Earth to NASCAR: Californians dislike your racing
The track appeared to be about two-thirds to three-quarters full at the start of the race. The race lasted 3 hours, 40 minutes – including 37 laps run under caution because of intermittent drizzle – and empty seats became more noticeable throughout the event.
Track parent company International Speedway Corp. doesn’t announce attendance figures, but Zucker said she was “happy."
The track had reduced ticket prices on some of the seats on the lower parts of the grandstands and ran several promotions, such as one where fans got tickets to the race if they spent a certain amount of money at a grocery store.
"The doom and gloom about the fact that California cannot support NASCAR is dead wrong," Zucker told reporters Sunday night.
She said the track had ticket holders from all 50 states and 12 countries.
“That really says an awful lot about how passionate people are that they are willing to travel such far distances still for their sport," Zucker said.
The track’s 2-mile configuration at times leads to strung-out racing, but the event Sunday did feature a close battle between Matt Kenseth and Jeff Gordon near the end.
“The quality of racing is everything," Zucker said. “The races are not boring. They’re different. When you look at what different race tracks have to offer, they offer different styles of racing. We have a very wide race track, and what you see is a racing surface that gives a lot of room for drivers."
Zucker said she only received one complaint from a fan about the 3 p.m. local start time. The fan was planning on traveling five hours to the event. She said Fox requested a late start time, and she didn’t have an issue with it because the Chase For The Sprint Cup race later in the season will be a day race (12:15 p.m. local start) and her fans wanted a race run at least partially at night.
“If I didn’t think [the start time] was the right thing for people here, absolutely I could be out there saying I don’t think this is the right thing," Zucker said. Scenedaily.com
02/22/09 Sunday could be one of the worst-attended Cup races ever there. Reports emanating from the west coast are gloomy, indeed. In fact, while in Daytona for Speedweeks, a high-ranking official of International Speedway Corporation dourly lamented about how only one-third of the seats for Sunday's race had been sold a little more than a week ago. He feared that the race might draw just 50,000 people, tops.
If that.
And if that happens, it would be the lowest-attended race in Auto Club Speedway (ACS) history.
When are the NASCAR top brass going to realize that Californians are sophisticated people who drive very few American cars and trucks. California is where new trends in America are started. Californians have no desire to watched NASCAR's dumbed down managed racing using 1950's technology cars (yes, they still even use carburetors, imagine that!) and drivers who cannot properly speak the English language. When they hear NASCAR drivers butcher the English language as if they are from another country, they cringe and head for the nearest exit.
This is NASCAR's third foray into Southern California over the years.
The first episode was at Riverside International Raceway, which proved popular as a Cup venue at the outset in 1958. But by the time it held its last Cup event in 1988, you could squeeze more people into a phone booth than you could into Riverside's grandstands. It's no wonder the old track is now a housing subdivision.
And then there was the ill-fated Ontario Motor Speedway, which lasted exactly 10 years on the Cup circuit (1971-80). Again, poor attendance proved its downfall. Today, that same area is once again thriving — just three miles from ACS — but for different reasons: It's where the very popular Ontario Mills outlet mall now sits.
We'd hate to say Fontana's own ACS will make it three strikes and NASCAR is out, but unless nothing short of a miracle, that's probably what's going to eventually happen. And no matter how many excuses they make, there's no way to overcome the ambivalence of people who just aren't that interested in watching guys like Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart run 180-mph lap after lap on the edge of the desert. In part from JerryBonkowski.com