Local Racing Promoters - Top Of Their Game

"When they race in Chicago, I try to do something else," Deery says. "We'll have a thrill show, monster trucks, rollover contests, a wall of fire, some stunts. The monster trucks are big. And we have spectator drags."

Tom Curley, the promoter at Thunder Road International Speedbowl in Barre, Vermont, says he's not sure that Nextel Cup races affect short track crowds that much.

"I think there's a clear-cut group of short-track fans who go to one Cup race a year," Curley says. "And there's a loyal group of Cup fans who don't go to short tracks."

Tom Deery is the president of DIRT Motorsports, which sanctions racing around the country and handles various short tracks. One of those tracks is Volusia (Florida) Speedway Park, about 30 minutes from Daytona International Speedway on a good day.

"At DIRT Motorsports, we believe in the strength and power of community short tracks all across America," says Deery, who knows something about NASCAR and short-track racing across America. Deery once worked for NASCAR with the Weekly Racing Series, and he traveled the country in the '90s, visiting WRS tracks.

Deery says the Volusia and Daytona tracks have a relationship, although the scale is far different.

"They've been very helpful in recognizing what we do here in spreading the news," Deery says of Daytona officials.

Volusia had DIRTcar Nationals, Sprint Car, UMP Modified, Late Model, and Big-Block programs going on during the 2007 Speedweeks at Daytona.

"As expensive as it is to attend a Nextel Cup race anymore, people might not attend the Daytona events every day," Deery says. "We provide a nice alternative, and people take advantage of that."

Powell says that Darlington mentions Florence racing in promotional materials, but he says that the Florence and Darlington tracks don't co-promote events as much as they used to when Hunter was Darlington Raceway's president.

"We don't have any type of official relationship with them [Florence]," says Chris Browning, Darlington's current president and former president of North Carolina Motor Speedway in Rockingham. "We list their events in our fan guide and materials we send to customers."

It might have been easier for the tracks to work together in the past, when Darlington had two Cup races and the Southern 500 was run on Labor Day weekend. Back then, Florence's race season was in full tilt. Now, Darlington has just one Cup race-the Dodge Charger 500 on May 12.

"We have the same challenges," says Browning of the Darlington and Florence tracks. "We're still trying to sell tickets. The economy has kind of ebbed and flowed the last few years. It's never been easy [promoting races], as long as I've been involved. It was that way when I was in public relations. I've only been running tracks for 10 or 12 years. We had to work hard to sell tickets at Rockingham, and to a degree, we've had to work hard here at Darlington. There's no guarantee that you'll succeed."

Ironically, the Darlington track has a relationship with a track in North Carolina: Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem. For years, Darlington has sponsored an award for Modified racing at the quarter-mile track, which has been in operation since the late '40s, and Browning says he talks to Bowman Gray's promoters on occasion.

Browning was asked why Darlington and Florence haven't gotten together.

"We've never been approached, to be honest," he says.

Browning has a long and loving relationship with short-track racing. He raced his own Three-Quarter Midget car in Tennessee and various tracks in the Southeast. He later did public relations at Martinsville Speedway before switching to Rockingham, and he attended races at Concord, 311 Speedway in Madison, North Carolina, Volusia County Speedway (now Volusia Speedway Park), and the old Metrolina track in the Charlotte area.

"Short tracks are where most people get their first taste of live racing," Browning says. "If you polled the majority of race fans, most of them probably first watched racing on TV, but the majority probably saw racing at a short track somewhere before they saw a Cup race live."

The biggest problem for the short-track promoter, Wheeler says, is getting people out of their houses and away from their high-definition TVs and air conditioning. But it can be done.

What are the differences between promoting big tracks and short tracks?

"Really, there shouldn't be any," Wheeler says. "You're doing the same thing. You're trying to put people in the seats. It's all relative. We both promote locally selling tickets, and we both try to get the media to pay attention."

Wheeler has often said that there are three "T's" in promoting-traffic, tickets, and toilets. If you can handle all three, you're doing all right, he says, whether you're promoting a race at Concord Motorsport Park or Lowe's Motor Speedway.

During the RPM Workshop in 1996 in the Daytona Beach area, Wheeler showed up and deferred to promoters whose tracks have about 150,000 seats fewer than Lowe's Motor Speedway's seating capacity. Wheeler, who operated short tracks in Gastonia, Monroe, and Concord before going to Charlotte Motor Speedway in 1975, says that short-track promoters put up with a lot of headaches.

"I have a lot of respect for them," he says.

Wheeler was asked what he'd do for a living if he couldn't be the president of LMS. Leaning back, smiling broadly, he answers, "I'd probably be promoting at some little dirt track somewhere."