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Remaking Fontana into Talladega West

An Opinion



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October 15, 2009

By Doug Demmons


Doug Demmons
The weather was ideal -- in the 70s with no rain.

The race was smack in the middle of the Chase, was capped by a wild finish and was won by the local boy -- Jimmie Johnson.

The track even brought in a galaxy of stars to entertain the fans. There just weren't that many fans. The official estimate was 70,000 but other estimates put the crowd for the infield and the grandstands at about 60,000. The grandstands seat 92,000.

The major reason always cited before for lousy attendance was the Labor Day race date and the 100-degree heat it often produced. This time, the economy was blamed -- high unemployment and a high rate of foreclosures.

That’s certainly been a problem everywhere this year, but the track did manage to fill the lower-level seats that it sold for $35 to $55.

That fact alone should point to the real reason fans aren’t turning out -- the race is just overpriced.

That’s not a shock to anyone who has ever taken his/her family to a Major League baseball or NFL game and paid through the nose for parking, tickets, food and souvenirs. With NASCAR it can be much more expensive when you add in hotel rooms and gas.

Basically, you need to take out a loan to enjoy a game or a race. And for a lot of Americans, the credit cards are maxxed out.

And who wants to pay that kind of money to see an NFL team that’s 1-10 or a cellar-dwelling baseball team? Or a race at a track with a well-deserved reputation for boring races?

For a lot of people the solution is to take away one of Fontana’s two race dates, especially since ISC, which owns Fontana, is committed to adding a second race to Kansas Speedway once a casino is built there.

ISC would have to take a race date from one of its other 11 tracks to do that. The most obvious choices are Fontana and Martinsville. Martinsville is a small track far away from any large TV markets, but it is steeped in NASCAR tradition and the racing there is good. Taking one of Martinsville's races will surely further alienate NASCAR's hard-core fan base.

But Fontana -- despite its poor attendance -- is in the No. 2 TV market in the country and is as important for corporate entertaining as Miami and Las Vegas. NASCAR doesn't want to leave Southern California.

So how about changing the track? The Los Angeles Times recently reported that the speedway asked for up to $30 million to increase the banking in the turns from 14 degrees to 23 degrees. ISC turned it down because it doesn't have that kind of cash to spend during the recession.

The ideal fix, of course, would be to make Fontana a three-quarter-mile version of Bristol, but that would involve tearing the place down and starting over. And if ISC won’t spend the money for more banking it surely won’t bankroll a total overhaul.

So making Fontana into Talladega West is the most practical solution.

Increasing the banking would make a track that already has cars topping 200 mph even faster so it would become a restrictor-plate track, a shorter, less steep version of Talladega. If that doesn't sell tickets, nothing will.

Drivers wouldn't like it. Many of them hate plate racing and you can’t really blame them. The plates bunch the cars into packs and help bring about the huge pileups.

But I’d be willing to bet they’d like racing in front of empty seats even less.




Doug Demmons is a writer and editor for the Birmingham News ~ he writes daily and weekly auto racing columns ranging from NASCAR to open wheel to Formula One, local tracks and more... you can read Doug's columns online at Blog of Tommorow

Follow Doug on Twitter: @dougdemmons


You can contact Doug Demmons at .... Birmingham News

You Can Read Other Articles By Doug Demmons


The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.

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