weekend in Wilson, N.C., but the Willow Springs race was counted for 1957 (as were the two races in December that are mentioned above).
That retelling has my head spinning, so I can imagine that I might have lost you some time back, which makes this a good time to leave the dusty archives (well, my keyboard is a little dusty).
I see two ways NASCAR could realistically run into December these days. The first would be find a track in a resort-ish location – Hawaii, the Caribbean, Mexico/Central America, Australia – and make the race part of an overall vacation package. Since people already pay outrageous sums for those, another hundred bucks or so per person for race tickets wouldn’t even be noticed. There could even be some extras for the drivers/teams… back in the old Northern Tour days, Oxford Plains Speedway would hold a clambake for racers, and that idea could be updated.
The other possibility would be to go indoors. I went to see one of the old midget races in the Atlantic City Convention Center 40+ years ago, and other than the fumes getting so bad that you couldn’t see across the place by race’s end, it was lots of fun. They still run there, although with smaller cars. At the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis, they’ve run full-sized sprint cars, but I don’t think you need bigger cars.
In my proposal for a “Classic” racing series on short tracks with rich NASCAR histories, I said cheaper cars could make it affordable with smaller audiences, and that could apply to indoor racing, too, especially since the tracks also tend to be (a lot) smaller.
We’ve even got the whole thing already set up. Down at the Richmond Coliseum, Ricky Dennis (son of long-time NASCAR driver Bill) runs his ArenaRacingUSA series and has 11 dates scheduled for this winter. I would love to see another one of these and may try to get down there in February or March.
The series’ aluminum track is modular and can be installed-torn down anywhere in a relatively short period. The cars are pretty cheap; NASCAR Cup teams could add a couple to their inventory and pay for them by buying cheaper coffee. It would give us something fun to do, and it might keep NASCAR on the radar – something our sport desperately needs these days. (Could we call ‘em “Mini-Monsters?”)
Arena Racing is pitched as a “developmental” series, and had one winner in its first races last month who wasn’t even 10 years old, but grown-ups fit in the cars, too. I’m ready to see the Coca-Cola ArenaRacing 200 reverse NASCAR’s decline and make it all fun again.
