Thoughts on where racing is at heading into 2025

I hope to see side-by-side racing like this and not worry about some of the negatives in racing in 2025.

Since deciding to restart the RaceChaser blog, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about racing regionally, and where I think things are at from a fan’s perspective.

I think it’s a mixed bag. There are some good things happening for sure, and some things that are troubling to me as a fan. 

When I was a teenager the stands at a lot of tracks were packed every week. You’d have to get to Viking Speedway an hour early to get a seat in the top half, and this was even before the press box/suites were built there. Redwood Speedway was always full every week.

The world is much different than it was then. There are many more things to do entertainment-wise on the weekends and that leads to a lot of competition for peoples’ time and money. You have social media and the internet which weren’t even a thought in the late 1980s. Youth sports seem to take up a ton of weekends in the summer for families. I have one brother who has two kids in hockey, and another who has a kid in Junior Olympic volleyball and another in flag football. The weekends get booked quickly. Plus you have family events like graduation and weddings, and the list goes on.

I also think back in those days, there were more “average, diehard” race fans who came to the track every week because they loved racing, not necessarily because they knew the drivers or had a family member behind the wheel. The average diehard fans, which I consider myself, have decreased, and it’s not a coincidence crowds overall have dropped.

People’s attention spans are much shorter now. I consider myself part of the “remote control” generation that will start flipping channels rather than watch the commercials. Our minds need to be entertained more often. I think it’s even more so with IPhones and the internet at your fingertips. If you see some down time at a track, I’m guessing 80 percent of the people in attendance are on their phone.

My two biggest complaints in racing are these, and if you’ve read the blog previously I’ve consistently stated this: there are too many classes (and too many that don’t interest fans all that much) and the regular, weekly shows are taking too damn long.  Combine that was short attention spans, and you have more reasons the crowds have decreased.

Some have mentioned trying to get back to the old days, and in terms of relying on having good racing on the track that interests fans, that is true. But how to promote a track and how to run an efficient, smooth racing program are NOT the same, and acknowledging that is an important step in improving things. I don't think we can go back to the "old days" completely, even though I miss some of things from that era. The world has changed too much to rely on those old methods.

Here is an example of what I saw as a fan:  I went to 15 tracks last summer in four different states. I enjoyed most of the places I went.  I went to one track later in the season, which will remain nameless, last year and I left pissed. The show started 25 minutes late, and the employees frankly didn’t seem to be in a big hurry to get going. They didn’t hurry the show along, and it was after midnight before the show ended. There couldn’t have been 50 people left in the stands when it was over.  I wanted to pay a visit to the promoter afterwards, but it ran too damn late and I wanted to get back to the hotel.

Needless to say, I won’t be going back to that track in 2025.

Screwing around, having needless delays and starting late are all things that irritate fans and will keep them from not being a regular customer. Let’s compare it to a restaurant: you go there, it isn’t overly busy with plenty of seats available, you have to wait 15 minutes to be seated because the hostess isn’t paying attention, your food arrives in 45 minutes and the order is wrong. All things that can be controlled and fixed. All things that would keep me from returning.

I would argue that racetracks are not only in the entertainment business, they are also in the customer service business, too. Efficiency to me is important in pleasing customers. I will call out tracks that I think screw around too much or run too long of racing programs.

I go into the 2025 season with an open mind. And I don’t expect things to be perfectly smooth right off the bat. There are always hiccups early, and it takes a few weeks for the tracks to get into real good shape. But by the third or fourth week of the year, I’d expect most of those bugs to be worked out.

Racing is at a crossroads and now is the time to examine ways to help it grow. That means listening to the drivers, but it also means listening to the fans and what they want. Some people bitch all the time no matter what, but there are other sensible folks who bring constructive suggestions to the table.

As a fan and blogger, I am thinking of these things as we go into the season. Ultimately I just want to see good racing on the track, and not have to stay 4-5 hours for a regular racing night. But I have concerns like I mentioned. I’m hoping to see improvements in some of those areas for the betterment of racing.