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| Dec 1, 2008 |  |
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The State of OUR sport; Past, Present, and Future A continuing series of interviews through the eyes of YOU, our Teams, Promoters, Tracks, Sanctioning Bodies, and Fans...
STEVE YORK – THE SHOWMAN 2007- The Turn Around Year….. It’s July 30, 2007, 12:58am, I’m just getting back from Orange Show with my son Drew. Reflecting upon the evening (a very healthy crowd and car count at OSS) and the past few months it dawns on me that………... ”it’s happening”. “Yes, it’s happening” The turnaround has started, the positive signs are all around us. Just last December I was wandering around the ruins of Champion Speedway in Carson City wondering what 2007 would hold for us, I was worried. Havasu (Dennis and Bill), Orange Show (Mr.Ganino) , Madera (Kenny and Al), All American (Mr. McAnally and Mr. Wimberley ), and the Fair Boards of all these facilities that are supporting our sport, a sincere Thank You. And of course a new Mesa Marin only a few months away (thank you Destefani and Collins families). And despite my criticism, I do have to thank Nascar for their continuing series of tv spots supporting Saturday Night Racing, they haven’t gone un-noticed. And most important, every racer and team member, first in points or last, Bandolero to the West Series, nothing happens without your countless hours and sacrifice into making this sport happen! You guys continue to amaze me with your dedication and spirit. As we put out the checkered on the 2007 season, I ask everyone to keep the momentum going. I ask all our Promoters and race directors to work with our racers as your partners. I ask all our Racers to work with your promoters and track sponsors as your partners too. And tracks, I ask you to work with each other as One. (yes, I know you can do it!) We all win when the partnership concept works. Just like any good franchise, we are all on the same team. Let’s increase the “size of the pie” together, not fight for what is left. We are all in this together. It’s us against them (all the other entertainment choices), not each other. Let’s keep positive direction going and ensure our darkest days, are behind us. …………Andy D. As most of you now know, at Magic Valley Speedway the keys were turned over to the new owner and promoter Mr. Eddy Mckean. Since my interviews were conducted last season, (yes, I am VERY slow with this stuff) I thought it would be ok to go ahead and print both chats with Steve York and Randy Kerr who are technically now both formerly of MVS. Both of the interviews hold valuable information for us, and will continue to be a legacy and model that was created at this track. Enjoy………. The Intro If I had to come up with one word to describe Steve York it would be….Showman. Not promoter, not track owner, but a Showman. He very well understands we are in the entertainment business, and it is his job to ensure the fans and racers are having a good time, no matter what happens on the track. When visiting MVS you know immediately who Steve is, he is the ringmaster of this show. He is walking around shaking hands, saying hello, laughing, joking, and thanking his fans and racers. He is a very visible part of why MVS is a racing success. And the end of every night you can find Steve at the front gates again thanking fans as they leave. It’s very much like a preacher with his congregation, expecting to see everyone return next Saturday night. As I reported in the MVS main article, Steve operates his track as a Partnership. It’s a partnership between Racer, Promoter, Fan, Sponsor, and Media. I can tell you by personal experience, this relationship is the key to why MVS has grown its fan base for each of its 21 years in existence. In order to create a partnership, it means the owner, who has invested hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in his track, must give up a certain amount of control to the other partners. That takes a willingness to delegate many aspects to other partners, and trust them to do their part making the enterprise a success over and above the norm. Vision, passion, trust, creativity, and determination, all words that describe Mr. Steve York, RPM’s 2006 Promoter of the Year. Andy D’Addario: Steve, where did you start, what was your racing background, what brought you to owning Magic Valley Speedway? Steve York: I actually came to Idaho with UPS, and was in management at the time. I was transferred here (Twin Falls, ID.) from Salt Lake City, and was then transferred to Los Angeles at the Soto Street facility. Eventually I ended up back in Twin Falls. My father wasn’t a race fan. In fact the first race he saw was here at Magic Valley, about 5 years after we built the race track. I had an uncle that used to take me to Atlanta Motor Speedway, this was back in the Sixties. We also went to Darlington and Charlotte, but I think that’s the only places I can remember going to as a kid. I really liked racing, and liked being around it. When I actually moved to Twin Falls I decided to try racing and actually one of our racers fathers built a racetrack, and old dirt track, just South of here. First night out I won the race and had never raced before so I thought, “this isn’t so tough”….(laughs). But he lost his lease on the land, on that particular property, so I and another partner actually went to the City, leased this property and built this racetrack. It’s been twenty some years ago, and have been going ever since. I’m a transplant, I was born in South Georgia, but I lived in Florida. I went to High School in Florida, and then to college in South Georgia. I then worked for UPS, moved to Atlanta, from Atlanta to Phoenix, then Salt Lake, Park City Utah, and then here. I was at UPS for fourteen years. AD: Tell me about Magic Valley Speedway, what makes you guys different? What do think you do differently? SY: Andy, I can’t tell you because I don’t go to a lot of other racetracks because we’re working on Saturday nights (big laughs). In the total time that we’ve had this place open, one night I actually skipped, and in the first couple of years I skipped a night and went racing at another racetrack myself. Another I actually had a back pain issue and missed a night. But other than that I’ve been here every night, so I don’t get to go to a lot of other tracks, I don’t know the insides and outs of other racetracks. There’s a lot of facilities that are much nicer than ours, I know that. But for what we do we do in our community, I think we can probably compete with anybody that has a track in a community our size. I know I look at the percentages that we draw, crowd wise, versus say Irwindale a town of fifteen million or whatever it is, we do ok. Last Saturday night we had 2430 people here. When you figure a population of 35,000, that’s a pretty dang good percentage. Even in Salt Lake City if you had a track there, they can’t draw near that kind of percentages. But I have a lot of advantages. I don’t have minor league sports, I don’t have minor league baseball, I don’t have major league sports anywhere in the State, there’s not a one here in the State anywhere. The biggest sporting event is probably Boise State Football. It’s the single sporting event that draws consistently. Five or six times a year they’ll draw 30,000 people. The Burley Boat Regatta has become very popular, but that’s a once a year deal. Our key is strictly working well with sponsors, very close with our sponsors, and being members of the community. I’m involved in the Rotary type clubs, working the sponsors in the events like you went to today, the Harley Davidson dealer that was our sponsor for tonight (TJ Woodhall at Snake River Harley Davidson). We try and work with our people as close as we can. He (TJ) also happens to be a racer so he’s involved. And, we also do that with Brian Bolton at Pepsi as an “event” type night. So, we try to stay as closely connected with our sponsors as we can. As far our relationship with our racers, go take a poll, you’ll find guys that like us, and you’ll find guys that don’t like us. But bottom line overall I think we do ok, but I’ve accepted the fact that the people who come through the front gate are very important to the survival of the speedway, but the people who come through the back gate pay twice as much as they do. So they are as big a part of our operation as the people who come through the front gate. Without them we don’t have a show, without us they have nowhere to play. So it’s a partnership deal, and I tell em that all the time. Hey, we’re partners in this deal. It ain’t just me, we’re partners in the business together, we have to be. AD: What do you think of the state of Saturday Night Short Track Racing. What kind of shape are we in right now? (Steve is busy multi-tasking working on the souvenir shop doors, getting stuff done….) “I’m with ya” Steve says. “Why are we suffering such losses across our sport?” SY: Again Andy, and not to be redundant, but I’m not sure what other people do. This is our twenty first season, and I can tell you as of today, we have never had a year where we went backwards, so we’ve always gone up. I’ve never had a year worse than the year before, not once. And if the trend holds this year, I’m still there. I think everybody needs to take their own facility, look at it, build it however they can, build the relationships with their sponsors, and with their fans. I like for people to feel bad if they’re sitting home on Saturday night. I want to be able to look at em right in the face, and you’ll see me in the grandstands tonight thanking people for coming, asking where they were last week if they weren’t here. I want em to “think racing”. I believe a race track promoter and a preacher has the same challenges. That’s because, and I don’t know what kind of guy you are, I don’t know if you go to church or not. But if you go to church every Sunday it’s tough to miss, but if you miss three in a row, it’s tough to go back. Short track racing, if you come every Saturday night and you miss a week, it almost kills ya. I mean you work your schedule around trying to get to that track on Saturday night. But if you miss four or five in row, and you find other things to do on Saturday night, it’s pretty tough to find time to come back. So I think the key is to try and keep people coming week after week after week, and making sure they’re entertained. Because I’ll tell ya at 10 or 10:15pm me and Randy (race director) are having discussions “why aren’t we through” because a long time ago people thought you had to a track and stay five or six hours, but that’s not the case. Two, two and half hours, it’s time to go home. Ya know, it’s over, so give me some excitement, let me have some fun, then it’s time to go home. Now you’ll hear the argument about short tracks versus Cup, well, last Saturday night, we had a tv up out here, and it happened to be Quale Electronics Night. What better a night to have a TV sponsor? They brought their tv, they showed a big screen. If you wanted to see who leading the race you can come down and look at it. The last three laps of the race there was tons of people packed around to see Stewart win the race, and then they are right back out here to watch the fun racing out here. If a promoter feels like he can’t compete with the Cup run on Saturday Night, I’m not going to argue with him, I’m gonna say “you’re right, but you better figure out something to do different, because those boys are here to stay”. So if you need to move to Friday night or Sunday, don’t go broke waiting to do it, do it and do it now. It doesn’t bother me at all, if I need to run Friday night, or I need to go to Thursday night, I’ll go to Thursday night, if I think that’s what it will take. But this is a business no different than any other. If you’re selling hamburgers and your product isn’t good, you better do something different or you’re going out of business. If your product in the racing industry is not good, you’re going to go out of business, I don’t care who you are. If you don’t appreciate your customers, take care of your customers, back gate and front gate, both are customers, you’re not going to make it. You’re not going to make it. The other thing is I think a lot of promoters have a tough time wearing more than one hat. And I promise you I’ve over here in the fryers unclogging the grease, I’ve been at a promotion with a motorcycle place today, and I’m here talking to you. You’ve gotta be willing to wear more than one hat. I’m not telling you I can do all those things well, but I do them. By the way, you’ve gotta surround yourself the best employees that you can find. And I can tell ya every promoter out there will tell you their employees are the best, and I’d tell ya the same thing. I have key employees that are as good as I can find. And ya know what, Saturday at four ‘o’clock it’s their show, they run it, I don’t have a radio on, they’re not bugging me, it’s their show. Most promoters don’t do “change”, they want to do the same thing that they did last year. If they sprint car racing a certain way twenty five years ago when they raced, that’s the way they do it now. No, that ain’t the way it works. The way it works now is I talked my twenty one year old kid into entering tonight’s final event. He’s going to race a roll over car. They want to see crap like that, I call it crap, but that’s what they want to see…..OK. I listen to what the young kids are saying but ya know what, it’s just like the Cup deal. They did the “chase for the championship”, next year we did the “chase for the championship”. Now I think you’ll see some other tracks do it this year……..We did it LAST year. Our drivers don’t run in Cup, but if Cup does it, hey we can do it too. We did that, we did the caution cone deal. If they put the cone deal in the Tours, it would help them a bunch. I’m not saying it’s right or it’s wrong, but it puts some strategy into it, that used to not be there before. You’ll see it work tonight. You’ll see a guy sitting there, under the yellow flags at most tracks people are bored. But you’ll actually see some people tonight say….”why did that dumb SOB go to the outside, or why didn’t that dumb SOB go the outside”…..(big laughs). Why did he do that? You’ll see this tonight, it’ll happen. You’ll see a guy go from fifth to second. He’ll go from fifth place to the outside pole just because no one else went outside. Last year we actually some guys who were leading and took the outside. Of course it also breeds more caution flags which bunches up the field and makes it even more exciting for the fans. AD: How do you see the competition side of things, costs and time for your basic racer to field a car. SY: Ok, twenty years ago the price of racing kept most people out it that wanted to do it. In 2006 the price of racing is still important, but if you come to Magic Valley Speedway we run a 3K crate motor in our top class. So money is not the issue, not near what it used to be. The issue now is…”I don’t have time to work on my car”. It’s no different than I want a two or two and a half hour show, three on the outside. People don’t have time to do that because there is so many other things to do that they want to do. So my idea of the whole thing is we have a feature class that you’ll see tonight. Some are modifieds, some are late models, we run them together. I mean that is another deal we did, that’s right, the Premier class combining the Late Models and Modifieds. I had promoters tell me, “that was the stupidest thing you’ve ever done”. Ok, how stupid is it? I mean I used to have eight cars in my premier class, and I’ll have fifteen tonight. If it’s stupid, I like stupid. (big laughs). And the cool part about it is last year I had a late model win two out of seventeen races, this year I think we’ve had a modified win one out of seven. So I mean it’s totally flawed. Rule package wise though, because of the crate motors, we have a one tire rule which most tracks now have, we have to keep that cost down as much as we can so they can spend more money on their haulers. There is a guy out here that has the trailer I used to race years ago, doesn’t even a tire rack on it man, we put them in the back of a pickup truck. But now we try to save them money on the race cars so they can spend it on their haulers. I guess that’s what they do with it, they get it from somewhere!!! Cost is important. I think our first year in season we were either 450 or 550 at our front gate. We charge twelve dollars. I’ll stand at the front gate tonight when people leave and shake everybody’s hand I can and tell em “thanks for coming” and not hear one person tell me they didn’t get their money’s worth. It has never happened and I stand there every night. AD: Basic business isn’t it? SY: That’s all it is. Thank you for coming, we appreciate you being here, drive safely, be careful in the parking lot, whatever it might be. Last Monday night I had over 2,000 people here, I didn’t shake everyone’s hand, but I talked to every one in those groups. Thanks for coming, hope you had a great time, come back next Saturday. They all knew I was there and at least if they wanted to tell me there was a problem, they could tell me. Whatever they wanted to say, they could. AD: You showed me a little awhile ago, many newspapers, front page articles about your track, in color, beautiful, well done. You told me it took you a long time to get to that point. What did it take for you to get that kind of media coverage. That’s something I harp on all the time. We have to work better with our sponsors and media. SY: Sponsors and media are somewhat the same. Sponsors want the most coverage they can get for their dollar, with the least amount of work. Let me tell you about newspapers, that’s changed too. Newspapers need to sell newspapers. I don’t know of a newspaper at least in my area, that is happy with their circulation, they always want more circulation. One way for them to get more circulation is for us to help them, and how we help them is they have the same issue that everybody else in the United States has, they don’t have as much time as they used to. They are not able to get as many things done as they used to, so we simply do it for them. We actually go out now and we hire a reporter to feed all the information to them. We do it “for them”. When we get through tonight, there will be an article in tomorrow’s paper, then it won’t hit our website until tomorrow night because that is our agreement, we won’t put it on for 24 hours. So at midnight tomorrow night we put an article on our website that will run in our local newspaper on Monday morning. We actually have done everything we can do to furnish that. If you’ll look at that “Motorhead” deal that I gave you, the girl that wrote every story in there, is out in our pits now, Linda Brittsan. She’s out there in our pits every night and we do everything we do to take care of them. If we need to send them to Las Vegas to the Cup race, that’s what we did, just for Thanks. Just thanks for helping us out, and it keeps them interested in racing! What I pay to do this saves me ten fold in advertising because of you look at these, if you look at everyone one of those regular newspaper articles there is not one speedway ad in the paper. (The stories become the advertising) What would I want to buy an ad for? I can’t buy that! That’s better than anything I can buy. (Steve is pointing to an ad that would be about 2K in the LA market) I can’t buy that. So the money I spend to get the articles written I’m saving in advertising. As a matter of fact my advertising budget on the newspaper last year was about ten thousand dollars, and this year is two hundred dollars a month. And that is only because I’m advertising on their internet site, it’s not print ad. Now the catch 22 to that is that I had to go to all my sponsors and say I’m not doing a print ad now. I tell them, “I’m not doing a print ad in the paper, but I’ll promise you I’ll get your name in the paper as much as I did before.” And you know what, it’s been a win/win deal. And, the paper is winning too, everybody does. They are getting more people that are sponsoring. If you look at one of those papers it’ll have congratulations to the speedway winners, with all the sponsors. It’s helped them with newspaper sales, and it’s also a human interest deal. Like today the article is not about a race car driver, it’s about a guy that’s worked at the race track since Day 1. There’s only two of us, me and one other, and that’s what the story today is about. They wanted to something different than a race car driver, they wanted to do an official. I said “ya know what instead of doing an official why don’t you do one of our safety guys that has been here since Day 1”. They said ok, it’s a good idea. AD: Some have described a “marketing partnership” and tried to explain it to me, and now I’ve seen it. SY: It’s all about people, it’s all about people and making sure they have a good time because really who win’s the race tonight makes no difference to any of us. It of course does matter to someone in the pits competing for money, but money is not the issue, I’m convinced. I don’t even know tonight what all we’re running (I’m laughing), but when we run our Thunderstock class, our Hornet class, and our Queen Bee class we do not pay a purse. Nothin’ Just come out and have fun. Yup, and we don’t charge em anything to get in the back gate either. Yup, free in and free out. Ya know what, and they have a great time. Free in and free out, nothing wrong with that, it’s a good deal, everybody wins. We do give a plaque to the winner. And if they go too fast we the claim the car for two hundred bucks and roll it over the next week. AD: Does Nascar have a place in this, or is it really up to the owner and promoter? SY: Andy, Nascar has a place in our success. I’ve said this before. Probably the most important thing I did to make MVS as successful as it is, and I don’t know what bar you use to say “successful”. AD: 2,000 out of 35,000 is successful. SY: 1,000 out of 35,000 is successful, I hope we do well tonight! Probably the most important change I made here after we built the track was asphalting it, that was number one. And understanding at that time Meridian Speedway in Boise was the only asphalt track anywhere around. Anywhere around! So it was kinda a dicey deal all the racers that were here said “ya change it to asphalt and I can’t race here any more”. Well we asphalted the racetrack because I decided if I was going to lose money running a race track that I didn’t want to spend all my time out here trying to prepare dirt that was not very good dirt in the first place. It wasn’t clay it was just sand. So, that was number one. Number two was in 1991 we went Nascar. Nascar as a sanctioning body is by far the best sanctioning body around, I think. They obviously have a name in racing, but it’s only worth what you use it for. If your racetrack is not doing well, it is not going to do well with Nascar. If your racetrack is successful, it will be as successful or more successful with Nascar. It is not a make or break deal, it is a promotion tool. It’s up to you. It’s a promotional tool. Do the racers have some benefits, sure. I can’t buy the insurance they get through Nascar, so that in itself is worth everything, ok? But, how much is it worth you as a sponsor if you own a business and say, “Andy I want to make you a partner, you’re not a sponsor, you’re a partner. I want you to be a partner with me at Magic Valley Speedway and we are the only Nascar track in Idaho”. By the way in 1991 we were the only ones anywhere around here because there wasn’t Salt Lake City or any of that, so we were the only ones around. So I could go to them and say “You can be partners with the only Nascar track in Idaho”. Is that worth something? It’s worth whatever you make it worth, and we’ve made it worth something. I mean ya know what, look around, you’ll see Magic Valley Speedway, you’ll see Idaho’s first and only Nascar track. We promote Nascar, we spend a lot of money promoting Nascar for Nascar. It helps them and their bigger series and all that, but it helps us too. It’s worth a little bit to walk in and say to somebody, “ya know what, Greg Biffle won one Northwest Tour Race, and he happened to win it at Magic Valley Speedway”. That’s the only one he ever won. I doubt he’s gonna win the last one, but maybe he’ll show up August the fifth. You outta come to that, two hundred laps. AD: I don’t know if my family is ever gonna let me drive this far again….LOL SY: That’s an awesome event, and the last one. AD: Should Nascar be doing more for our short tracks. All these market areas we’re losing for our sport. El Cajon, Stockton, Carson City, (yes I know not a Nascar track) etc. SY: Are you asking me if they should have dropped the Tour, or if you’re asking me how should be involved in tracks? AD: Both really. SY: Ok, here’s the deal. I cannot run Magic Valley Speedway, by myself. I just told ya I don’t, I don’t even try. I don’t even give it a good shot. AD: I do understand, you’re like a good film directors I work with, you hire good people around you. SY: That’s where it’s all at. Nascar can’t run 80 racetracks, they can’t. The other thing is that racetrack promoters are a tough lot as you try to convince them of anything. Most of them are not very open minded. They are gonna tell you what’s gonna work, and what’s not going work, they think, and there’s really not a lot of them that are open to change. Ok, if you’re a sanctioning body and let’s just say you print out a list, one of these flyers right here that says, “these are all things you should do to make your speedway better”. I can tell you right off the bat, open it up, “well this won’t work for my track cause of this, this won’t work at my track cause of that”. Out of the top 100 things there’s going to be two of them they say “well we might try that one”. They might, they might not, ………….they probably won’t. I gotta tell you, we as a group, racetrack promoters as a group, are our own worst enemies. You can put it on the record, I don’t care, that’s the truth. (big laughs from me) AD: You’re not the first to tell me this. SY: Yeah, we’re our own worst enemies, geez. But let me tell you, there are some good ones. I don’t know what tracks you go to, but there are definitely some race tracks that I talk to. Not necessarily on a weekly basis, but I used to a lot. We email back and forth and we talk quite often. One of the ones I talk to quite often is Chuck Deery, Lacrosse Fairgrounds Speedway in Wisconsin. Chuck has a facility, same kind of areas….Dairy, etc. He draws much bigger crowds than I do and he works it hard. He’s a down to basics kind of guy. I’m probably more race oriented than he was. He never raced. I’m probably more race oriented than he was but he understands the racer side of it so well. Because of his family background he has a heads up on me because he has a lot of people to learn from. But as far as knowing the basics Chuck has always been somebody that I can lean on. I’ll call him and say ‘whatya think about this”. And he’s the first to say “hey ya know what, that might work”. Or he’d be the first to say “well that’s stupid, cause here’s whats going to happen”. We do it back and forth. Trailer racing. Many, many moons ago we started doing this stupid trailer racing deal. So the first year we sat down and we decided we were going to do a trailer race, he’s gonna do one, I’m gonna do one. I chicken out because I’m the purist, I’m not gonna do it. He does it the first year. He calls me on Monday morning and says “there’s two reasons not to do the trailer race”. I responded “why’s that”. He said, “number one, you don’t want to clean up the mess, it’s a pain in the butt, and number two you don’t want to have to go the bank to deposit the money”. (big laughs). That’s just the kind of guy he is. He said, “other than that, I can’t think of any other reason you’d want to do this”. (again big laughs). Of course I responded, “Ok, I’ll try it”. AD: The one thing I’ve found is incredibly consistent is, almost without exception, is that when the special events are run, trailer races, destruction derby, fig 8, train race, roll over contest, you name it, crowds are up, and people stay around for them. It all makes complete sense to me because you can’t get any of these events on TV. I would consider doing one of these type events every week. SY: You know what’s crazy though. Walk out here tonight, just walk up to a fan somewhere and say “were you here last Monday night”. If they say yes say “who won the race”. I’ll bet you a hundred bucks, a hundred dollar bill, (slams the counter) they can’t tell you who won the feature event, I’ll bet ya they can’t. Then if you say “who won the trailer race, or tell me something fun that happened in the trailer race”, they’ll be able to tell ya that! They will remember that. Or ask em “who rode in the gauntlet van, they’ll probably tell you who drove it”. The gauntlet van they can tell you who drove that, but they can’t tell you who won the feature event! So I mean you put it all in perspective. It’s gotta be a good mix, I mean we are a racetrack. You’ll probably have someone down the road think I don’t even know why we race, why don’t we just run a junk show. That ain’t what we’re about. If you’re gonna do that, go get a fairgrounds arena and just do motorsports type events, but that’s not racing. We’re a racetrack, that’s our business, the other stuff is just entertainment. We have to run racing where it’s entertaining, so that’s why you see us try to be on the cutting edge of stuff. I don’t know how many tracks you go to, you probably see a lot more than we’re familiar with, but we put the AMB system before most people did (transponder scoring), and at least a decent scoreboard. It’s ten positions, nice scoreboard. It was expensive, but ya know what, I got a sponsor to do it. I have people tell me “oh I can’t get a sponsor”. You gotta be kidding me, you can’t get a sponsor for your scoreboard, what are you thinking? Ya know, this is a money making deal, why wouldn’t you do it? We put the transponders in thinking for the racers, and this is back to the old Chuck Deery deal, and by the way, he hadn’t done it yet. He’s saying “the racers can’t afford to spend $300”. I was so worried about that. I was worried about the racers. But one of the biggest benefits from that thing I never even saw coming, was you walk up in the grandstands and sit down and the people in the grandstands say “hey Steve, that scoreboard is so awesome because our driver was never was in the top 5 (because our old scoreboard was five positions, and the last two were half the time wrong because we couldn’t keep up with them fast enough). Because our driver ran in seventh place all the time his number never showed up on the scoreboard. So now I know where he’s running during the race. They know it’s accurate, they know it’s updated every lap, they know whatever it says is right. The racers love it. They go home and get to see how fast they ran, how many laps they led. They come out during the week for practice, we flip on the light, and they don’t have to have a stop watch any more, it says it on the board, they can get it printed. Ya know what, the best three hundred dollars they ever spent. They say, “know what’s cool about it, the car’s worth two hundred bucks, the transponder is worth three hundred bucks!” (big laughs). We have a lot of cars that you can buy for $200, but you can’t have the transponder with them. (more laughs) Ya know what, I dodged your question about Nascar. So, if you are looking for a sanctioning body to bail you out, just go ahead and sell and get out, it ain’t happening. By the way, if you can’t make Nascar work, how the hell you gonna make Ump work or Imca work, and I’m not throwing off on those guys. I’m saying I’ve heard of Nascar, if I can’t make it, is ASA gonna bail me out? If I’m good, ASA can make me better. If I’m good, Nascar can make me better. If I’m bad, nobody can bail me out. AD: Steve any advice to the promoters and racers out there? Advice from your perspective that everybody can use? SY: Obviously in 2006 your facilities have to be reasonably fan friendly, first off. They have to be, it’s not the old days. And racers, they have to be presentable, their uniforms need to look somewhat nice. We all go to racetracks every year, especially in some of the lower divisions they don’t take as much pride in that part as they can. I mean the tracks that you go to that don’t even have some kind of employee uniform where you can’t recognize who an employee of the track is, those days are over. Today, you gotta be better than that. If I go to the movies, I want to know who works there. So I think you have to take pride in your facility and in appearance of your facility. I don’t say that everything has to be painted every fifteen minutes, but at least it has to be presentable, it needs to be decent. Having said all that the old days are back, “he’s the promoter, I’m the racer, the promoter screwed me over he didn’t pay me the purse”. “If the motor did this, he didn’t do that. The racer cheated and did that”. No, that’s no good, no good for the business. Here’s the deal, the racers need to follow the rules, we need to put out rules that are fair for the racers. I mean fair by, Obviously cost has a lot to do with it. We need to make sure that we keep the cost in line, because we gotta keep the cost in line at the front gate. We can’t just keep raising the prices, we can’t do it at the back gate. If you’re running a race track and you’re charging the racers so much money he can’t afford to come, that’s no good, and some guys have tried that. Some guys have tried bumping the back gate up so much the racers quits coming. It’s not about purses! I’m convinced if we ran “The No Purse Nationals” at Magic Valley Speedway, I’d put cars on the racetrack, a lot of them. I think it can happen, the No Purse Nationals (laughs). Twenty bucks to get in, and I don’t know what you give them for a prize, but no money . We’ll have plenty of racers, and we’ll have a good time. Racetracks are no different than McDonalds. You gotta have a plan, and you’ve gotta sit down and gotta work the plan, and it will work. If you don’t, you have no chance. I mean you have to have some sort of outline cause you ain’t gonna make it. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a population of thirty thousand, or millions, I don’t think the fundamentals change. The things that will change, you might find you are competing for the same fan that you’re local hockey time is, or baseball, or whatever it is. But I do know there is a need for entertainment. Let me tell ya something. If you go to a minor league hockey game, what’s great about those guys is, they don’t trust the players. The guys that promote hockey, they don’t trust the players to make sure I (the fan) have a good time. So they have this hockey puck shoot contest and a hockey puck throw and they got music between, they have the chicken dance, and this, that and the other. Cause ya know what, the score in the hockey game might be ten to nothing, that’s pretty boring stuff if it’s ten to nothin’. So they have all these other things laid out to make sure that the fan has a good time, even if the game doesn’t come out so good. In racing, we need to do the same thing. We’re lucky! Ya know what if there is only one car on the lead lap in the Daytona 500, what do you do? What do you do about it? You go home. There ain’t gonna be another race. While you’re watching here tonight and one car gets a half a lap lead, what do you say,….”Ya know what, I’ll go get a hamburger, this race is over, but there’s another one coming”. I’m lucky! Look at baseball teams same way. They plan nine innings and they don’t ever start over. If they said “well if it ever gets more than 3 runs different we’re going to close the gap again”. I think Brian France has it figured the Cup deal where he did the Chase. He should have copy written it because we’re doing the Chase too. We’re putting three points between our top ten guys, which is one and a half positions. One and a half positions is all you get. Yeah, we’re racing right now, ya know what they come every week, they’re still racing doing the deal and now they’re to look forward to the Chase, cause they get to start all over again. It’s a cool deal, it’s a great deal ! What did We Learn?
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