127 replies to this topic

[racer111]

I just checked and Williamsport is 92 miles one way from Clearfield...184 miles round trip...in my vehicle that would be $33 a day just for gas...$165 a week...so you would have to make gas industry type money, plus spend at least three hours on the road every day...

 

Doesn't matter because that's not what the initial post is about anyway...I still feel the economy is a huge problem here, that and three tracks running the same night in the same area.

[The Legend]

If the race track can't sustain what you call a " fair purse " then what ??? When ppms used to get 30+ limited lates a night it paid like 30 to start lol

[Fwig]

Can't answer that, and pretty silly to throw away 6 pay positions from the owner.  

[116 octain]

The money is here if your willing to go out and make it the problem is all the lazy people moving in from The south and the east!!!!

[just saying]

Don't matter Williamsport long drive state college same gas isn't cheep and there are jobs in clfd just don't pay that great I forgot who said it but do the car load deal gets them out there and like I said lower the pit to $20 bucks remember when the bird was $20 had to work for your way into the feature  race anyone remember them days was reasonable to get in the pits the cars bring the fans treat the drivers pocket right and they will come good luck Jeff hope you can make it work your an ok guy times are tight work with the public and racers and they will come word of mouth best advertisement and its free just saying That extra $10 will put an extra meal on the table for the family 90% of your race car drivers live week to week help them they will help you
.

Edited by just saying, 18 June 2014 - 11:30 PM.

[bobvogtjr30]

What killed raceway 7 is when they took the banking out of it and made it more of a motor track! Use to be you could get away having less motor by running the top side now you pretty much just drag race to the next corner. Its not horrible racing theee but nowhere near what it onfe was.

[The Legend]

So high banked tracks like tazewell and eldora aren't " motor tracks " ???

[BaconBits]

A fair purse is when positions 5 through 10  reduce losses, further back helps "field fillers" to come back each week, and when a top 10 car has a bad night. That's what weekly purses should be designed for, maintaining car counts. 10th is just as important as 1st.
 
Bacon - Raceway 7 bad management, Tri-City to my knowledge never ran LM's on a regular basis, plus a big motor track. This year MCR has had great LM fields.....
 
Who cares why Ferd paved the track, the facts are he paved it. This is about AMP.
 
Location???? Now this cracks me up!  Lets see who has cut there teeth at HVS/GRP/AMP. David Scott, Robbie Blair, Dutch Davies, to name a few that I believe (not positive) got their first LM win. 
 
I think others have covered the job market in this area.... There are good paying jobs in the area.  

If bad management was such an issue at Raceway 7, wouldn't the track be straight up closed instead of a back gate bonanza. They still manage to get a fair amount of support class cars. I guess the management just hated late models, right?

Tri City attempted to run late models on Friday nights right before it closed. They lasted until mid June. They averaged a whopping 8 cars a night. There were nights they got something like 6.

I'd hardly call what MCR gets for late models "Great fields". The high point in car count for a regular weekly show for the season is 16 or 18. When the NDRL And WoO tours fire back up, they're going to lose at least two cars weekly. Not to mention Stateline opening back up on Saturdays next month. They're going to split what's left. It'll be 8-10 cars at each track on a good night. MCR does pretty well for their specials though.


I don't care who won their first race at AMP, that's not the focal point of this discussion. The focal point is why don't cars show up weekly.

I've provided actual evidence that purses don't really matter. You've done nothing but provide excuses. Not answers, but excuses.

The fact is that neither Clearfield track has had sustained weekly success. They both failed multiple times under multiple owners. They've both tried paying good money and had no success, and they've both tried paying squat and had no success. They're specials only venues at best.

Edited by BaconBits, 19 June 2014 - 07:26 AM.

[racer111]

Well said Bacon Bits...tracks everywhere are struggling, not just here.

[The Legend]

More importantly I got cage side table seats for Adam Milsteads fight July 12th were they worth 85 each or will I be disappointed ?

[BaconBits]

More importantly I got cage side table seats for Adam Milsteads fight July 12th were they worth 85 each or will I be disappointed ?

They are fantastic seats as long as you aren't stuck behind the camera guy. Then your view might be a little obscured.

[Fwig]

What evidence did you prove????? My facts of from past history PROVED that several quality drivers ran at there on a weekly basis. The history of both Clearfield tracks have nothing to do with running weekly races. No one on this forum can say why owners have failed or took the money and run or whatever the case may have been as to why they decided to change hands.

 

I wasn't aware of Tri-City trying to run LM's on a weekly basis, but another example of a track being miss-managed. Raceway 7 chased the cars away, and as posted, I forgot about them cutting down the turns and made it a bumper tag race. MCR has always had very competitive LM fields, and been running weekly for years. All three northern tracks had a flavor of the week mentality for years. Franny would piss some off they go to MCR and vice-versa. Eriez had their ups and downs as well. MCR has had over 20 cars on several occasions.

 

I have not giving any excuses for anyone. first of all, I don't have a penny in either place. Unlike you that wants to come on here and be negative and my guess is you don't venture far from Lernerville and PPMS, I try to give suggestions and support to any track that is willing to make it good for everyone.

 

Maybe you are Legends crew chief, working for bacon cheeseburgers?

[Skull]

If bad management was such an issue at Raceway 7, wouldn't the track be straight up closed instead of a back gate bonanza. They still manage to get a fair amount of support class cars. I guess the management just hated late models, right?

Tri City attempted to run late models on Friday nights right before it closed. They lasted until mid June. They averaged a whopping 8 cars a night. There were nights they got something like 6.

I'd hardly call what MCR gets for late models "Great fields". The high point in car count for a regular weekly show for the season is 16 or 18. When the NDRL And WoO tours fire back up, they're going to lose at least two cars weekly. Not to mention Stateline opening back up on Saturdays next month. They're going to split what's left. It'll be 8-10 cars at each track on a good night. MCR does pretty well for their specials though.


I don't care who won their first race at AMP, that's not the focal point of this discussion. The focal point is why don't cars show up weekly.

I've provided actual evidence that purses don't really matter. You've done nothing but provide excuses. Not answers, but excuses.

The fact is that neither Clearfield track has had sustained weekly success. They both failed multiple times under multiple owners. They've both tried paying good money and had no success, and they've both tried paying squat and had no success. They're specials only venues at best.

 

The only evidence you supplied was selective to support your theory. Do you really think weekly purses don't matter for 410 racing in central Pa.? Modified racing in N.J.,N.Y., and e.Pa.?

 

I don't know what R7 was paying ten or so years ago for a total SLM purse. Most people focus on what a race is paying to win, not payback throughout the field. I have seen where the number of cars they were getting dropped substantially after a few weeks. Everyone blamed the high purse. As far I can tell, no one polled the drivers that started going elsewhere to find out exactly why they quit running there. People just assume the high purse meant that the same 15 to 20 cars had to load up without benefit of tow money every week. Rarely is there one factor at work when fields rapidly deteriorate.

 

TCS was an entirely different situation altogether. They signed their own death warrant when they decided to go back gate and drop 410 Sprints in favor of Crate LM's. Then H&H leased the track to a group that included Tim Engles, and they tried a Hail Mary move of headlining Supers with a big back gate and a switch to Friday and as predicted, it was a major flop, having to compete for SLM's with both Lernerville and DHS and serving that dish to a primarily open wheel fan base. Besides, I don't know what it was, but I don't remember their SLM purse being anything noteworthy.

 

I'll give you that raising purses isn't a paved road to success, but it hasn't been conclusively proven by you or anyone else for that matter that it can't work. No one, especially me is suggesting that a bullring that probably seats a thousand people like AMP should be paying their LM's a $10k purse. But dropping the advertised purse two weeks into the season certainly isn't helping their P.R. now, is it?

[The Legend]

Raceway 7 paid like 2k to win , 400 for 10th and 200 to start ... And yes the guys who couldn't compete left to go to places like the bird , amp , etc etc where they raced their 92 bullet leaf cars against other 92 bullet leaf cars .... Lol

[race ace]

yeah that is right on there legend because i have seen such slouches like ron and dutch davies, robbie blaiir and some nobody like dave scott and a sloth like sammy stiles and there was even some bum called chub frank who ran there a few times what a loser of a track this place is .get your facts straight there bench racer before you spout off about something you dont know about and for the last time there suhoney is a man , dude  ,boy, male  anything you want to call HIM so quit having  dreams about this guy already if you need to  pound on something go put a deck together.or get that high dollar opperation race car together and go racing somewhere  lets see how you do .

[The Legend]

Those guys you mentioned raced at 7 and those guys you
Mentioned raced and won everywhere and were not hummingbird regulars

[BaconBits]

Skull, on 20 Jun 2014 - 08:37 AM, said:


The only evidence you supplied was selective to support your theory. Do you really think weekly purses don't matter for 410 racing in central Pa.? Modified racing in N.J.,N.Y., and e.Pa.?

I don't know what R7 was paying ten or so years ago for a total SLM purse. Most people focus on what a race is paying to win, not payback throughout the field. I have seen where the number of cars they were getting dropped substantially after a few weeks. Everyone blamed the high purse. As far I can tell, no one polled the drivers that started going elsewhere to find out exactly why they quit running there. People just assume the high purse meant that the same 15 to 20 cars had to load up without benefit of tow money every week. Rarely is there one factor at work when fields rapidly deteriorate.

TCS was an entirely different situation altogether. They signed their own death warrant when they decided to go back gate and drop 410 Sprints in favor of Crate LM's. Then H&H leased the track to a group that included Tim Engles, and they tried a Hail Mary move of headlining Supers with a big back gate and a switch to Friday and as predicted, it was a major flop, having to compete for SLM's with both Lernerville and DHS and serving that dish to a primarily open wheel fan base. Besides, I don't know what it was, but I don't remember their SLM purse being anything noteworthy.

I'll give you that raising purses isn't a paved road to success, but it hasn't been conclusively proven by you or anyone else for that matter that it can't work. No one, especially me is suggesting that a bullring that probably seats a thousand people like AMP should be paying their LM's a $10k purse. But dropping the advertised purse two weeks into the season certainly isn't helping their P.R. now, is it?

I kept the evidence to regional Western PA tracks because we're talking about western PA.

But since you asked...

The New York modified tracks almost universally cut their purses about five or six years ago with John Wight (the owner of the juggernaut Gypsum Express racing team and Fulton and Brewerton Speedways) leading the charge. There was no large scale exodus of drivers or fans leaving any one track. There were a couple holdouts with the purse cuts, such as Utica Rome, and none of them experienced any boost in drivers or fan attendance.

New Egypt Speedway in New Jersey still has a high weekly purse for it's 358 modifieds, but it costs 20 dollars to get in to a weekly show to cover it. Could you imagine if a track around here tried charging 20 bucks for a weekly show?

In Central PA, they do pay insanely high weekly purses to thier sprints. I will give you that. They'd probably lose some drivers if they ever cut that gravy train. It's hard to say though, because it's hard to say where those drivers would go if it did happen.

Same thing with Granview and Big Diamond. They have had the same fiercely loyal runners regardless of what they have paid. They haven't always been such lucrative tracks. If they cut thier purses, my guess is that they'd end up with roughly the same cars each week regardless.

[Skull]

Well, I stand by my assertion that better paying tracks are healthier. I have read nothing to show me otherwise. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

Anyhow, one thing is clear with AMP. They are not going to survive if they stand pat. A move to Sunday evening isn't a terrible idea. They only really have Sportsman's, which is a shell of it's former self, as competition; Eriez being too far away to really affect them on either side of the fence. Maybe they could try running a smaller show as well. There is simply too much regional competition for them to survive Saturday nights.

[116 octain]

About 95% of this thread has been total bullshit..(roughly 10% higher than average on here). The track has no intention of closing or changing days. Website will be updated in next day or two, purse cuts have been restored with a couple changes in pay back through the field. Once again hiding behind screen names makes everybody an authority on everything... If you're gonna stir the shitpot, you may have to lick the spoon...

Just wondering if they are going to post the pay outs or if your the bullshit we should not be listening to. Web site was updated but no pay increases. SPOON. click click

[Benny K]

The New Egypt purse has come down some since the drop to 358's as has the car count. They are averaging around 10 or 20, but it still is 20$ to get in. Bridgeport is still running the Big Blocks weekly with a 2500 to win purse.