Jul 12

Written by: The Commish
7/12/2011 7:22 PM 

Let's get the racing results out of the way before I take off on my KY rant. 

Fernando Alonso beat Sebastian Vettel in the British GP thanks to a botched pit stop by the reigning World Champion; the only popular pick to DNF was Jenson Button.  A good race from Silverstone.

Dario Franchitti won the Toronto IndyCar rumble over Scott Dixon and Ryan Hunter-Reay; Will Power, Helio and TK all scored zero due to boys-have-at-it action that has no place in open wheel racing.  A good but stupid race that proves some drivers have more huevos than marbles.

The #16 Dyson LMP1 beat the #6 Muscle Milk car in ALMS's return from its three month hiatus at Lime Rock; too bad a lot of Super 7 Sweep players forgot to go back and remove and replace that #01 Highcroft Honda pick.  And in the Rolex Series the 'Red Dragon' No. 99 Gainsco car earned its first win of the season over the No. 01 Ganassi car and the No. 10 SunTrust entry at Laguna Seca.  Both decent races although both series need more big dogs.

Kyle Busch won the Thursday night NASCAR truck race at Kentucky Speedway over Parker Kligerman, Brendan Gaughan and Todd Bodine with Ron Hornaday getting knocked out early for no points.  As usual for this event, a darn good race.

On Friday Brad Keselowski gave Dodge and Roger Penske their first NNS win of the season over Happy Harvick and Kyle with Carl Edwards eighth and Mark Martin 14th at Kentucky.  Again, as usual for this event, a darn good NASCAR race.

And on Saturday the very first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race ever held in the blue grass state saw Kyle Busch beat David Reutimann and Jimmie Johnson with Carl Edwards fifth, Kurt Busch ninth, Tony Stewart 12th and Kevin Harvick 16th.  Dale Jr. finished 30th.

It was another decent Cup race; nothing special, but the first at Kentucky Speedway, and the culmination of the track's first three-NASCAR-race weekend.

On the books the event was a huge success.  They added new grandstands and sold every one of the 107,000 available seats for the Saturday afternoon Quaker State 400, plus all their outside and infield campground spaces.  And then they kept the ticket window open offering infield and standing room only Cup tickets for the Turn 1 and Turn 4 concourses.

They sold more tickets than the infrastructure surrounding the event could possibly support.

We've all read the horror stories.  As many as 20,000 race fans, most of whom bought tickets, never making it to the track or even getting out of their cars because there was no place to park.  Or pee.

We've also read about the make-goods that are in the works; the free tickets to remaining 2011 races at SMI tracks, discounts and offers for races at IMS, and of course the sincere, empathetic wishes and a  teflon-coated ignorance of how something like this could have happened.  Heavens.

In an interview with Steve Byrnes on SPEED's NASCAR Race Hub,  Marcus Smith, President of Speedway Motorsports, said:

“We had such overwhelming support leading into the weekend and really all year since we announced we were going to bring Kentucky’s first Sprint Cup date to Kentucky Speedway. So, to have all that wonderful support, all the great fans come in and want to watch the race with us, it was really encouraging and we were really very grateful and thankful, but then to have the traffic backup the way it did really was disappointing for us. I know it was way more than disappointing for the fans out there. They had vacations and plans and had really their whole weekends planned out and Saturday night we had just such a huge backup of traffic in spite of planning. Like you said, we’ve done this before. We’ve conducted a lot of races with even more fans coming in than what we had at Kentucky Speedway. It’s really tough to say what happened or what could have been different.”

I disagree.

SMI, like ISC, BP, Ford Motor Company and General Electric is a corporation.  Corporations exist to make money.  Selling as many race tickets, barrels of oil, F150s and dishwashers as possible plays an important role in how they make as much money as possible.

And in Kentucky Speedway's case, not selling more tickets than the surrounding, outside-the-track infrastructure can handle is an abrogation of fiduciary responsibility.

There were no surprises in Kentucky this past weekend.  The goal of promoting and executing a star studded SMI -style NASCAR Sprint Cup race was reached and it was going to be reached regardless of the existing reality; that the physical, unchangeable landscape of highways and roads and parking lots would create the exact mess everyone is now talking about.  And will be for years.

Maybe that's supposed to be a good thing.  Because you know damn skippy that the county or state or somebody else's will fund and improve new infrastructure so this never happens again.

All the players knew that on raceday a certain percentage of guests, i.e. paying customers, mostly hard-working, middle-class, loyal-to-a-fault NASCAR fans were going to be inconvenienced at best but more likely pissed off forever and damn vocal about it.  They were going to get caught in a traffic jam of biblical proportions, similar to trying to put five gallons of moonshine in a one gallon jug, and miss the race entirely.

The race sponsor, NASCAR, SMI, everyone involved had to know that it would take a miracle for every person who bought an admission ticket to the Saturday Cup race to get what they paid for.

And there's the rub.  Maximum profits trump acceptable, reasonable service expectations and customer relationships are subject to acceptable losses.

I expect that sort of thing from Bernie Ecclestone.

But I always thought we were better than that on this side of the pond.

Copyright ©2011 The Commish