One longtime employee of a top NASCAR team repeatedly called the empty seats at Chicagoland Speedway last weekend "depressing" and admitted something needs to be done about it, while stressing that he didn't want his name used.

Fans have been lighting up e-mail inboxes and were quick to voice themselves all about town, anytime they encountered someone who had anything at all to do with NASCAR and the races being run last weekend at the facility in Joliet, Ill., on the far outskirts of Chicago.

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We are going to take a hard look at it. ... I just think with the economy, it has put pressure on the facility -- but even more pressure on the fans.

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CRAIG RUST, Chicagoland

Now, Craig Rust, the new track president at Chicagoland, seems ready to change the way the joint goes about its business of selling tickets to race fans.

What has fans up in arms in the unique Midwestern market is that the track, as it has since it opened in 2001, refuses to sell single-day tickets to events such as last Saturday's LifeLock.com 400 Sprint Cup race. Instead, it requires anyone who wants to attend the Cup race -- or any other event -- to buy a Track Pack that also includes tickets to the Nationwide Series race, the Camping World Truck Series race and an ARCA ReMax event, in addition to Indy Lights and IndyCar races.

That may help explain why the grandstands were 20,000 or more empty seats short of being full for the Cup race. And Chicagoland is not one of those larger, arguably overbuilt facilities that are struggling to fill their seats for other Cup events. Its grandstand seating capacity is listed at 75,000.

Rust, who came on board at Chicagoland only June 15 after running Watkins Glen International for eight years, admitted that the policy appears to have alienated some fans and that it likely needs to be changed.

"We are going to analyze it. We are going to take a hard look at it. It may have worked in the early going with this track. I just think with the economy, it has put pressure on the facility -- but even more pressure on the fans. I mean, it's tough when you're asking people to buy two of something," Rust said.

"There is a really strong market for NASCAR here, and I want to make sure we're filling up that grandstand for our Cup racing. So we're going to take a hard look at it. Once we do the analysis, we'll make a decision and let everybody know."

Rust said he envisions Chicagoland always offering the Track Pack, which essentially is a season ticket.

"I do want to say there is a very strong value in the Track Pack. You get the Nationwide race, the Sprint Cup race, the Camping World [Truck] Series, the IRL ... when you really break it down, there is a lot of value there," he said. "I think probably if we did something with it, we would still offer a season-ticket model to the fans first -- so the fans who do want to purchase that, they get a little bit of a better value and maybe some good seats. But we'll come out with a way, if we do something, that it's fair to the fans who have been supporting us for eight years." (Continued)