By the end of January last year, every grandstand ticket for the Daytona 500 was sold out. Now, with that anniversary rapidly approaching, Daytona International Speedway president Robin Braig looks around his mammoth 2.5-mile facility and sees much of a backstretch -- or "superstretch," in Daytona-speak -- yet to be filled.

Empty seats for NASCAR's biggest race? There's still more than a month remaining before the engines fire and the pursuit of the Harley J. Earl Trophy begins, but less-than-robust ticket sales for the Daytona 500 stand as another gloomy reminder of the current economic environment. The 2008 season ended with teams merging with one another and hundreds of race team employees being laid off. The 2009 season could conceivably begin with some vacant seats sprinkled among the many thousands in attendance for the Great American Race.

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Braig said Friday that Daytona has sold roughly 110,000 of the track's 168,000 seats, and that he's expecting a full house on Feb. 15. But he's a track operator, and track operators worry. "Oh, absolutely," he said. "We were sold out last year at this time." Which is why Daytona has announced that a limited number of backstretch tickets have been reduced from $99 to $55, the lowest price for a Daytona 500 ticket since 1995.

Braig and his staff watched as Walt Disney World in Orlando awarded free nights at its hotels, as the NFL lowered ticket prices by 10 percent, as the recent Dolphins-Ravens playoff game in Miami featured a multitude of empty seats. In a crowded and competitive Florida entertainment market, Daytona couldn't stand still.

"That's when it really hit us," Braig said. "You know what, our sales are lagging, we're probably not going to get caught up, and we've got to find a price point that matches with the NASCAR fans that still want to come to the 500."

Daytona isn't alone. NASCAR's marquee facility is one of a handful of race tracks that have dropped ticket prices in the wake of the recession, trying to generate business in an environment not exactly conducive to discretionary spending. Darlington has reduced about 9,000 tickets for the Southern 500 to $35. Talladega has lowered the price of about 20,000 seats to $40 each. Richmond just announced Friday that it is "restructuring" ticket prices for 18,000 seats. Atlanta is offering payment plans. As of last month, Bristol -- yes, Bristol -- made a limited amount of season tickets available to the public for the first time since Speedway Motorsports Inc. bought the short track in 1996.

"You've just got to turn the TV on, to be honest with you, and look at where things are," said Darlington Raceway president Chris Browning, whose facility hosts the resurrected Southern 500 on May 9. "You visit any retail store, you go anywhere, it's pretty much across the board. People are making adjustments to try and help the consumer. That's purely and simply what we're doing. It's not a discount, it's a reduction in our prices to help the guests attend the event."

Will those guests respond? This Web site recently conducted a poll asking race fans how many events they planned on attending in 2009. The runaway winner: none. Of course, that's far from a scientific survey. But it shows what track operators are up against.

"It's very tough," Browning said. "There are a lot of things factoring into it. I'm sitting here watching CNN, and the news all over the television is the unemployment rate at a new high now, 524,000 jobs lost in the month of December. I don't care what kind of business you're in, that kind of impact is going to have a ripple effect on everyone. We're in a business where you don't have to buy a race ticket necessarily, but you do have to pay your power bill. At the end of the day, I think we're still going to be OK when our race weekend rolls around. I just think people are going to wait a littler bit later to buy their tickets like they historically have, just because of what's going on in the world today."

It's not all gloom and doom. Tracks with one race, moderate seating capacities, and traditionally strong ticket demand -- venues like Kansas and Homestead -- seem to be holding their own, Braig said. Browning said Darlington, with a single annual event and about 62,000 seats, has a real chance to sell out for a fifth consecutive year. Then there are places like Michigan, which is trying to sell tickets in a geographic area hammered by unemployment.

With an economic footprint of $2.3 billion, Daytona has been able to wield some influence with hotel operators, and curb the usual sky-high rates and multi-night minimum stays. And don't expect ticket prices to jump back up to pre-recession levels next year. "I think we understand the stress on the economy is here for a while, and we expect these prices will stay for a while," said Braig, adding that Daytona will review its prices annually. Over at Darlington, Browning agrees.

"Personally, I think they're going to stick around for a while," he said of the lowered ticket prices. "We didn't go into this with the idea that it was going to be temporary, we went into this with the idea that this is an adjustment we're making, and I think you'll see the same pricing when we go into next year. But this is not something we just took lightly. It's been discussed for a while. And if you look across the world today, we're not the only ones doing this."

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