SATURDAY NIGHT’S NOT ALRIGHT FOR RACING

The next two races for the Winston Cup
cars take place on Saturday nights. NASCAR is effectively messing in its own
nest when it runs races on Saturday night. Hundreds of short tracks around the
country just can’t compete with a NASCAR Winston Cup race on Saturday night.

NASCAR sanctions the "Weekly Racing
Series" (which up until this year was the "Winston" Racing
Series, and then Janet Reno stuck her nose in it and cost NASCAR and thousands
of weekly racers the RJReynolds sponsorship; but that’s another column).

The Weekly Racing Series (WRS) is made up
of nearly 100 tracks around the country. There are 10 geographic regions
containing 10 tracks in each region.

Each track designates one of their
divisions as the "premier" division in which the competitors run for
WRS points. Points are awarded through the first part of September, after which
a national champion is crowned.

A couple of years ago, NASCAR also created
the NASCAR ShorTrack Series, where a track could designate a second division to
run for national points and a national championship. Last October, Exide picked
up the sponsorship for that series and it’s known this year as the Exide
ShorTrack Series (ESS).

The National champion in the Weekly Racing
Series comes away with well over $100,000 in point fund money at the national
banquet. Each of the other nine regional champions wins over $40,000. (NASCAR
actually upped the point money this year despite losing the Winston
sponsorship.)

The tracks that make up the WRS generally
run on Friday or Saturday nights. The ones that run on Saturday nights are at a
major disadvantage when the NASCAR Winston Cup Series runs on Saturday nights.
You end up with a situation where NASCAR’s high dollar and highly promoted
series is competing with NASCAR’s "entry level" series. Guess who wins
that battle?

Nashville Speedway USA has moved their
July 4th weekend race again this year because of that. Last year they had it on
Friday night. There are a total of five Saturday night races run in the Winston
Cup Series, all of them during the Weekly Racing Series points season. On four
of those weekends, the Busch Series runs on Friday night, plus they run the
Friday night before the Brickyard 400.

Moving one race a season may not be a
problem for some tracks, but there’s no doubt that they can’t do that for every
conflicting Winston Cup/Busch race. And when they can’t, attendance drops like a
rock. When you can only run maybe 25 weekends a year, having poor attendance on
20% of your race nights has to hurt.

Night races in the Winston Cup series are
certainly more entertaining than daytime races. But does NASCAR have to have
nighttime races at the expense of the very short tracks that are generating the
future stars of the sport?

There’s talk of adding two more Winston
Cup races next year. NASCAR should guarantee the WRS tracks that it won’t add
any more races to the Winston Cup schedule that are run on Saturday night (or
change any existing races for that matter).