DW & LarryMac Weigh in on Driver Fueds
General
They should be able to afford the admission fee.
Forum Activity for @dave-fulton
DW & LarryMac Weigh in on Driver Fueds
General
Here's Dw's and LarryMac's thoughts on the most recent driver fueds:
updated by @dave-fulton: 04/04/17 08:33:36AM
Dismal New Numbers for Sinking NASCAR Hall of Fame
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Amen to the comments made by both of you ladies. I live in Charlotte and refuse to go. Can't tell you how many time I wandered through the Joe Weatherly Stock Car Museum and the International Motorsports Hall of Fame. Maybe you gals could come next September when Charlotte hosts the Democratic National Convention. The City is going to "safen up" the areaby temporarily relocating the downtown transportation hub (read bus transfer station) so the convention attendees won't be exposed to the "undesirables" who hang out there. Charlotte has an unused bran new jail annex out near the old Osterlund Racing shops that it can't fill up. I'm going to suggest they move the Transportation Hub there and they can put the undesirable hanger outters directly in the pokey.
Dismal New Numbers for Sinking NASCAR Hall of Fame
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Right on the money boys with that observation.
Dismal New Numbers for Sinking NASCAR Hall of Fame
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I see that we, the Charlotte/Mecklenburg taxpayers, are paying more to the search firm looking for a new CRVB head than we are paying the search firm seeking a new Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent. Maybe that explains the "Are you smarter than a middle schooler" function at the NASCAR HOF.
Dismal New Numbers for Sinking NASCAR Hall of Fame
General
Charlotte Checkers draw 12,000-14,000 for a good weekend game, but average just over 6,000. Checkers' season attendance is about the same as HOF.
Final 2010-2011 AHL Attendance
(Complete through Sunday, April 10th)
Team Yesterday Total Games Average
Hershey 10,435 392,005 40 9,800
Manitoba 0 336,156 40 8,404
Chicago 10,091 298,117 40 7,453
Providence 9,550 292,970 40 7,324
Grand Rapids 0 289,646 40 7,241
Lake Erie 0 262,735 40 6,568
San Antonio 9,909 256,433 40 6,411
W-B/Scranton 7,161 254,411 40 6,360
Houston 11,519 253,021 40 6,326
Charlotte 0 252,486 40 6,312
Milwaukee 6,523 231,839 40 5,796
Connecticut 4,825 227,792 40 5,695
Manchester 0 218,444 40 5,461
Texas 0 213,584 40 5,340
Peoria 0 207,852 40 5,196
Syracuse 0 206,158 40 5,154
Toronto 6,815 187,741 40 4,694
Portland 7,051 186,192 40 4,655
Norfolk 0 179,609 40 4,490
Rockford 0 174,418 40 4,360
Hamilton 0 170,292 40 4,257
Oklahoma City 0 166,195 40 4,155
Bridgeport 7,205 165,609 40 4,140
Worcester 0 162,728 40 4,068
Rochester 4,471 154,890 40 3,872
Abbotsford 0 152,272 40 3,807
Springfield 0 148,695 40 3,717
Binghamton 0 146,097 40 3,652
Adirondack 0 143,001 40 3,575
Albany 0 124,563 40 3,114
League 95,555 6,455,951 1,200 5,380
Dismal New Numbers for Sinking NASCAR Hall of Fame
General
Just in.... I really don't want it to fail. but...............
During fiscal 2011, which ended June 30, ticket revenue at the NASCAR Hall of Fame totaled $4.1 million, 64 percent below budget estimates.
More attendance woes for NASCAR Hall of Fame
Date: Wednesday, September 14, 2011, 11:26am EDT
Erik Spanberg
Senior Staff Writer - Charlotte Business Journal
Attendance at the NASCAR Hall of Fame fell by 35 percent in July from a year earlier, continuing a trend of declining results.
The Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority, operator of the $200 million publicly funded stock-car museum, reported the figures at its board meeting Wednesday. In July 2010, 33,452 people visited the hall of fame. Attendance declined to 21,910 in July 2011, the first month of the new fiscal year.
July marked the third month of attendance slips of 30 percent or more in year-over-year comparisons. Those figures offer a barometer of interest in the hall of fame, which opened in May 2010. For May 2011, attendance was 30 percent below the previous year (25,034 visitors compared with 35,090 in May 2010). In June 2011, crowds dropped by 39 percent to 17,604 visitors for the month.
Visitors authority board members didnt discuss the hall of fame results during their meeting. A recent update to City Council included questions and discussion of whether ticket prices could be hurting attendance.
Gross operating deficits for the hall of fame were $188,000 for July, and, after a reimbursement from taxes designated for maintenance, the net loss was $144,000. Both figures were less than the losses forecast in the budget.
During fiscal 2011, which ended June 30, ticket revenue at the hall of fame was $4.1 million, 64 percent below budget estimates.
updated by @dave-fulton: 01/08/17 08:09:40PM
One Time "Fastest Woman on Earth" Dead
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Betty Skelton Erde
Motorsports Pioneer Betty Skelton Erde Dies At 85
Posted: 4:35 pm EDT September 13, 2011
Updated: 5:06 pm EDT September 13, 2011
THE VILLAGES, Fla. -- Betty Skelton Erde, an aviator and auto racing pioneer once called the fastest woman on Earth, has died. She was 85.
Erde set female speed records at Daytona Beach and Utah's Bonneville salt flats half a century ago. In 2008, she was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in suburban Detroit.
Dozens of firsts are attached to her name: the auto industry's first female test driver in 1954; the first to set a female world land speed record in 1956 (145 mph at Daytona Beach); and the world land speed record for women in 1965, hitting 315.72 mph at Bonneville.
Erde began drawing attention as a female stunt pilot as a teenager in the 1940s.
"To me, there's hardly any feeling in the world that can equal the feeling of an airplane when the wheels leave the ground," Erde told The Associated Press in 2008.
She mastered dozens of tricks. Her signature move was cutting a ribbon strung between two fishing poles with her propeller, while flying upside down just 10 feet off the ground.
In 1948, she bought a rare Pitts Special - a lightweight, red-and-white biplane suited for aerobatics. But while Erde was soaring in popularity, she also was a rarity because she was a young, beautiful woman in a male-dominated world of death-defying stunts.
In 1953, the man who began the NASCAR race circuit asked Erde to fly some auto racers from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. She and Bill France became fast friends.
In February 1954, France invited Erde to Daytona. She climbed into a Dodge sedan, went 105.88 mph on the beach and set a stock car record. Erde became a Chevrolet employee and set records with Corvettes, owning 10 in all.
In the 50s, she raced across the South American Andes, down Mexico's rugged Baja Peninsula and also set records at the Chrysler proving grounds in Michigan.
"I would venture to say there is no other woman in the world with all the attributes of this woman," France once remarked. "The most impressive of them all is her surprising and outstanding ever-present femininity, even when tackling a man's job."
She flew planes until she was in her mid-70s; when she was 82, she drove around her retirement community in a red Corvette.
Said Erde in 2008: "It's been quite a ride."
She died Aug. 31 in The Villages, a retirement community in Central Florida, where she had lived with her husband, Allan Erde.
Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press.
updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:02:07PM
Danica Admits She Likes NASCAR Fights and Says "Don't Mess With Me?
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Danica Patrick (above) made these remarks to Hank Kurz, Jr., The Associated Press Virginia Sports Editor at Richmond this past weekend?
HANK KURZ Jr.
AP Sports Writer
2:09 p.m. CDT, September 14, 2011
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) Danica Patrick gets fired up when she's watching a NASCAR race and tempers flare.
"I'm a fan, too. I'm a consumer. I love to see fights . I love to see crashes ," she said. "I love to see drivers being honest with their emotions and letting everyone know what they think."
The IndyCar star also looks forward to joining the fray full time next season, when she plans to run the entire NASCAR Nationwide Series schedule and eight to 10 Sprint Cup races.
"Oddly enough, I would say that the older I get, the more aggressive I get. Is that weird?" she said in Richmond, where she qualified 32nd and finished 18th last Friday night. "I didn't start like a Brazilian driver and go out 'Whoooo' and hit everything and figure it out later. I started out much more patient with other drivers and patient with myself and respectful.
"Now I'm much more of the attitude and it's probably because I have fenders these days but much more of the attitude that 'Don't mess with me. I will hit you back, '" she said. (NASCAR'S New "Have at it Girls" policy)
Yes, in NASCAR's time of 'Boys, have at it,' the girl wants in, too.
"I think you have to," she said of retaliating. "You've got fenders and you take care of business yourself and there's very few penalties for driving carelessly or aggressively with other drivers because they don't really need to. You just give it back to them because you can."
But that's not to say she plans to wreak havoc once she's one of the boys.
Instead, she knows she still has a ton to learn, a point that has been reinforced each time she finds herself in an ill-handling car and struggles to communicate to her crew what needs to be changed and with what level of comfort is reasonable to expect.
The point was driven home during a test session in Georgia this year when she felt like the car was loose all morning, and that pushing it any harder would cause it to spin.
"It took half the day before we finally made a shock adjustment and it was like, '... Yeah, I do like these cars. I remember,'" she said, laughing. "I'd forgotten how good it can feel. ... I drove a car that was loose for a half a day because I just didn't know any better."
That inexperience is why Tony Stewart, who owns the car she will drive in the Sprint Cup races next year, intends to make sure Patrick keeps her expectations in check.
"Your rookie season is all about learning," he said, "and the steps get tougher the higher you get in racing. I guess it's my job as an owner that we keep her goals attainable."
Patrick, though, will hardly be a stock car novice when her Cup debut arrives. She has driven in 21 Nationwide Series races the past two seasons, and after finishing no better than 19th in 13 starts in 2010, has three top-10s with a best of fourth in eight races this year.
Kevin Harvick has seen enough to suspect she's only going to get better.
"I think she's made good progression with her on-the-racetrack-driving part of it," he said. "Off the racetrack is going to be great, as usual, and I think it's going to be great for the whole sport in general. But Danica's a very competitive person. She's not here to just collect a check and ride around. She wants to be competitive week in and week out and that's what I like about her. She will put in the time and the effort to be competitive."
And in the interim, she's fine getting on-the-job training under a microscope.
"I think of it like I've got to prove that I'm a great driver. I don't really think of it because I'm a girl, I feel like I have more to prove. I don't," she said. "There are lots of drivers that want to get the rides that I'm getting and whether they are girls or guys."
She's also not buying the idea that she's off limits to confrontation if she messes up.
"If I can come down and talk to you, you can come down and talk to me," she said. "Handle it how you want to handle it. I suppose it wouldn't be a good idea to strike me, but it wouldn't be a good idea for me to strike someone else, would it?"
On some level, she almost seems eager to get in that first dustup.
"There's twice as many races, there's twice as many opportunities for people to tick you off, and twice as many cars," she said. "There's probably 10 times more passing out there, so there's a lot of opportunities for drivers to do things that would tick you off.
"That's what makes it exciting, I think."
___
Follow Hank Kurz on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/hankkurzjr
updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:02:07PM