aplacetorace

I don’t honestly know about other specific communities, but this specific community that I live in does not get the full effect of auto racing.

I have a few points to get across here, and hopefully you can follow along.I live near and race at (well, used to, i’ll get to that later) the legendary I-70 Speedway. I-70 Speedway is a 1/2 mile 30º bank race track that some very famous race car drivers have been to and raced. The likes of Mark Martin, Carl Edwards, Clint Bowyer and Dick Trickle just to name a few.I-70 used to be a great place to run. It has scince closed down over this off season. A lot of people protest and claim that it is because of poor ownership, I beleive that has a little bit to do with it, but not all.Yes, the owner of the track could have done things different to keep the track alive, but can we blame that solely on him? I don’t really think so. Auto racing in Kansas City is not that big of a hit as it once was. NASCAR as never really been a popularity around Kansas City as it is in other cities like Charlotte or Daytona Beach. Kansas City was never on the NASCAR schedule except for a few good years in the late 90’s with the Crafstman truck series came to I-70. Kansas Speedway was built and that put K.C. on the NASCAR map but now, the media doesn’t want to cover local racing anymore. Anytime NASCAR comes through Kansas Speedway, they are all over the news, all over the place and talking about racing every where you turn, you can’t turn on a local television or radio station without hearing about the likes of Kansas Speedway, but once the race weekend is over, you don’t here another word about auto racing in the community until the next year. It seems the media doesn’t realize that there is other racing besides the big hit of NASCAR. We local racers race too, and we race at tracks like I-70 Speedway, Lakeside Speedway, Valley Speedway and Central Missouri Speedway because we cannot afford the likes of a $250,000+ racecar, not to mention the upwards of $5+ million it costs to run a season.You won’t hear a word about local auto racing on the local news over the weekend, you won’t read about local auto racing in the newspaper on Sunday. It’s really kind of sad really. Hardly anyone in this generation knows about it around here, because no one talks about it. Auto racing is still one of the biggest fan based sports around, but why can’t we get people out to the local race tracks? Because the media doesn’t want to have anything to do with them aparently? I guess scince we have a big NASCAR track in town, us local guys aren’t famous or good enough for their media time.

Just some of my thoughts on why local auto racing is decaying around my area, and little hint at the media around town!