Southern Race Dates On Bubble
Written by Linda Przygodski · March 27, 2004
No matter what is going on in NASCAR racing, every weekend the conversation turns to the same tide: the 2005 schedule. Certainly, Darlington’s name has been tossed around in recent weeks as one of the tracks that may loose a date next season.
While it has been reported that International Speedway Corporation may sell Darlington to Speedway Motorsports in an effort to settle the Texas lawsuit, it is far more likely that SMI will purchase Rockingham – transferring that date to Las Vegas or Texas and Darlington would remain under the ISC umbrella, perhaps with one of its dates transferring to another ISC track.
Darlington suffers from the same symptom that pronounced Rockingham dead on arrival. Geographically, it is about two hours from Charlotte, stifled in an area saturated with race dates. The city commons hasn’t helped the Darlington’s cause either. Hotels prices are exorbitant and price-gauging reigns supreme all over town.
Upon leaving the hotel and getting coffee on the way to the track at a chain establishment in Darlington, we were told that we couldn’t have coffee creamer – because it costs them too much money race weekend to put it out for people to use. Not to mention, my very black coffee was $4.00, and I wasn’t at Starbucks.
The maid at the hotel we frequent announced that they weren’t cleaning race weekend, because people “were too damn messy”. There’s nothing like running down to the front desk in your Winnie the Pooh pajamas at 5:00 am trying to scrounge for a towel the morning of the Cup race.
Delightful.
It’s that kind of arrogant attitude that makes race fans stay away. Why travel somewhere for a race and spend thousands of dollars to be made to feel unwelcome race weekend. The people of Darlington act like it’s an inconvenience for them, that race weekends are just another hard slog they have to get through with as much bile and vinegar as they can muster, while they line their pockets with as much cash as they can drain from visitors.
Race towns need to start coming to the table with hospitality if they want to keep their dates. There are too many attractive metropolitan cities vying for race dates, the old school has got to find a way to embrace the new NASCAR. Else, someday, Rockingham and Darlington will just be notations in the NASCAR history book.
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I agree totally with your comment. It is amazing to me how many locales, “bite the hand that feeds them.” This is not unique to NASCAR. While a student in Chapel Hill the town thought it wa doing me a favor by taking my money, with begrudging service. While staioned at Camp Lejune, I was like a social pariah, when I ventured into the town of Jacksonville.
My defense became to travel to Durham to trade when at UNC and to Wilmington when at Lejune. Of course the people in Darlington will never understand, they will blame the lost race date on “Corporate NASCAR,” not their own ineptitude at acting decent and providing customer service.
I’m from SC and have attended several Darlington races. There is no excuse for the behaviour you describe. I plan to make some noise about it (not that it will do any good). I’ve noticed very little rudeness on my trips, but the price gouging is rampent (I understand this is pretty common for most major sporting events).
It is my understanding that NASCAR may change some events in order to “grow” the sport, their excuse is the amount of spectators not the comparisons of rudeness among the host towns. The FACT of the matter is that Darlington and Rockingham has better racing than Texas, Las Vegas, Chicago, California, or Kansas City. If it’s spectators that NASCAR wants certainly a few tenths (or more!) of TV rating points is worth more than 100,000 spectators.
Linda have you seen the reports coming out of the Fort/Worth Telegram?
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/sports/motorsports/8491863.htm
The ‘05 NASCAR schedule may be decided by the legal shysters rather than the NASCAR head honchos. Looks like Texas may get its coveted second race and also be part of the “Chase” next year.