Print
E-mail
Share
del.icio.us
digg
Newsvine
Facebook
Bristol Motor Speedway and Martinsville Speedway are a long way from Las Vegas. The Martinsville race that is coming up this weekend reminded me once again how West Coast NASCAR fans are deprived because they don’t have easy access to a short-track Sprint Cup race. It’s time we had a short track of our own.
I had originally thought that the way to solve this would be to rip up the road course in Sonoma, Calif., and turn the facility into a short track. But NASCAR teams wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time, money and resources on developing a road-course car if there was only one road-course race a year at Watkins Glen.
A better plan would be to reconfigure the Phoenix track into the Bristol Motor Speedway of the West. Heck, they could probably build more seats than the track has now and have a shot at improving the quality of the racing.
I realize reconfiguring the Phoenix track may be pie in the sky thinking on my part, but Fontana, Las Vegas, Texas and to a certain extent Phoenix are all basically the same shape and that’s a good reason for spicing up the mix by including a short-track Sprint Cup race in the West Coast lineup.
P.S. Check out this blog this coming Thursday for the next installment of our caption- writing contest.
Get your copy of the latest StockcarToons book, "Nuts for Racing"
Better still, let ISC build a short track in the Northwest (and not just a Richmond-esque 3/4 mile oval... and not, for cryin' out loud, on the Kitsap Peninsula in Washington.)
Two words come to mind when I think about a track in the Northwest. Rain delay.
Hey, California in February isn't too brilliant an idea either, when it comes to rain. Nor Tennessee in March for that matter. Just schedule the Washington race in August or September, the two months it doesn't rain .... much!
I vote 'not on the Kitsap Peninsula' also, lets go a bit farther south, maybe between Olympia and Chehalis, thus making it easy for the Seattle crowd and the Portland crowd to round trip on the same day. Plus it's somewhat dryer in that area!
But Washington doesn't seem all that into having a top divisions racetrack, so now what? Phoenix? Nahhh!!
On July 23, the average high in Portland is 83°, with a historical 1.9% chance of rain.
That's NASCAR weather.
Believe it or not, it doesn't rain too much up here in the summer. Just don't race in April or October.
BringtheRain, you sneaky one, are you from the Pacific Northwest also? Portland would be good. Let's gang up on these NV/AZ/CA people. I attended a very rain shortened race in Las Vegas a few years ago, it CAN happen anywhere!
Simple problem, just bulldoze Calif. and build a Richmond and a Bristol in its place. Then they might even show up to watch a race.
Bulldoze California? That's the best idea so far.
Lets see .... it always rains in Washington and Oregon, so forget them, we could reconfigure Arizona, or we could bulldoze California. There isn't any Nevada bias going on here is there?
With that in mind, why don't we just bulldoze all those little Mickey Mouse tracks on the Las Vegas site and build a good short track there. 2 for 1, what the heck! Then we can all stream to Vegas twice a year and pay $300.00 a night for our damn rooms!
Well, it may not be in the ideal location, but the replacement for the old Mesa Marin track is built but stalled--in Kern County http://www.kerncountynascar.com/ . A Cup race with 100,000 seats would be quite a feat, but I'm not sure that "if you build it they will come" applies to any track in California.
The more likely scenario would be for Bruton to rebuild the Las Vegas Bullring (Craig Road Speedway)property into "Bristol West"--even if it IS less than a mile from LVMS.
Kern County? --- Bakersfield? --- the middle of nofrigginwhere!! Kevin Harvick notwithstanding, if they cannot fill Fontana, they will surely not fill Bakersfield. So we're back to Vegas again, good grief, is there any hope?
And I meant to say...just where do you think Darlington is? Try "nowhere"...and I don't live that far away. I'll get there some day.
Hey, I live in Georgia now...but in the past, I made my way from San Diego to Mesa Marin on a number of occasions for much lesser events than a Cup race.
So, where do you think Bristol is...."in the middle of no-friggin-where"!!!
I'll bet that the population/distance numbers for Kern County aren't alot different than quite a few other tracks that DO have Cup dates, and are better than some of them that could stand to lose a date.
A dynamic leader like Bruton Smith could make Bakersfield work. Just look at Bristol, which used to be a 10,000 seat track. Having Cup racing at any "Bristol West" venue would bring the people out. And with the wide open area such as Kern County, the campers could be made very happy.
The bigger problem with any future Cup location is controlling costs--to build, to buy tickets and attend, to have the local infrastructure capable of supporting it. I have not been there lately, but I know when Kansas Speedway was built (first race 2001), there was NOTHING around....now, quite a bit of the "essentials" are there.
You are welcome to disagree...
I don't disagree. My point is only that if Fontana doesn't sell out, why would Bakersfield be any different? Bristol has tradition on it's side, Bakersfield (as in Cup racing, that is) does not. Camping on the Kern sounds darn good though!