Struggles nothing new for NASCAR's local tracks

There are houses now where the old racetrack used to be, each of them trim and tidy with a two-car garage and a screened-in porch. There are pretty palmettos and tea olives along the entranceway, handsome black street lamps down each avenue, and a brick sign by the highway bearing the new subdivision's name. All indications of the property's former life have been bulldozed, graded, and covered with sod.

Newcomers would never guess that for nearly three decades this was the spot where NASCAR reached down to the masses, where grass-roots racers fired up their late models and spun around the same tiny oval their fathers did, where legends like Earnhardt and Allison showed up to sign autographs when the big show was competing nearby. It wasn't big-time auto racing; it wasn't even close. But it certainly felt like it to the drivers and fans who turned out every Saturday night.

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And now it's gone, its modest Victory Lane converted into someone's front yard. It's hard to blame the owner, who bought the property in the 1960s for a few hundred thousand dollars, and sold it to a developer three years ago for more than $1 million. No one would turn their back on that kind of profit. But in the process, another metropolitan area in the heart of NASCAR country lost its local track, and more drivers were forced to find somewhere else to race. That is, if they didn't just give up the sport entirely.

It's but a single snapshot of an entire industry, one that's struggled to find its niche within the wider entertainment landscape as well as NASCAR itself. Gone are the days when tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds spread money across more than 100 local tracks in the Winston Racing Series. Some tracks have shut down, while others have been dropped by a sanctioning body trying to streamline its weekly program. As spring arrives and the short-track season opens, there are roughly 60 venues flying the NASCAR banner.

And their promoters have a tough job. All those stories you've seen recently about the issues suddenly facing the Nextel Cup series? The folks in the weekly program have been dealing with them for years. At the local level, struggles to sell tickets, get attention, and control costs are a fact of life.

"It's not easy to successfully operate a weekly facility," NASCAR vice president Jim Hunter said. "You have to go out and sell sponsorships, you have to pay prize money, you have to keep up the facilities. There's so much more competition out there for the entertainment dollar. I think people really have to work at it. You can't be a weekly track operator part time. It's a full-time job to really be successful at it."

NASCAR's weekly series seemed to languish after Winston was forced to abandon its longtime financial support of the program due to the Master Settlement Agreement of 1998. Hunter, a former Darlington Raceway president who covered his share of short-track races as a motorsports journalist, was tasked with resurrecting it. The business model was revised, the number of tracks was pared down to better distribute sponsor money, the awards banquet was even moved from Orlando, Fla. to Las Vegas. (Continued)