Having the Nextel Cup race at Loudon next weekend doesn't feel right. Maybe that has something to do with lagging ticket sales there this year.Typically, in the life of an auto racing journalist, there's a symmetry to the season.
April and May whet the racing appetite, and you bounce around from track-to-track for a few weeks reacquainting yourself with tire barriers and pit areas. June then rolls in with a few big shows and warmer weather that gets you through to the Fourth of July. After pigging out on hot dogs and cold beer, you begin to turn your attention to the mid-July race at New Hampshire International Speedway. You work on some preview stuff, cover the week's worth of activity there -- and then there's the Oxford 250, a week's vacation fishing on a lake somewhere, and you're ready to document the championship hopefuls at all the local tracks throughout August.
Then there's September, and you chart the point battles as they shake out lap-by-lap in a 35-lap Late Model feature at Unity or Wiscasset or Oxford. You hit Loudon one last time before fall sets in, finish it off with a couple of weeks of extra-distance open races back at home and the year is over.
But, I've got to tell you, Loudon snuck up on me this year. School just got out. Championship battles haven't even begun to shake out a the short tracks. Vacation is still six weeks away.
Heck, the Cup cars haven't even raced at Daytona yet.
I wonder if my union still allows me to cover Cup racing before I have a heaping helping of watermelon.
1 comment:
agree with you on the ticket sales issue. as you know in the early days of louden the race was the week following daytona, which was around the 9th or 10th of july each year and the oxford 250 was around the forth of july.
i personally liked it as the company i worked for at the time shutdown for those two weeks. although it was tough call between going back to work or checking in to the betty ford clinic!!
getting back to ticket sales, i am a starting to get the impression that there is not a lot of interest in this area for the oxford 250.it seems to be quite wide spread. i did a skybox last year instead of buying a block of 12-16 tickets as i have for the last few years. but this year i did not even come close to having enough. and reluctanly cancelled last week.
i like bill ryan, but the masses of people in my area are not in love with a certain promoter that he has "curled" up with.think that has more to do with it than the class of car. how that for a preveiw of a future blog topic!! greg
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