| Weather Forcing Changes at Ocala | by BJ Cavin
 Nature has not made things easy at Ocala Speedway this season. The main reason for scheduling twin, 25 lap open wheel modified feature races for June 29th was to make up for races rained out by nature in the past.
But nature can be cruel as we all know, and again it is nature that has delayed the races that were intended as a make up session for those races lost to rain in the first place. This time the races have been rescheduled for July 27th, and maybe Mother Nature will see fit to allow them to happen this time around.
The June 29th rainout for Ocala Speedway again delayed the twin open wheel modified features, and also pushed back the championship race for the V8 Thunder Stock division too. The Thunder Stocks, the rookie division at Ocala Speedway, had been scheduled to run a 30 lap, $500 to win race, on the 29th in addition to the twin mod races.
This was the race that would end the Thunder Stock season and graduate some drivers up to the V8 Pure Stocks for the remainder of 2007. Thanks to a tropical wave that race did not happen as planned, and will be made up as soon as the 4th of July holiday week ends. The Thunder Stock Championship race will run on July 13th, the same night as the school bus figure 8 racers make a much awaited return to Ocala Speedway.
Besides making racers sit at home on Friday nights, the weather has done a number on the Ocala Speedway future schedule. When make up races are added to an already full racing date, something has to go in order to make room. So far the victims have been a street car challenge event and a kidney bean race, but other scheduled events may have to be canceled if nasty weather persists and causes more postponements.
According to Ocala Speedway owner Michael Peters, no one wants to cancel any planned events. But the unfortunate truth is that you can only force so many laps of racing into one night at the track, and too many late nights are hard on the fans and the drivers as well. So in order to make room for the higher profile events, some less popular events have been displaced or canceled altogether.
And as one might expect, this makes the schedules printed months ago very inaccurate and can lead to confusion on the part of the fans and drivers. But Peters adds that a call to the speedway is the best way to find out what is going on from week to week, especially when so many changes have to be made.
Peters has made it clear that every effort will be made to make up scheduled events when weather interferes, and those events will be rescheduled at times and dates that attempt to avoid conflicts with similar events at other tracks. This makes rescheduling even harder, and this is further complicated when more rain postpones yet more events.
Ocala Speedway is making every effort to reschedule every race that falls victim to the weather if at all possible, and do it at a time and date where drivers are not forced to make hard choices. And every effort is made to run races as scheduled as well, but weather is always a variable in that effort. When the forecast and radar indicate that it is unlikely that the night's scheduled events can be completed as planned, it makes sense to postpone racing and therefore save everyone money and a trip to the track. And it is also a safety issue because pulling a race car home on a trailer in heavy rain is risky business as well.
The bottom line is that a speedway is a business and the ultimate objective is to make money. When events have to be canceled or postponed it means no profits for the dates on which the events were scheduled, and it usually means less profit when those events are finally run at a later date.
Ask most drivers and they will say that they prefer the speedway to cancel events early if possible rather than trying to battle impending bad weather and therefore cost them time and money to attempt to race and then fail. Either way, everyone is not going to be happy with the choices that are made or when some events are rescheduled, and therefore it is preferable to make choices that benefit the majority and then stick by those choices.
And the big difference seems to be that the old way of running just enough events to call a night complete and not issue rain checks have ended, and tracks are now thinking about their drivers and fans first.
Any way you look at it, that is a big improvement.
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