Full Throttle

After a few billion years has the Earth suddenly decided to revolve in the opposite direction? Maybe not, but you get the idea, I’m SHOCKED!

Shocked I could actually read in a Washington State newspaper a commentary in favor of the purposed NASCAR, ISC project for Kitsap County Washington. I should temper my surprise somewhat, it’s a guest commentary and written by the past president of Seattle International Raceway who is now retired. It stands to reason he would give the project a thumbs up.

Washington state better look for a way to put a deal together on this proposal from Speedway Corp. or miss out on one of the best revenue sources and tax equalizers there is. Motor sports events, in my view, are not affected by the cycle of recession that tax revenues go through. While the country as a whole was stumbling along over the past half-dozen or so years, the racing business was accelerating to its highest levels ever. New race facilities throughout the United States were being built in such states as Texas, Kansas, California, Florida and Nevada because of the strength of the NASCAR program.

The negative vibes from some lawmakers certainly shows their ignorance of motor racing and maybe even business deals. With all due respect, a professional negotiation team needs to come forward to stop all the negatives in the media and captivate the absolutely best potential this area has ever seen. For the thousands of race fans located on the West Coast or throughout Canada, this possibility is beyond a dream. Those same fans have had to travel all over the country to attend one of the NASCAR events.

Exactly.

The untapped fan base from north of the border alone is worth a good percentage of seating capacity. Add in Oregon, Northern Cali and points east and it’s promises a long string of sellouts. And as the author, Jim Rockstad, points out it isn’t just NASCAR and 2 or 3 dates they will provide the speedway, it’s “hot-rod shows, swap meets or flea markets.” The market for the latest craze Drifting has potential to fill a weekend by holding a Formula D event as well as other racing related events.

Local lawmakers are sending out “negative vibes” for the project and that’s to be expected after getting scorched by taxpayer funded sports stadiums for the Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Mariners. But at the moment they seem to be more concerned about their ego than funding the project, They’re crying because the Staten Island project is being fully funded by ISC while the Seattle/Bremerton purposal is being partially funded via a bond issue with 50% coming from ISC’s pockets.

“That’s a big factor with my constituents,” said state Sen. Tim Sheldon (D-Potlatch, Wash), noting that area residents oppose public funding for the track by a two-to-one ratio.

“We’re taxpayers, too. If it can be done privately in one place, they’re saying to me, why can’t it be done privately in Kitsap County as well? They don’t want to take a backseat to New York City,” he said.

On it’s face Sheldon has a point, as did the Seattle Times in a Dec. 18^th editorial, but in true political spin (Dare I say anti-NASCAR bias?) both the Times and Sheldon fail to mention ISC will own the Staten Island facility outright. Washigton State’s will be owned by the local citizens and leased out to ISC/NASCAR for a “minimum three events per year.” That’s a not so subtle diffrence.

Also not mentioned is the recent $4.48 billion TV contract NASCAR entered into and how a potential venue in the NY City area was factored into the contract. To be fair any crying on the part of Wash. residents and local politicos should also be directed at FOX, the SPEED Channel, TNT, ESPN and ABC for partially forcing the issue.

Michael Printup, ISC’s project manager for the Staten Island track adds a caveat to that lease that I haven’t seen in the media before.

ISC would petition NASCAR to create one, possibly two, new Nextel Cup races on its schedule for a New York race, along with an Indy Racing Series race, he said. In Washington, though, the track developer would seek to shuffle its schedule around and move a pre-existing Cup date.

That should shivers down the spines of a few non ISC owned race tracks.

In the end, obviously the local taxpayers will have the final say but they shouldn’t be taking the word of hack newspaper editorials or disingenious politicians in making their decisions. In fact I would highly recommend they learn from Kansas Speedway’s experiance, whose operators and local businessmen are doing just fine, thank you.

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