What Tracks Can Learn from the Myrtle Beach Situation

Copper Hill, VA(November 19, 2012) – Let’s flash back to July.  The Third Annual Youth for Tomorrow 150 at Old Dominion Speedway was postponed until the same week as the Hampton Heat 200 at Langley Speedway.  So, there we were, two tracks just a couple hours apart holding their biggest races on the same night… and both races were a success.

What’s my point?  Well, when Old Dominion Speedway and the event organizers postponed that race, they could have postponed it to any other weekend.  But it really had no impact on either event.  There may have been a few drivers who might have been considering running in both, but it’s not like CE Falk was going to run in Manassas or David Polenz was going to run in Hampton.

That takes us to the Myrtle Beach situation.  Nobody can control the weather.  If we could control the weather, races would never get canceled because of rain.  Myrtle Beach Speedway promoters were put in a box.  Should they reschedule their race up against the Thanksgiving Classic at Southern National Motorsports Park?  Should they race in December?  What Myrtle Beach Speedway decided to do was what any business owner would do, do what’s best for them.  So they rescheduled the race in March of 2013 in hopes of drawing more cars out to their Saturday night race.

The downside of that is that other tracks are planning their opening night for the weekend of March 22^nd and 23^rd.  The thing is, they haven’t released their schedules.  The opening nights for the other tracks have not even been announced.  Hell, it’s not even clear if some tracks will open next year.  Sure, there’s precedent that’s been set and it’s safe to assume when tracks will open, but that can always change.  I mean, after all, NASCAR decided, in 2011, that they would start the season later (beginning in 2012) by moving the Daytona 500 from its traditional President’s Day Weekend to the last weekend in February.

During the offseason, we get begin to get a shape of what track schedules will look like. The big races begin to be announced slowly and touring schedules begin to be announced. But, too often, it’s not until a couple months before a racetrack opens that we get an idea of what the season schedule is.  Maybe racetracks should consider announcing dates for their big races and season openers before they release their full schedule.

As a journalist, I’m often told there are two sides to every story.  That’s not exactly true.  Some stories have one side, some have five sides.  And this is one of those stories with more than two sides – and I understand every side to the story.  But I also understand that we are all in this together, as a racing community and as a nation.  While there is an element of competition between tracks that is good for the sport, there is also an element of cooperation that would be good for the sport.  Yes, Myrtle Beach could’ve picked a different weekend, but once again, nobody else except for South Boston has released a schedule.

At this point, Myrtle Beach’s schedule is a done deal.  Other tracks can either choose to schedule their opening weekend against the Myrtle Beach 400 or they can change their opening weekend, as I have heard Kingsport Speedway might do, to another weekend.  The ball is now in their court.  Either way, it will be no great tragedy.

As the season rolls on, there will be more scheduling conflicts, man-made and meteorologically-made.  The drivers have rolled with it in the past, despite frustrations they have voiced.  In fact, I would not be surprised if many of those drivers who were upset at Myrtle Beach showed up that weekend.  After all, many of the drivers who were crying a river over the changes to the Martinsville late model race were the first ones unloading their cars.

For the tracks that already have opening nights planned (but not officially announced), let this be a lesson that they shouldn’t wait several months to announce their season schedules just because they’re waiting to finalize one or two things.  The sooner tracks release their schedules, the better it is for all of late model stock car racing.  It would give drivers more time to plan their season and to plan which races they will run when their regular track is off and which big races they will run.

Myrtle Beach doesn’t deserve all the vocal criticism they’ve been on the receiving end over this.  They deserve as much criticism as the tracks that wait until the last minute to release their schedule.  At this point, if tracks have their opening race of the 2013 season on the same weekend as the Myrtle Beach 400, the blame lies with the other tracks.