Flash Races: Drivers Wondering If It's NASCAR's Way To Make The Series Go Poof
50 lap heats? and a 50 lap feature for 35.00. OUCH!! One week later we "flash"to Oswego for a 75 lap all green feature with heats and consi for 25.00. No the ROC doesn't have the Names like Stefanik, Christopher,Fuller and Flemke. We struggle along with guys named Hirschman, Beers, Hossfeld and Leaty. Thank you were doing fine. I'm glad to read that the WMT is working hard to "grow" since its only been around since '48.
Utica is right ... I think NASCAR has had plenty of time to "grow" the Modified division.
Sometimes I'm guilty of comparing apples and oranges when I compare the Mod Tour to the World of Outlaws. But even if I look closer to home, I come to the conclusion that NASCAR has dropped the ball.
Two examples ...
Glenn Donnelly started the DIRT circuit in (I believe) 1971. Without one-thousandth of NASCAR's promotional dollars and media clout, he grew the DIRT Mods and their various "tours" into something much more stable than NASCAR has managed to do with the pavement pounders we love so much. To this day, DIRT runs weekly Mod races at certain tracks while also running bigger-bucks touring races for the cream of the crop. NASCAR meanwhile struggles to come up with 16 races, some of them at "cut rate" purses.
And up in Vermont, Tom Curley had a great thing going with the old NASCAR North Tour until NASCAR got tired of the circuit being run by an "independent thinker" like Curley. So they aced him out, and yet Curley formed ACT and came back strong. History shows that ACT was kicking NASCAR's butt in Northern New England until Bob Bahre built NHIS. At that point, a lot of the Late Model guys developed "Cup dreams" and jumped ship from ACT to Busch North.
If I'm not mistaken, before they became race promoters Curley was a bar owner and I think Donnelly was the guy who had the food concessions at the Syracuse Fair. Either way, they didn't have anything close to NASCAR's motorsports muscle ... but they out-thought and out-worked anybody in Daytona Beach, because they attacked racing with a PASSION.
Those Florida folks have lost touch with "real" short track racers and fans.
Didn't Glenn sell DIRT 3 years ago?
DIRT Motorsports
But yes, they did A LOT for the short track racer and fan indeed.