Gas prices have race fans rethinking trip to the track
By CHRIS JENKINS
AP Sports Writer
Auto racing is the ultimate in gas-guzzling entertainment. But the prospect of paying $4 a gallon to get to the track has some fans reluctant to start their engines.
Ticket sales have slipped just as May, the biggest month in motorsports, approaches. So track promoters are shifting into high gear to keep the grandstands full, offering all-you-can-eat packages and staging rock concerts.
“This is a working man’s sport, no matter what picture some people try to paint,” said H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler, president of Lowe’s Motor Speedway outside Charlotte, N.C. “The people most affected by these obnoxious oil prices are the working man.”
About half the fans who attend the Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR race, set for May 25 at Wheeler’s track, drive from more than 250 miles away, many of them in RVs that can cost $300 or more to fill up.
Fans often camp out for several days at races, too, making a weekend at the track a much larger financial commitment than taking in a baseball game—and suggesting motorsports is more vulnerable to an economy under the yellow flag.
Dean Strom, a financial planner from Muskego, Wis., usually gets to 20 to 30 races a year, mostly at grassroots-level short tracks in the Midwest. These days he has more incentive to stay home.
“Now there’s the gas price issue,” said Strom, who also works as the public address announcer at the Milwaukee Mile racetrack. “I think twice now before I go and do something, whereas I never thought twice before.”
Racetracks generally don’t release official attendance numbers. But in a recent conference call with financial analysts, officials with one major track ownership group, International Speedway Corp., said the company was seeing a high-single-digit percentage drop in ticket sales over last year.
Wheeler is hoping unlimited hamburgers, hot dogs and snacks will help his track, which is run by a rival company, Speedway Motorsports Inc. He’s selling $89 all-you-can-eat tickets to his race, an idea he says he lifted from baseball’s Atlanta Braves.
He’s also promoting the NASCAR All-Star race, set for May 17 at Lowe’s. To rev up fans for that, he’s added entertainment—a “burnout” competition in which drivers will perform wheel-spinning, tire-smoking pirouettes in their cars, just like they do after winning a race.
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is hoping the positive publicity generated by Danica Patrick’s recent victory, the first by a female driver in the IndyCar series, and a recent reunification of two rival racing series will boost interest for the May 25 Indianapolis 500.
The track also is bringing in rock music acts in the weeks leading up to the race, hoping to turn qualifying and practice sessions into fan festivals.
Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Joie Chitwood said ticket sales for the track’s July 27 NASCAR race, the Brickyard 400, are looking “a little bit tougher these days” and might be a sign that the economy is having an impact on racing.
So far, Wheeler said, ticket sales for the All-Star race, an event that costs less and usually draws more local fans than the 600-miler, are “substantially ahead” of last year.
Sales for the Coca-Cola 600 are “not ahead,” he said—although the all-you-can-eat section is selling well.
Virginia Commonwealth University professor Jon Ackley, who teaches a course on the business of NASCAR, always sees plenty of out-of-state license plates at Richmond International Raceway.
But with a NASCAR Sprint Cup series race coming up in Richmond this weekend, Ackley couldn’t help noticing that the track still had tickets on sale this week.
“Clearly, the gas prices are having an impact on travel plans,” Ackley said.
Still, NASCAR’s crowds remain impressive.
The Texas Motor Speedway didn’t sell out its April 6 Sprint Cup race, but it did draw more than 180,000 fans—“three times the Super Bowl,” track president Eddie Gossage crows.
At the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas, sales of a $159 package for a family of four to sit in the tougher-to-sell backstretch are up 600 percent in the past three years.
“In our view attendance has done well given the economy,” NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said. “Let’s put attendance into perspective—we are averaging 120,000 fans per race day. That’s a crowd that any sport in America would be ecstatic about.”
Racing has weathered tough times before.
During the energy crisis of the 1970s, Wheeler found a way around gas shortages that might have prevented fans from making it to the track: He hired a former oil company executive to drive up the interstates leading to Charlotte and pay gas station owners $500 each to guarantee a fill-up to any fan holding race tickets.
“I don’t know if it was legal or not,” he said, chuckling. “I think, it was good, old American capitalism.”
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some of these nascar tracks (KC comes to mind) that you have to pay for parking and can't bring in backpacks or coolers. better rethink some of their
policies.
the tracks with the best perks for the fans will be the ones
with full seats.
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No real fan plans to go to a race and stays home because of gas cost.
When I had season tickets to my area track I was required to pay for them 8 months in advance. That was over $400 that had to be in by the previous Christmas. After putting up the cash for the seats and waiting all winter and spring... $4 per gallon wouldn't even make me slow down on the way there.
Even NASCAR not immune to rising prices of gasoline
Non-sanctioned tests, haulers, jets starting to add up
By Jenna Fryer, The Associated Press
May 7, 2008
03:15 PM EDT
CONCORD, N.C. -- As gas prices soar across the country, the thought of paying $6.25 a gallon would make any consumer cringe.
Yet that's what it costs in NASCAR, where race teams use a special Sunoco 260 GTX unleaded fuel to fill their cars. Although the gas is free -- part of Sunoco's agreement as NASCAR's official fuel supplier -- it doesn't mean car owners and drivers aren't feeling the pain at the pump.
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"It affects all of us, anybody that's in business," said car owner Richard Childress. "Getting our cars to the racetracks costs a ton in gas money for the haulers. Bringing our people to the tracks, the rising costs of jet fuel. It's very, very expensive to do what we're doing."
Childress, owner of a highly successful race team, isn't complaining. Nor are the drivers who pull in multimillion dollar salaries and don't flinch at $85 fill-ups on their luxury SUV's.
But no one in NASCAR is immune to the weakening economy and rising costs on fuel. Just because they can afford it, doesn't mean they aren't feeling the pinch.
Under Sunoco's deal with NASCAR, teams are provided free fuel at any sanctioned test, practice or race for all three top divisions. A company spokeswoman said it's impossible to determine just how much fuel is used per weekend because of fluctuations in schedules, weather and the teams' practice times each week.
When teams tested earlier this week at Lowe's Motor Speedway, their gas was once again free.
But the good teams test a lot, traveling all over the South to facilities not sanctioned by NASCAR. Sunoco doesn't cover those all-day sessions, and a race team typically brings a 55-gallon drum of gas to get them through the test.
Of course, it's all budgeted for long before the season even starts. And teams aren't affected by the oft-changing fluctuations in fuel costs under the Sunoco deal.
Even so, there are critics who complain that NASCAR races are dipping into the national supply. But NASCAR officials claim the amount of fuel being used -- less than 175,000 gallons per year on the Sprint Cup Series -- doesn't come close to the 366 million gallons that Americans average in daily usage.
So NASCAR has no current plans to shorten races, as it did in the early 1970s when OPEC hoarded oil to increase prices, causing long lines at the pumps.
But the pain is still felt away from the track, where teams have noticed a significant increase in transportation costs.
From sending diesel-chugging haulers across the country to transport the racecars, to the exorbitant jump in jet fuel, costs are soaring in simply getting drivers, crews and equipment to each event.
"We're really noticing it in credit card costs," said Jay Frye, general manager of Red Bull Racing. "We're getting bills back for thousands and thousands of dollars in diesel fuel that's needed to get the haulers to the track each week. So every time gas prices go up, it affects our monthly budget because we're paying a bigger gas bill than we did last month."
With diesel fuel now more than $4.00 a gallon, and each hauler holding roughly 300 gallons, fill-ups now cost more than $1,200 for a truck that only gets between 4.5 and 7.5 miles per gallon.
The real pinch, though, comes in jet fuel. Many team owners shuttling crew members, and drivers flying private planes on weekends, are considering cutting down on the luxuries.
Jeff Burton said he recently sat down with his wife, Kim, to discuss removing any nonessential travel from their plans, and in March, Childress had crew members make the three-hour drive from North Carolina to Bristol, Tenn., instead of sending planes.
"That's directly related to fuel costs," Childress said. "We've gotten rid of some planes this year and gone to some different programs to save money in that area."
Many drivers own their own planes and use them for personal and professional travel. But at about $4.30 a gallon, Carl Edwards estimated it costs him $2,000 a trip to fill his airplane -- not worth it for a spur-of-the-moment vacation.
"It's expensive, and listen, I'm a real thrifty person and I have my budget for the year before the year starts," Edwards said. "I'm good. I planned for it. But I still have trouble doing it. I'd rather just go ride my bike to get a little outside time, or just go down the river. It's way cheaper than jumping over to the Bahamas."
Many also consider themselves lucky to be at the highest level of racing. Fuel isn't free outside of NASCAR, and as high as the ARCA level, teams are paying for gas to get to the track and once they get there.
"When we were starting, it would have been really difficult for my dad and I and my buddies to go racing," Edwards said. "We'd go 150 miles each way every weekend, and it would have been really, really difficult to pay for that and all the gas at the track on top of it."
Tony Stewart has seen the pinch up close, from sagging attendance at the racetracks he owns to helping the promoter at the dirt track in Talladega, Ala., dry the surface after a rain shower.
"I was down there with the track promoter just riding around in the pace car, helping try to run some of the water off the track," he said. "The hard thing is you have guys with late models rolling around trying to get the track in and the racing gas there was $8 a gallon.
"To sit there and have those guys rolling around like that and burning fuel just trying to get the track back in shape -- you know that has to hurt."
The End
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OK folks the motorcoach is leaving for Darlington at 9pm tonight!!! If ya need a ride and are located between Ormond Beach Florida and Darlington just stand on I-95 North holding one of the following: CASH for Diesel fuel / Adult beverages ( bring enough to share ) / LARGE BANNERS PROCLAIMING YOUR A RCR FAN will also work. Max capacity is somewhere between 25-40 depending on alcohol and deoderant usage so stand near the road ( dont worry the driver wont be drinking till 5 seconds after arrival at track )
Sorry young ladies, the wife-of will be in the coach so the above standards will also apply.
__________________ If You Wont Stand Behind OUR TROOPS please feel free to stand in front of them
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The JACK CREW!!!
Last edited by flflash47 : 05-08-2008 at 07:58 PM.
Gas prices have race fans rethinking trip to the track
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