Pathetic sign of the times.

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pittsburghracer

pittsburghracer

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We had a great two day event scheduled at Keystone Raceway park this weekend. With our track hurting to find employees all year and a couple getting sick the whole weekend has been canceled. Calling for a slight chance of early rain tomorrow would have probably forced a one time trial and race but most of us are cool with that. I never thought I would see this day
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pittsburghracer said:
We had a great two day event scheduled at Keystone Raceway park this weekend. With our track hurting to find employees all year and a couple getting sick the whole weekend has been canceled. Calling for a slight chance of early rain tomorrow would have probably forced a one time trial and race but most of us are cool with that. I never thought I would see this dayView attachment 1715950206
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Skeleton crew, no one want's to pay or work. Our club had to fill in last year for the drag strip during our event. The manager's son bailed out on the crew. There is a night of fire event coming up and we aren't volunteering to work concessions. We haven't got paid for last year yet.
 
pittsburghracer said:
We had a great two day event scheduled at Keystone Raceway park this weekend. With our track hurting to find employees all year and a couple getting sick the whole weekend has been canceled. Calling for a slight chance of early rain tomorrow would have probably forced a one time trial and race but most of us are cool with that. I never thought I would see this dayView attachment 1715950206
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That's a pretty big pay out. you need a 64 car field to break even.
 
pittsburghracer said:
Probably plus costs. I pity the guy with acres of grass to cut, rent, advertising, electric, employees. I don’t know what the answers are.
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ANd the spectator numbers are down in the dumps. That is the profit of the event. The entry fees should cover the payouts and round money. We got caught last year and guaranteed 3 $5000 races with a poor racer and spectator turnout. We wrote a $12,500 check out to the strip to cover it all. It just about broke us if it wasn't for some big dollar sponsors.
 
toolmanmike said:
ANd the spectator numbers are down in the dumps. That is the profit of the event. The entry fees should cover the payouts and round money. We got caught last year and guaranteed 3 $5000 races with a poor racer and spectator turnout. We wrote a $12,500 check out to the strip to cover it all. It just about broke us if it wasn't for some big dollar sponsors.
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Greg our manager has at least two other businesses but they aren’t big money businesses. One is owning and working at a sign business. His son races so he works his butt off to make it work.
 
Between losing friends and a lot of my “diehard” racing friends not racing this year it has me shaking my head. I hope this race makes him some money (funny car weekend) this coming weekend and three 15,000.00 races the end of this month.
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It's like that with everything lately.. I organize an annual Mopar/AMC car show on Vancouver Island, BC. Every year I have the same 4 volunteers, out of a club with over 100 members. The guys get burnt out, and even though everyone wants the car show to happen each year, the lack of help is the same. I very much appreciate the guys who do help, one of my best volunteers isn't even a club member! But it's the same story each year.
 
I support him as much as I can but I’m almost positive I’ll be heading to Ohio next weekend.
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70DartMike said:
It's like that with everything lately.. I organize an annual Mopar/AMC car show on Vancouver Island, BC. Every year I have the same 4 volunteers, out of a club with over 100 members. The guys get burnt out, and even though everyone wants the car show to happen each year, the lack of help is the same. I very much appreciate the guys who do help, one of my best volunteers isn't even a club member! But it's the same story each year.
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I think it’s like that almost everywhere. Church, car shows, etc. I know if keystone would close many many local guys would be done. I could travel but would have to come up with a plan each year very early in the year.
 
All the same out here in California. Lack of workers that are getting older, young enthusiasts who want the benefits but don't want to do the work.
 
Murray said:
All the same out here in California. Lack of workers that are getting older, young enthusiasts who want the benefits but don't want to do the work.
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I retired from the steel mill at 53 because of it after planning to work till 55. At that point I had 33 years in and was probably going to choke out some young coffee drinking, texting experts. I don’t think I would like jail.
 
The gubmint is still handin checks out, so it's still hard to get people to work.
 
1 out of the 40 are willing to work after crossing that river down south. I am sad to see drag strips close down, especially due to low work force. Most are family run and the kids went to college and now going after a tech career instead of helping ma and pa.

Also, there are too many rules according to the kids driving like idiots on the “street scene.”

The kid I grew up next door to is Ernie Bouge The Beast from the East. He typically does the night of fire with his jet car. Fuel is killing him this year. Also another low turn out reason.
 
Gotta love the direction the countries going ,not. It's the LWO, heard it yesterday..I guess they think being a traitor is in fashion.
Of course... soon it'll be robots at the track, rails for safety and lithium against lithium..lol wah wah... they'll sell kale burgers and raffles for free enemas in the stands... dont forget the break where LGBT half naked freaks come out and pride dance at the starting line...

:steering:
 
One thing that is new at Keystone is a local very established Hobby Shop has been coming to keystone on off weeks and using the top end of our track to drag race RC cars. I know they have done this twice so far this year, possibly more.
rc shops in my area - Google Search

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The SFG 1/2 million at US131 I see was cut down to 350k
I know they only have had around 400 entries this week for the 50k events leading up to the big one today.
I am guessing the racers are probably OK with what happened, they can look at the car count and see the numbers don’t work.
Several years ago SFG had the first million dollar race here…but WAY more entries. Sign of the times.
 
Years ago there only used to be a handful of big money races. Once guys realize they could make decent $$$ at promoting and hosting big money races lots of people started doing it. There's at least 1 if not 2 or 3 big money (10K+) races every weekend it seems. With so many around racers can pick and choose which ones they go to. Seems like the same group travel to the same promotors races. I have heard of some of the not as popular promotors not being good with getting the checks out and what not. It's really hurt the avg bracket races at local tracks since no one wants to race for a $1000 anymore. In doing so the weekly bracket program payouts are horrible especially with the time we live in. For where my wife and I race one of us has to pretty much win to pay for the day of racing. We have very mild cars and run on pump gas and try to do it at a reasonable cost. I know your not going to get rich at racing but when you can barely pay for the day with a win and then have to listen to the owner complain about how much crap cost over the microphone it doesn't exactly motivate me to head to the track.
 
moparstud440 said:
Years ago there only used to be a handful of big money races. Once guys realize they could make decent $$$ at promoting and hosting big money races lots of people started doing it. There's at least 1 if not 2 or 3 big money (10K+) races every weekend it seems. With so many around racers can pick and choose which ones they go to. Seems like the same group travel to the same promotors races. I have heard of some of the not as popular promotors not being good with getting the checks out and what not. It's really hurt the avg bracket races at local tracks since no one wants to race for a $1000 anymore. In doing so the weekly bracket program payouts are horrible especially with the time we live in. For where my wife and I race one of us has to pretty much win to pay for the day of racing. We have very mild cars and run on pump gas and try to do it at a reasonable cost. I know your not going to get rich at racing but when you can barely pay for the day with a win and then have to listen to the owner complain about how much crap cost over the microphone it doesn't exactly motivate me to head to the track.
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I know my local track can't get enough help as the track operator had to hand out time slips last week and the week before that she had to help man the fire crew. I know several racers that travel to the big money races and moparstud is right there seems to be one every weekend here in the tri-state area, I know it can get expensive one well known winning racer I was talking to recently told me what it cost in entry fees and it isn't cheap luckily he is very good and wins more than enough to cover the entry. I just never felt I was good enough to race the big money races. My local track just raised the pay out in all classes after years not doing so and the car counts are pretty good but could be better the track seems make more money on special races such as Nostalgia , imports, grudge etc. races , I went this past Sunday to a Nostalgia race and the place was packed. I decided to just race locally this year to due to costs but will travel in the fall for several index races if gas wasn't so expensive I would be going to Delaware this weekend for an index race.
 
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As so many of you have referenced the labor shortage is effectively strangling a lot of hobby sports not just racing. I own and operate a firearms training center, as a result I get sucked into helping run a lot of gunbunny events at several locations. Inevitably it is the exact same 3-4 guys doing all the work to make it happen. And yet each event has hundreds of folks capable of pitching in. Like racing events, firearm matches and ranges are high cost low margin events. Lots of upkeep and high insurance costs as a result of danger factor. The folks like all of us that are keeping it going are getting rode to death. Apologies, rant over
 
MOPAROFFICIAL said:
Gotta love the direction the countries going ,not. It's the LWO, heard it yesterday..I guess they think being a traitor is in fashion.
Of course... soon it'll be robots at the track, rails for safety and lithium against lithium..lol wah wah... they'll sell kale burgers and raffles for free enemas in the stands... dont forget the break where LGBT half naked freaks come out and pride dance at the starting line...

:steering:
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Now that's an image in my mind that I can't shake.....
 
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