Thank you for the great invention of the camera, without it there would not be any wonderful old pictures that have been captured on this site.
Thank you everyone for your contributions. Joe
Hope all of this tightens up the racing. lol
Thank You Patty, I go ther and read your column after work.
NASCAR should read these posts, there are fans of the sport here that are telling the truth about the sport.
We all need to support our local short tracks, they are dieing a slow death. I love the dirt cars I am an asphalt convert. There is a great track in Southampton Virginia that is just rotting away it was dirt and got paved. Both surfaces put on a great show but the promoter suffered a couple of seasons of bad weather and the car counts strarted going down and it just closed.
Everytime I go by the track I can't believe it the Sadler brother were supposed to buy it an open it back up but it fell through.
I thought I was going to pluck a chord with my post, glad to see there are so many fans out there that feel the same way I do.
Dave commented on Paul Sawyer, he was a great promotor and always put on a great show in his 1/2 mile bull ring. I would make a weekend of it driving back and forth from Norfolk to Richmond to see practice and qualifying on Friday,late model race on Saturday and the Cup cars on Sunday andget in a Saturday night at Langley when they raced,
I saw that years ago at Rockingham I forget what driver won but fans were near the fence where they were doing post race inspection and the driver totally ignored everyone. But I saw lines a mile long for the King and he greeted and signed autographs for his fans.
The drivers are so vanilla these days they are boring I noticed they all hold the labels of their soft drinks so the camera can see them and take a swig for the sponsors.
I am so tired of the preshow lets go racing. I can say that i do not really have a favorite driver any more since Bill Elliot and I do not buy any race souveneers they are all making too much money for me to spend my hard earned dollar.
I still would rather see short track racing and stick to my local dirt track. It would be a good gesture if drivers paid down to some of the local short tracks and help some of these guys.
I was reading a story in The Wall Street Journal this morning concerning NASCARS tank going dry and the reduction in attendance at races.
Some of the facts I read was that Martinsville had removed some seating. Talledaga had 80,000 in attendence compared to 160,000 in 2000.
UPS, Home Depot and Dodge were pulling out and other sponsors were following as well as Mountain Dew was cutting back on juniors car.
The average fan was in his fifty's and lived 115 miles from the track and with the recession could not afford the gas to get there and the $80 admission.
The cars were homoginized and non descript and could not pass. I myself can only watch a bit of this nose to tail follow the leader racing.
I am not a Jimmy fan and I am sure he is a great driver but he has the personality of a frozen tuna. JMHO. He is stinking up the show right now and I'm sure people said that about Richard and Darrell and others when they won so many races.
After the first 10 cars there is very little competion and cubic inches cost cubic dollars which not many people have the cubic dollars these days. I have said it before when big money came into NASCAR that is when I feel racing started to decline.
Great article. I remember 1 season they had so few cars in the late model devision that they even let Al Grinnin bring his dirt car and the field was 8 cars that night. That was probably about the time Joe Carver came on the scene.
There were so many great drivers and cars then. The cars didn't look like they came off an assembly line. When I would see the lineups at Langley you knew you were in for a show not the nose to tail racing you see today.
