I hate to hear about your local track. We ARE experiencing the onset of truly hard economic times and a lot of folk have had to stop running their cars or taking the family to the track. The X boxes don’t help either.
I don’t know where you’re from, but Eldora draws cars from all over the US an Canada for the World 100/The Dream. It ain’t small potatoes. They make enough from pit passes for that one event to cover expenses all year.
The taxman shut a track here in Cecil Georgia, but there are two dozen operating dirt ovals within a 200 mile radius, four drag strips, and five short ovals. Car counts are falling though.
I don’t build them anymore, but I still like to go, just to smell the exhaust, hot oil and even hotter rubber.
Nascar, and more importantly Tony Stewart are working together to try to save the dirt sport for the future. I know Tony talks about this all the time.
I don’t think there are many Nascar pro drivers that do not want to run one of these races at Eldora. In spite of the fact that the cars don’t work perfectly, and they rarely attain any kind of speed for very long before the caution flag flies.
It’s all for fun...and the promotion of the sport.