So, Jerry Carroll is “Livid” Huh!
NASCAR’s decision Friday to not have a Sprint Cup race at Kentucky Speedway in 2009, despite a change in ownership to Bruton Smith, has left the track’s founder livid.
“This is what bullies do and it’s been going on too long,” Carroll said. “They’ve showed their hand again. If they want to break us and want to run us out of business, get more creative.”
Well D’OH! Just what did this dim bulb expect?
That NASCAR would suddenly change direction because O. Bruton Smith has entered the Kentucky picture. Sorry Carroll, setting aside for a moment Smith is ISC’s chief rival when it comes to track ownership, There is a little matter that has been the problem since you and your team of “financial experts” sunk 150 million large into Sparta’s economy.
It’s called market saturation. With Bristol, Michigan, Indianapolis and Chicagoland all within easy drive time of each other the market is flooded and the sales depts of all concerned would do nothing but poach each other’s potential customers.
The winner winds up with a full house that generates less revenue because of lower ticket prices and other enticements.
The loser well gee, let me think. The loser in this potential game has a less than full house and loses more cash than the others playing it.
Toss in the current price of gas, that isn’t going down anytime soon despite what the nutcakes on Capital Hill attempt to do about it, there’s serious potential for all tracks to lose buckets of cash.
According to the AP report Carroll is playing the sympathy card by suggesting ticket sales have gone “through the roof” since the Smith sale was announced. If true that only shows common sense isn’t common.
It’s also a reason to raise the BS flag on Carroll, how do you sell tickets for an event that doesn’t exist? What does the ticket stub say, “at a date to be determined?”
It’s not unlike Carroll to make pie-in-the-sky pronouncements.
The entire Sparta project was hatched on a hope and a dream and when it didn’t come to fruition he ran to the courts to file a phony unwinnable anti-trust suit that has lost at every turn with the exception of a venue change request by ISC.
For the foreseeable future Kentucky will be out in the cold, Smith isn’t going to abandon the northeast market and move a New Hampshire date it makes little marketing sense for SMI or NASCAR.
Winds of change are in the air, there’s talk this week of Atlanta, Fontana and Talladega making a swap of dates for 2009 but Kentucky?
Forgetaboutit, if Smith moves any date it will land at his showplace of the west Las Vegas, not Kentucky!
Before I wrap this up, let me toss this spanner in the works.
Added to the Kentucky, Michigan, Bristol and Indianapolis mix is the Dale Earnhardt Jr “signature” track Alabama Motorsports Park located near Mobile, Alabama.
What happens when that track comes online? Although plans call for a 2.6 mile road course the important feature and the reason Junior’s name is on it (and Kelley, Kerry and Dale Jr’s. cash) is the 7/10th’s mile oval that will sport the hot ticket in track design at the moment, progressive banking.
To say nothing of planned space for 100 haulers. Other than the sports car series’ and NASCAR no one needs that much space for car haulers and makes it pretty clear where developers Gulf Coast Entertainment (GCE) have their eyes set on.
Lets face it, setting aside the Kentucky fans that would support a Cup event there, who among NASCAR Nation’s fan base wants or needs another 1 1/2 mile track on the Cup schedule? I suspect not many.
It would set-up an interesting conundrum if and when GCE, and trading on the Earnhardt name, requests a Sprint Cup (or whatever the hell the series is by then) race date.
Nascar gives them a date and adds to the plethora of tracks all within 600 miles or turns them down risking the considerable wrath of Junior Nation.
Frankly it’s a scenario I look forward to if for no other reason it would provide blog fodder for weeks, if not months.
>Technorati Tags: Kentucky Speedway, Bruton Smith, NASCAR, Sprint Cup Series, Sprint Cup, Jerry Carroll, Dale Earnhardt jr., Alabama Motorsports Park
Yeah, Marc … but, races at Chicago and Bristol can get to be pretty pricey, and the racing at Michigan and Indy just isn’t the best sell to see live. To say that Kentucky shouldn’t have a race because of those tracks would mean that NASCAR would need to re-evaluate their entire East Coast schedule with Darlington, Lowe’s, Richmond, Martinsville, Dover, and New Hampshire.
That said, I agree, though. I don’t know much about this Carroll character, but he seems like a little … well, you get the point.
Sorry Tim, Michigan is my “home super speedway” having grown up less than 60 miles away and having attended every event there (NASCAR and open wheel) between opening day and 1981 when the U.S. Navy interrupted my streak.
Unless you’ve spent some time in the grandstands and not forced into the very narrow view TV gives (true of much TV coverage sad to say) you can’t appreciate how much two and three wide action occurs out of sight. Not to mention ALL the drivers praise the track and always have.
As far as Carroll goes, for the moment he’s got a job with the track, but I’d bet regardless what happens with the schedule Smith will shit-can him within a year.
Carroll can take a long walk off a short pier, in deep water, with concrete shoes.
He’s lead a selfish, abusive, disgraceful suit against NASCAR with no merit. Just because you build a track doesn’t mean a date. His loss, along with the other investors, of about 50 cents on the dollar in their submissive sale to Smith serves them right.
Where Smith also had filed suit, NASCAR had said they would give him the date, then failed to follow through. There were grounds there. Here, there are none, and just because Bruton is going to buy it doesn’t automatically mean a Cup date.
Think about it. For what he paid for it, he’ll make out without one. Between what is already there, plus it being a testing facility for Cup when they need to run a cookie cutter, it won’t be hard to make it work at that purchase price.
Getting a date for it will be tough. It has to come from somewhere, and I honestly don’t want to see yet another cookie on the sheet. The shows are already less than spectacular, although with time should improve with this car, but more of the same kills the product. If it were a different style track, it would be a different story, perhaps.
In terms of market saturation, I honestly don’t see it as a problem. Especially as things are now. The other tracks “in the area” aren’t really that close, and with gas the way it is now, the fans that “could” hit Kentucky likely won’t be hitting Michigan, Indy, or Bristol. But if there was a race there, they could make it without too much of a crunch.
In the end though, it’s back to more of the same. It’s not needed. Bruton would stroke a check for Pocono if they’d let him, and one of those dates would (and should) go to Vegas. So, where’s a date for this joint going to come from?
I’d throw Iowa or Mobile a bone from LA or some “bakery” before throwing one to Kentucky. Why? They’re different.
The area isn’t the problem here, it’s the track itself. If it were me, I’d rip it up and reconfigure it. Make it different, make it challenging, make it conducive to good racing. Then, and only then, would it be a smart move.