INDIANAPOLIS – It is understandable that the name Werner Heisenberg rarely crops up in racing circles. Most people don’t spend much time thinking about quantum mechanics or the uncertainty principle, nonetheless a passage from a relatively popular work, “The Rigor of Angels,” grabbed my attention.
Author William Egginton noted that one popular strain of thought suggests “everything was flux; stability itself was nothing but delusion … the flow of time ensures that nothing we perceive as stable and persistent is in reality the same as it was.”
Short-track auto racing has been in flux since its birth, but there are times when things seemed more tumultuous than others. No matter how loudly some will insist they embrace change, few of us do.
As I type these words, I can crane my head and see a copy of a 1968 Life magazine with the Jefferson Airplane on the cover, a 1972 framed Grateful Dead concert poster, a baseball card of my favorite Kansas City Athletics players, a plate decorated with the pictures of the first eight winners of the Tony Hulman Classic and a AAA official’s armband given to me by the late Gordon Betz.
They are all memory prompts and anchors to the past. A past that I sometimes kid myself into believing was always rational and understandable. At such moments, I recall an interaction between my late mother and father. My mother was watching a movie and said she would have loved living at that time. In response my father grunted and said, “Really? They didn’t even have aspirin then.”
So let me get this off my chest. I’m worried. I hope this just isn’t a matter of being stuck in time and becoming like the relics that cover every inch of my office. I just am not convinced the road we are embarking on in sprint car racing is sustainable.
While on a treadmill, a memory popped into my mind of an event that occurred during one of my racing gigs long ago. I saw some high-level officials disappear into a little trailer like office at Walt Disney World Speedway and at some point, later that day the following was released:
Jan. 29, 2000 — Northern Light Technology, Inc., a leading Internet search engine, and the Indy Racing League announced today that Northern Light will be the series sponsor of the Indy Racing League. This announcement expands the relationship announced Jan. 27. The series will be named the Northern Light Indy Racing League Series. This is the first long-term marketing and media partnership between a major motor sports series and an Internet company.
OK, let’s have a show of hands of those of you who remember Northern Light Technology. In this bullish time, these new firms were simply referred to as dot-coms, and then later in the year 2000 all learned about the famed dot-com crash. A whole lot of people lost their keester.
As I sit back and watch this kaleidoscope of acquisitions, mergers and alliances developing in racing, I wonder when the terms hostile takeover, corporate raiding and Ponzi scheme will enter the lexicon of the racing world we all love. Are we careening toward a world that is akin to being a Coke or Pepsi race track?
I’m being a bit dramatic. Yet, I still want to know where all this money is going to come from. It’s not going to come from fans. I have no doubt that there will be High Limit and World of Outlaws races where you won’t be able to shoehorn another body in the grandstands. On the USAC front, I would expect Indiana Sprint Week will continue to be a big draw.
There will also be nights like we saw at Georgia’s Golden Isles Speedway in February when the stands were sparsely populated. Yes, the next date was far better. However, it doesn’t matter if there is a standing-room-only crowd or if the stands look like a ghost town, the purse has to be paid and the tow money (if it exists) must be distributed.
I suppose for some, streaming is the goose that lays the golden eggs. Is there really that much money to be made at this level? I don’t know, maybe there is. Yet, does anyone else doubt that? We can all see that streaming is the media wave of the future.
It was hard for some of us to believe that cable television would ever make it, and now it is easy to imagine that the model many of us grew up with will be completely irrelevant in the next five years. This is fine but short-track racing as we know it is a niche sport. Will exposure, reality programming and lifestyle pieces enlarge that niche? Can I be excused for being skeptical?
And can I also be excused for envisioning the sport evolving in a fashion that I find distasteful. I have already seen sprint car drivers held in the cockpit for a dramatic exit for television purposes. After all, there’s nothing better than made-for-television excitement.
Money is always the issue, and naturally all of this hangs together. If there is a market for this product, it expands and becomes attractive to outside entities, maybe this will all work. Racing is expensive. If you want to play at a high level, you need outside support.
If you can show that you perform in front of a sizable crowd at the track, and people are watching from afar, you are in an advantageous position to attract a sponsors. The same dynamic works at the level of a series.
Unless a sponsor is simply an enthusiast or is involved for nearly philanthropic reasons, that sponsor needs a return on its investment. If a promoter is interested in taking on a major event, once again, the same dynamics are in play. This I can tell you when significant outside money comes in — the rules of engagement will change. If a crew member wanders into victory lane with the wrong beverage or wears the wrong hat suddenly you have a situation. Be careful what you wish for.
Everyone in our sphere is engaging in risk. You can find myriad examples of racers, teams, promotors, race tracks and even series that went belly up. Tony Stewart did not divest himself of the All Star Circuit of Champions because he was making money hand over fist. This is why I’m worried.
I see growth, expansion, more money up for grabs and even more exposure for sprint car racing. The utterly optimistic soul would rejoice. For some of us the days of the dot-com crash still dance in our heads. A strong house must be built on a solid foundation. I hope we aren’t building an edifice that is more akin to a house of cards.
THIS ARTICLE IS REPOSTED FROM THE MARCH 27 EDITION OF SPEED SPORT INSIDER
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