Early in the 2015 stock car season, Speedway 95’s top division, the Late Model Class, was getting only five cars on race night.
It was a major headache for track owner Del Merritt.
The Late Models gradually have rebounded but the overall car counts on Saturday nights remain an area of concern. There were 36 cars in the four classes last Saturday night and only 314 fans were in the grandstands to watch.
“If we don’t get more cars, we aren’t going to get more fans,” said Merritt.
On Saturday, there were 12 Late Models, 10 Sport-Fours, eight Street Stocks and six Sportsman cars.
The Sportsman Class has struggled with low car counts for years and Merritt is going to give serious consideration to eliminating it after this season.
“I have fought for years to keep the Sportsman Class. But if we can’t get more than six to eight cars, there is no sense to hang on to them,” said Merritt.
He said there isn’t a shortage of Sportsman cars, but most of them are sitting idle.
“I love this class but we’ve never had a lot of cars,” said Levant’s Shane Tatro, the points leader. “These cars are close to the Late Models. They aren’t as expensive. But a lot of up-and-comers go right to the Late Models and skip this class.”
Hermon’s John Curtis Jr., a Late Model racer, said the primary reason for the low car counts is the expense to owners.
“I’m not running a full schedule because it requires a foolish amount of money,’” said Curtis.
Tires cost $120 apiece and racing fuel is $10 a gallon. Race night usually requires 10 gallons of fuel between practice, the heat race and the feature, according to Curtis.
Drivers bring their crews and friends and it costs $25 per person to get into the pits.
“And you spend a lot of man-hours working on the car during the week,” said Curtis.
Merritt and Street Stock drivers Jordan Pearson of Corinth and Greg Pung of Franklin agreed.
“I think it’s mostly financial,” said Merritt, who contended most of the other Maine tracks also are experiencing low car counts.
“The economy is poor. There aren’t many people who can afford it,” said Pearson. “I don’t think the track is doing anything wrong.”
However, Sport-Four racer Donny Silva of Hudson and Pung said track officials have been inconsistent in their enforcement of the rules and that has led to frustration.
“Last year, they let everything go. You could do whatever you wanted to,” said Silva. “This year, they’ve been enforcing the rulebook. You can get disqualified for the stupidest things. It’s a big joke. If they opened up the rules like they did last year, the cars would come back and you’d have 25 of them every night.”
Merritt conceded there have been inconsistencies.
“The rules were always in place but they weren’t enforced last year,” admitted Merritt. “We’ve started enforcing them this year and it has caused chaos.”
Pearson said he and other drivers are bothered by the fact officials change the rules “every four or five weeks.”
“You need to have a rulebook at the beginning of every season and stick with it,” said Pearson. “They’re trying to conform for different people. They’re trying to make everybody happy.
“If you build your car with a specific set of shocks (absorbers) and, halfway through the year, they tell you that you can’t run those shocks, that means you have to go out and buy four new shocks. It costs you a couple of hundred dollars to do that,” he added.
“It’s hard to keep up with the rules changes,” said Pung.
Merritt said the rulebook is revised every three years and that means there will be a new one for 2016. Drivers have input into the rulebook.
“The fewer the rules you have, the better off you are,” said Merritt. “They all push it right to the limit. They try to find any advantage they can get.”
While car counts have been low on Saturdays, Wacky Wednesday has had a dramatic resurgence over the last year.
The entry-level Roadrunner Class has attracted 33 to 42 cars every week.
Merritt said the Roadrunners will join the Saturday night lineup in September after Wacky Wednesday finishes up on Aug. 26.
He said that Speedway 95 will take a long, hard look at possible changes for next season. It will consider reducing the price of admission and pit access.
Grandstand tickets are $10 on Saturday and $5 on Wednesday and pit passes are $25 and $10, respectively.
“I’ve told them we can do what they want to do but it is a business and we need to bring in ‘X’ number of dollars to pay our bills,” Merritt said. “If we charge less for admission, maybe we’ll have to charge more for sodas.
“There are more expenses than people realize, like insurance, every week,” he added, explaining that his aim is to have fun, not to make money.