No seats available for Grand-Am race

A reader writes, Dear AR1.com, I've wondered in the past why some Grand Am DP races have no one in the stands watching and now I know why. You can't buy tickets for the race, at least at Watkins Glen this weekend you can't! My father and I are going to the USAC Silver Crown and Midget race at Oswego Speedway in New York on Thursday (we live in Toronto Canada) and thought that on Friday on our way home we'd swing by Watkins Glen and watch the Grand Am race but we found out the only way we can get in to see the race is if we but a weekend general admission ticket in the amount of $80.00 for the whole Nextel Cup weekend. I emailed the series on the weekend to see if they could help but no response yet. I just thought I'd share this insanity with you. Steve Baker, Toronto, Canada

Dear Steve, With Grand-Am ALMS is up against the same Voodoo economics that CART was up against with the IRL. CART was a stranger in a VERY strange land. They were trying to conduct "business" on the normal principles taught in business school. You remember……."Profit and Loss", "debit and credit"; "expenditures and revenues"; but for the IRL it was "Voodoo Economics," ticket give-a-ways, empty side pods, empty grandstands, promoters who didn't promote and didn't care because they are guaranteed to make a profit. Tony George may have won his "WAR against the Infidels, the Non Believers". But it was be a Pyrrhic Victory. ..Gettysburg 2003! The fact that his sisters kicked him out for blowing all their money keeping the IRL afloat proves it was Voodoo economics indeed. Likewise Grand-Am sells very few tickets and TV ratings cannot justify all the sponsorship plastered all over the cars. Word is that sponsorship can be had in the Grand-Am for next to nothing because the same Voodoo economics are at work until the ALMS dies away. So far it appears to be working. Mark C.