shrinkboy

dang, the folks who run our Superdrome in Frisco TX had to cancel the rest of this summer's Friday night racing because of lack of attendance. how disappointing, but I understand thoroughly because we've had total turnouts of sometimes 8 or even less in all categories. hard to keep officials around for something like that.

i think there is just too much competition from crits and RRs around here ....I guess

hoping that the Fall series goes better.

Kayce

Any more details of the local culture at the track and in the area? With cash payouts like that on a regular training series I would imagine people would be pretty interested. Was a slow wind down through the season, or have you been struggling for riders from April?

shrinkboy

they do all the right things, with cash etc, but it just seems like turnouts have been really skimpy and have been since April. i talk it up to many of my friends, and you just see that its like telling people to eat their vegetables- they get this distant look while the little voice inside tells them they really should, but the reasons not to just stack up so much higher: the shop ride tomorrow, the crit tomorrow, the crit next weekend, the one last night, the big huge bad ass 100k road ride every Saturday morning with all the Pros and Cat 1s, etc etc etc...we have a very active race scene around here in DFW and it would be possible to ride a crit, a road race, or a rally nearly every day of the week...

Kidd69

I'm just wanting to get started track racing again. I live in McKinney, Frisco is 10 miles for me. I hope it continues. I'm looking for a entry level bike that I can upgrade for a while as the time goes. I hope there is no chance of the track going away.

Racer Ex 

Sorry to hear that. FWIW the road promoters aren't happy with turnouts right now either. One of the problems is the TXBRA folks are pretty dismissive of track and are promoters themselves, so they have conflicting interests, and don't do much to help new folks in general (see the clinics and things that other places put on).

I was on the TXBRA board for two years and there's one or two people who control everything. No new ideas, lots of old petty grievances.

The Superdrome is a great facility that the local college really wants to turn into a parking lot. The folks fought that off with the help of the city a few years ago.

Kayce

We were having a similar problem with the USAC LA here too. Basically we just kept having track people show up and make a stink at every meeting. Now there are results. We also started things on our own. It was a big time commitment. But we ran new rider clinics, did free events, and helped create 3 brand new track specific teams. That got our LA attention as well.

The biggest thing was to get people that were/are road races to like the track even more. When you are enjoying track racing more than the local crits, you will use the track as the focus. We did that by having a more fun friendly atmosphere, hanging out after racers, bbqing at the track, and securing a beer sponsor.

shrinkboy

the 'Drome has posted a full slate of racing for the upcoming season, i'm looking forward to it

DMC707

Cool -- I hope to get in my share of racing this year myself - i'll go check the site out