Trends In Our Sport

[Tom Goldman]

Originally Posted by Mike Carr

Bret, how about Pennsylvania tracks? As best as Dad and I can come up with, there were fourteen tracks that ran, at one time, in PA. Six are still running.

1. Maple Grove
2. Numidia
3. Beaver Springs
4. South Mountain/Quarter Aces
5. Pittsburgh Raceway Park (Keystone)
6. Lucky's Dragway (Erie)

The eight that closed:
1. Sunset Raceway (Mercer)
2. Skyline DRagway (New Castle)
3. New Bethlehem
4. Peterson Memorial (Altoona/Tyronne)
5. York US 30
6. Pittsburgh Int'l Dragway (Cecil)
7. Pocono Drag Lodge
8. Vargo Dragway (Perkesie)

Ohio and WV we could only come up with three each that closed. In Ohio, Howland, Meander and one up by Toledo, Glass City?). WV Fairmont/Eldora, Princeton, and Winfield. I'm sure there are more, in each state, those are just the ones we could remember (many closed before I was born in 1979, sadly).

Add to the closed in my lifetime in PA. , Vultee Airport [Allentown] ,Allentown Fairgrounds, Wind Gap , KelReca, Hatfield, and recently, I heard ,Quarter Aces.

[Bob Bender]

Tom, dont forget Reading Fairgrounds.

[randy wilson]

Be real interesting to see how many spectators today, compared to the 70's, and 80's.

[Bret Kepner]

Guys, your numbers are far from reality. Pennsylvania alone has had over sixty dragstrips.

Roland, Allan Brown was the first to make an effort to accurately chronicle all North American racetracks. He was a pioneer who archived a phenomenal amount of information prior to electronic gathering techniques. Allan retired almost a decade ago after printing three editions of his original book; the last was published in November, 2003.

I met Allan several times and he's a fantastic guy. Unfortunately, he was never a big drag racing fan, (although he enjoyed the sport), and his final listing, while impressive, included drastically fewer drag strips than were actually in operation over the years.

Almost twenty years ago, I formed a consortium to precisely locate, confirm, research, chronicle and archive all of 'em. The effort demands the hours of a full-time job each week and requires a massive effort from the members of a very small group. Our project isn't a hobby. It's a lifelong ordeal; it's a commitment to which we have each made huge sacrifices. It's no different than campaigning a Stocker every week of the year.

We take this project seriously, (excruciatingly so). We can never finacially recoup our investment and, therefore, have set a simple goal of making sure the information is available to people in the future. I'm not talking decades in the future. I'm referring to CENTURIES in the future.

There is no "web site". There is no "e-mail list". There is no FaceBook page. We owe no free information to anybody in this pursuit. Those who have assisted us receive our undying thanks and many, many people have assisted us.

I never meant my original response to Gary Smith to become a "Name Those Tracks" thread. He wondered about the data progression over the sport's first sixty-five years and I offered a response proving, as James Perrone noted, "the sky isn't falling".

Nothing more. Nothing less.

[Nitro Joe Jackson]

I agree with Bret 100%, but I have been around for a bit also.

[Robert Swartz]

Originally Posted by Randall Klein

Trends? How about the youth caring more about video games than getting a license, cost of cars (let alone race gas, entry fees, showroom cars not in the guide etc), or the aging curve of class racers, general economy stagnation, more choices for discretionary income, dysfunctional sanctioning body......those are more discouraging than track availability. More encouraging is the on-going investment of racers building $100k plus cars, the new blood from the factory race cars.....these single purpose cars will be raced somewhere, and the Northern Class Nats may be a start of racers taking ownership of our future

I would guess there is enough passion and $ to run this out about 10 more years, could be wrong, hope so...it's the trend I see

I have to agree with Randall. I remember when I was 14-15, getting your license and dreaming of what your first real car was going to be was part of being a teenager. Nowadays it's not uncommon to meet young men, 18-19 years old that don't have a drivers licence?

Another point is the lack of mechanical knowledge of youth today. A case in point, had a lab tecnichian yesterday. He came in to do a test on a torque unit, wanted to measure the angle to insure the unit was in calibration. Plant where I work, we build remanufactured diesel engines. He comes over to me with a puzzled look on his face. His measurement tool was a 3/4 drive and the machine tooling was 1/2 inch. Told him to make that tool work you need a simple 1/2 to 3/4 adapter and we can run your test. He looked at me in amazement, and said, "they make such a thing"?

Also agree in that the economy is not strong, business can't/don't want to pay higher wages. Another major spike in gas prices certainly won't help. If we were to suffer another serious recession (we're due), that 10 years might be optimistic.

Yes, the graying of the drag race community is a concern as well. That's true of most hobbies. The 100K cars are a good example of this. I agree it's great to see that kind of committment. If those of us with lesser operations are forced out, then there will be no feeders to move up! A local association may be the only option we have left to Class Race?

[Terry Witzel]

I can think of three more in Ohio that closed, Kettlersville and Wayne trail both owned by Ted Jones and also Hyde Park.

[Michael Kilduff]

Originally Posted by Randall Klein

Trends? How about the youth caring more about video games than getting a license, cost of cars (let alone race gas, entry fees, showroom cars not in the guide etc), or the aging curve of class racers, general economy stagnation, more choices for discretionary income, dysfunctional sanctioning body......those are more discouraging than track availability. More encouraging is the on-going investment of racers building $100k plus cars, the new blood from the factory race cars.....these single purpose cars will be raced somewhere, and the Northern Class Nats may be a start of racers taking ownership of our future

I would guess there is enough passion and $ to run this out about 10 more years, could be wrong, hope so...it's the trend I see

Randall, you make valid points. But there are lots of youths into cars and racing, just not the kind we are into.

Last weekend I went to Fayetteville Motorsports Park in NC to make some test and tune runs-they had a group there called 'Horsepower Junkies' that rented the track. They had 4 classes of competition as I recall, and there were probably 125 or 150 cars there with lots of spectators-as many as I have seen at any local track in a long time. The cars were all new muscle-mostly '98 and newer Corvettes (even a couple Z06's) , camaros, mustangs, Crysler 300s and even a few new caddies-only a spattering of imports and the only old cars were a 69 chevelle and a 70 AMX. The new muscle all had tags from what I saw and many of them ran in the 11's or quicker. There were at least 40 late model corvettes.
Almost all of the cars had power adders, especially turbos and pro chargers. It was kind of a hokey deal- no rules or scales and all heads up-and a 'party' environment. And lots of broken rear ends too, I might add. I can't imagine many class racers or bracket racers being caught dead at such an event, but by the same token this Horspower Junkie crowd looks at other forms of drag racing and they just aren't interested.

These people are spending money on their cars. What is a 2008 Corvette worth, and then add on the forced induction and etc?

[Michael Beard]

Originally Posted by Mike Carr

Bret, how about Pennsylvania tracks? As best as Dad and I can come up with, there were fourteen tracks that ran, at one time, in PA. Six are still running.

1. Maple Grove
2. Numidia
3. Beaver Springs
4. South Mountain/Quarter Aces
5. Pittsburgh Raceway Park (Keystone)
6. Lucky's Dragway (Erie)

The eight that closed:
1. Sunset Raceway (Mercer)
2. Skyline DRagway (New Castle)
3. New Bethlehem
4. Peterson Memorial (Altoona/Tyronne)
5. York US 30
6. Pittsburgh Int'l Dragway (Cecil)
7. Pocono Drag Lodge
8. Vargo Dragway (Perkesie)

Ohio and WV we could only come up with three each that closed. In Ohio, Howland, Meander and one up by Toledo, Glass City?). WV Fairmont/Eldora, Princeton, and Winfield. I'm sure there are more, in each state, those are just the ones we could remember (many closed before I was born in 1979, sadly).

Other PA tracks: Green Pine (no idea where this was, just heard a number of the older guys talking about it when I was a kid... ok, after searching for it, says it was around Williamsport) and Kremer, which was pretty close to Beaver Springs. Chicken coops there now, as I understand it. I think I've actually been past it, but it is unrecognizable. My dad raced his street '70 Dart 340 4spd there once. Said it had a dirt shutdown area, and not much of it! I think there was a motorcycle dragstrip in the Reading area as well.

Here's an interesting page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lost-...26629034080783

[BRINK]

Originally Posted by Randall Klein

Trends? How about the youth caring more about video games than getting a license, cost of cars (let alone race gas, entry fees, showroom cars not in the guide etc), or the aging curve of class racers, general economy stagnation, more choices for discretionary income, dysfunctional sanctioning body......those are more discouraging than track availability. More encouraging is the on-going investment of racers building $100k plus cars, the new blood from the factory race cars.....these single purpose cars will be raced somewhere, and the Northern Class Nats may be a start of racers taking ownership of our future

I would guess there is enough passion and $ to run this out about 10 more years, could be wrong, hope so...it's the trend I see

Randall,

I couldn't agree with you more. Great post.