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March 8, 1999
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly [WARNING: The following contains completely biased opinions and may
cause emotional upset to some race fans. Please do not go further if
you are easily upset by criticism of race track owners]
A visit to USA International Speedway this past Saturday was a great reminder of the potential that the sport and entertainment value of stock car has: if the shows are professionally run. The team at USA International in coordination with Hooters Restaurants knows how to do it. Friendly, efficient, and professional. There are at least a few owners who could probably benefit by closing their tracks for a month and taking in shows like the Lakeland, Florida operation manages to put to. And of course they should take lots of notes and probably get a test afterwards.
The race itself wasn’t a thing of beauty, with 14 cautions there was plenty of time to visit the concession stands. But it was certainly competitive, and people knew their jobs and did them well. Teamwork, so often the subject of conversation in NASCAR debates, was evident from the technical inspection camp, to the flag man, to the timing of the pre-race activities, to the excellent work of the safety crews. As the national anthem was playing, it was a real hoot to see the pit crews lined up with military precision in their respective pitting areas. The Hooters ProCup series has outstanding racing talent, and is highly recommended for it’s entertainment value. The cost of a Hooters race at USA is less than some 125 lap late Model events around the state. In addition it should be noted that some of these drivers would run the wheels off some of the guys in Busch Grand National racing. Bobby Gill, Chad Chaffin, Mario Gosselin, Justin Labonte, Blaise Alexander, Derrick Kelley, Jay Fogleman, Michael Ritch, and Jeff Agnew may not be as widely known as some of the guys in NASCAR’s junior division, but they have every bit as much talent. You can catch the USAR Hooters ProCup race on Sunday night March 14 at 8 PM on Speedvision. See for yourself. When you combine the class act of the USA international Speedway with the class of the competition, the clean, modern facilities, and a sanctioning body with a clue about marketing, you end up with a big winner. Florida fans are very lucky indeed to have a series the caliber of the Hooters ProCup running six races during 1999, four at USA and two at St. Augustine Speedway. My guess is the new ownership at St. Augustine will do as fine a job as USA International in catering to the fans.
The Bad
Controversy, meanwhile just seems to stay a welcome guest at New Smyrna Speedway and Orlando Speedworld. Which in some people’s opinion is due to the fact that the two speedways share the same ownership. When you have pitifully low car turnouts, a fan base that is so turned off they will drive 100 miles for racing action rather than deal with poorly maintained facilities, a controversial climate just goes with the territory.
Earlier we wrote an article about the safety issues at those tracks. It’s a shame in a hot bed of racing fans like New Smyrna and with the demographics of Orlando, the tracks are lucky to have 100 paying fans on some occasions, and the management has to resort to running street cars at the tracks because they can’t get enough ‘real race cars’. So they’re running cars with enough flammables in them to turn a routine crash (is there such a thing?) into an inferno.
There must be at least 50,000 race fans with in an hours drive of either Orlando Speedworld or New Smyrna. I guess they are all taking in their 40th visit to Disney, or maybe they are all dining at Race Rock. Or maybe, just maybe, they think the tracks **** (unprintable) and are spending their entertainment dollar where they are treated better.
From what I understand the track is now refusing to let the very popular, and well run, T.B.A.R.A. series run at his tracks unless they guarantee a certain car count. Madness! In actuality, he should be guaranteeing T.B.A.R.A that he will have at least a few hundred fans in the stands to see their show.
Meanwhile the drivers and fans are now arguing over the fairness of the claim rule that was used to deny a victory to 14 year old Shelby Howard in the Open Wheel Modified class Saturday night. Yes Robert, 14. The fairness, usefulness or lack of, and other issues related to the rule is good grounds for disagreement and argument. However, all this serves to take attention away from the dismal management of the speedway.
Every racing facility statewide that is suffering from poor attendance and less than stellar car counts all suffer the same malady: business rules are consistantly misapplied. A case in point is the web sites of many racing facilities. To have somebody with no business web experience, a copy of Front Page, and some free time on their hands put a web site together for multi-million dollar business is foolishness. The Internet is not some passing fad, or a playground. This same short-sighted approach to management, and thinking small keeps the fans at home, driver costs up, and plays right into the hands of the NASCAR marketing monopoly. Of course the defensive attitude of track officials when someone points out their deficiencies is understandable, but doesn’t change the facts. And in the world of entertainment and sports, it’s the right of the fans to complain. And fans, when their complaints are not heard, have one other option: spend their hard earned dollars elsewhere.
The Ugly
There are few things uglier than watching a ship sinking slowly beneath the water or a business in it’s death throes. That is exactly the situation at DeSoto Speedway. And for all you Dewayne Musick supporters over the years, I told you so.
The speedway has been for sale for a long time. But that’s Florida, everything is for sale. But then some folks from Indiana made an offer and negotiations began. It’s gone way downhill since then. The fact that Musick has kept his staff, drivers and fans completely in the dark during the off season. The fact that the drivers could not plan, series such as TopCops, late model drivers, and anyone else with an interest could not get a schedule, a plan, or any useable data. This, added to the fact that the only guy with a clue about how to create excitement at the speedway was fired, all add up to disaster.
Musick has embarrassed the proud fans of DeSoto Speedway, played with the lives of the very people and their families that have lined his pockets over the last 8 years, and has turned one the finest racing facilities in the state of Florida into a dash for a fistful of dollars. Greed, a requisite for being an upstanding Ferengi, apparently is well under Dewayne Musick’s control.
When the facts are all on the table, which I can assure you will happen, the fans and drivers may, just perhaps, learn that the owner was willing to destroy the DeSoto Speedway in order to line his own pockets. Now that he has fired some of his best people, thrown the racing community into total confusion and chaos, what next? According to General Manager Pat Bianchi, she is now in charge of the speedway’s marketing, and Musick is in charge of selling advertising. Makes sense to me: let’s fire the only competent marketing staff member (Todd Merikle) and replace him with a bookkeeper. I know personally of two prospective advertisers who tried to reach Musick to place ads this week. Course it didn’t happen because Musick was unreachable.
Two years ago Pat Bianchi informed me that Musick had told her to do whatever it took to get my DeSoto Speedway Weekly Report off the Internet. Laughable. Why?
Because I said the same thing then that I am saying now: His “racing family” is a farce and his management of DeSoto Speedway has done nothing but drive away a huge, once loyal fan base. Yes Tom Stimus was indeed a better operator of the speedway! Because Tom knew how to put on a show, excite people, and he loved racing. If Tom came back tomorrow there would be controversy galore. But the fan count would be 4000 and the car count would fill the enormous pitting area at DeSoto.
Unfortunately Dewayne Musick can’t do any of those. My plea is this: Will somebody please come forward and give Musick his 1.6 million dollars, let him keep a few month’s ad revenues as ‘vacation’ money and send him on his way with his million dollar profit in his tidy pockets. And let the rest of us help the new ownership rebuild our stock car treasure. That’s the Good, the Bad, and Ugly as I see it. If you suffered through all these words to get to this point, I’m sure you have your own story to tell. This is your site, I only play webmaster, editor, and opinionated editorial writer, generally in that order. Every once in a while I get time to tell you what I think. It’s how I get paid for serving as your webmaster. If you think I’m full of it, you have two choices. One is don’t waste your time reading my biased opinions. Two is to respond and tell your biased opinion to the stock car fans and drivers of Florida. Trust me there’s more people reading the content on Florida Stock Car Racing than you may imagine.
-Jack Smith
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