Post by rck on Sept 7, 2013 10:10:30 GMT -5
It has been a couple of weeks now since the quad show was offered at 81 Speedway and I have had time to think about what happened.
C-Ray Hall, the promoter at 81, wanted to offer his fans something other than his regular stock car classes as support to his featured USAC non-winged sprint car show. His plans were to run only quads and mod-lites along with the sprint cars. C-Ray stated that he expected 6 to 8 mod-lites to show and I thought there would be 8-12 quads which would produce a good supporting program for the sprint cars.
There were 6 mod-lites and their racing was somewhat strung out, nowhere close to the kind of show 10 quads would have put on.
Now to the part that I cannot figure out, only 1 quad showed (thank you, Brian Bookout). In the quad racing community there was one, if not more, bridge burned that night. I have my doubts if quads will ever be offered a show at 81 again. I feel that my creditability with C-Ray and 81 took a big hit because I had confidence that we could produce a strong entertaining class for his full grandstands.
I know there are dozens of reasons why riders, quad and motorcycle, do not come to race, but now is the time to take a long look at the state of our sport and decide if it is worth saving. Racer participation is down, fan interest is not growing (I heard that the stands at Springfield were not close to being full), it is getting harder to get on race tracks, etc. That is why when a fair board or a promoter actually wants a motorcycle or quad race we need to go out of our way to support them.
That brings us to September 14 at Hays, Kansas. Paul Covert and others have put an unbelievable amount of effort into the I-70 series and the Hays race. In my opinion this race is very important to the future of flat track racing in Kansas.
It’s time to ask ourselves are we racers and do we care about our sport or is this something we do when it’s easy and convenient and we won’t care if our sport goes away.
Randy Koster
C-Ray Hall, the promoter at 81, wanted to offer his fans something other than his regular stock car classes as support to his featured USAC non-winged sprint car show. His plans were to run only quads and mod-lites along with the sprint cars. C-Ray stated that he expected 6 to 8 mod-lites to show and I thought there would be 8-12 quads which would produce a good supporting program for the sprint cars.
There were 6 mod-lites and their racing was somewhat strung out, nowhere close to the kind of show 10 quads would have put on.
Now to the part that I cannot figure out, only 1 quad showed (thank you, Brian Bookout). In the quad racing community there was one, if not more, bridge burned that night. I have my doubts if quads will ever be offered a show at 81 again. I feel that my creditability with C-Ray and 81 took a big hit because I had confidence that we could produce a strong entertaining class for his full grandstands.
I know there are dozens of reasons why riders, quad and motorcycle, do not come to race, but now is the time to take a long look at the state of our sport and decide if it is worth saving. Racer participation is down, fan interest is not growing (I heard that the stands at Springfield were not close to being full), it is getting harder to get on race tracks, etc. That is why when a fair board or a promoter actually wants a motorcycle or quad race we need to go out of our way to support them.
That brings us to September 14 at Hays, Kansas. Paul Covert and others have put an unbelievable amount of effort into the I-70 series and the Hays race. In my opinion this race is very important to the future of flat track racing in Kansas.
It’s time to ask ourselves are we racers and do we care about our sport or is this something we do when it’s easy and convenient and we won’t care if our sport goes away.
Randy Koster
