Texas toasts IRL

Tuesday, Oct. 19, 1999 | 10:25 a.m.

FORT WORTH, Texas -- To even the most ardent followers of motor sports, it truly was an astonishing sight.

On a bitterly cold and damp fall afternoon, an estimated 50,000 fans seemed to come out of nowhere to populate the massive grandstand along the front straightaway at Texas Motor Speedway.

Four hours after the scheduled starting time, the Indy Racing League drivers finally were given the command to start their engines for Sunday's Mall.com 500 and, seemingly instantaneously, the once-barren grandstand began to come to life.

Fans who had sought shelter from the biting wind huddled together, many under brightly colored ponchos, to watch the IRL season finale from the track's 122,000-seat main grandstand.

While the IRL constantly is plagued by reports of poor attendance, it is obvious that Texans love their Indy-car racing. Not even a four-hour rain delay and unseasonably cold weather could dampen the enthusiasm of the majority of the 71,000 who had bought tickets for this race.

And that, said TMS general manager Eddie Gossage, is the primary reason his track is one of only two venues (Indianapolis Motor Speedway being the other) that has been successful in drawing large crowds for the upstart open-wheel series.

"When we were building this place, it was obvious to me that we had to run Indy cars here," Gossage said. "In our company (Speedway Motorsports Inc., which also owns Las Vegas Motor Speedway), we had never done that before.

"The reason it was obvious to me is because of A.J. Foyt, Johnny Rutherford, Jim McElreath, Lloyd Rudy, Bobby Hillin, Jim Hall -- there is great heritage for Indy-car racing in this state. So, it was just obvious to me that was the thing to do.

"Then, to have (1999 IRL champion) Greg Ray continue with that legacy ... it just kind of becomes a self-perpetuating system and we've been very fortunate."

While tracks such as Las Vegas Motor Speedway struggle to draw 35,000 fans for an IRL race under the best of weather conditions, Texas Motor Speedway remains one of the few success stories in the series. Gossage said pre-race ticket sales reached 71,000 and, had Mother Nature cooperated, he anticipated a crowd of around 75,000 for Sunday's race.

Gossage said he felt it was unfair to compare Texas Motor Speedway's success to Las Vegas Motor Speedway's situation. Last month's Vegas.com 500 IRL race drew an estimated 32,000 people, only about half of which were paying customers.

"There are a lot of the things that we have in place that Vegas doesn't have," Gossage said. "Vegas has so many things to distract your attention -- I wouldn't want to compete with all that.

"It's bad enough having the Dallas Cowboys, the Dallas Stars winning the Stanley Cup, the Texas Rangers winning the AL West ... we've got a lot of things we compete with but there's no city in the country that compares to Vegas in terms of entertainment choices."

But a strong fan base and a rich history of open-wheel racing in the Lone Star state are not the sole reasons TMS has averaged more than 65,000 fans for its five IRL races the past three years.

"I'd like to think we do a good job promoting our races," Gossage said. "I know we work very hard. You just have to be aggressive and promote, promote, promote. We've been very lucky here."

Luck plays only a small part in TMS' ability to draw fans for its IRL races. One would have been hard-pressed to avoid the Speedway's various promotions for the Mall.com 500, from constant radio and television ads to free tickets for Saturday's Pole Day that ran in the Dallas Morning News (which also sponsored the qualifying session).

Gossage was quick to respond to the series' critics who say the only reason TMS does so well for its IRL races is the tie-in with personal seat licenses and season-ticket packages. Because TMS also hosts an annual NASCAR Winston Cup race, it gives preferential seating to Cup ticket holders who either have purchased a PSL or a season ticket.

"A lot of people act like, first of all, that we are falsely successful because of PSLs and season tickets," Gossage said. "Everybody says 'the reason you have success is because you make people buy that ticket.' Well, if that was true, we would have 220,000 people here (for an IRL race) like we do for a Winston Cup race so, obviously, that is not the case. It contributes, sure ... but those tickets are in play out there.

"For someone to say that we're falsely successful is absolute b.s. We're in a good market and we're working hard. We have more season-ticket holders (50,000) than the Dallas Cowboys. To me, that says a lot, when you're in the backyard of the Cowboys and you can do that."

While Las Vegas Motor Speedway opted not to sell personal seat licenses when it opened in 1996, LVMS general manager Chris Powell said the track will begin offering preferential seating for Winston Cup fans who buy tickets to the track's other major races as well.

"PSLs are not anything we have considered here at Las Vegas Motor Speedway," Powell said. "I don't think we're in a situation here in Las Vegas where we need to have people pay a one-time charge in order to have the right to buy a ticket.

"But I do foresee, beginning with the 2001 season, tying other event tickets to the season-ticket package."

Gossage, for one, can't understand why every major racing facility doesn't offer personal seat licenses.

"I don't know why they don't," Gossage said. "It's beyond me why we handicap ourselves and make ourselves different than every other sport in the world. It makes no sense to me.

"I want to know why every race track in the country has to be different from every other sport. Every sport in the world has a season ticket but (auto racing)."