This is the bad thing about our sport, it is so selfish. Drivers sometime want to win at all cost and that is accepted. Owners don’t work together to promote the sport they battle against each other for the almighty dollar. Sanctioning bodies do the same thing. Even in organizations formed to promote our sport, people battle and back stab for what they think is power. Selfish, selfish, selfish. Me, me, me! Yep wrote that blog a few years ago and it still applies today, maybe it is even worse today!

On track battles have taken to pinching people into the wall at tracks with walls. Another selfish move is the driving hard into the corner and using the guy next to you as your stop, no intent to have any car control and race side by side. What happened to good clean racing, where the driver cared about his own equipment and the equipment of other competitors. It’s great to be King but only if you have others to compete with, like children, when someone doesn’t want to share but keep all the racecars to himself, then suddenly none of the other children want to play with selfish Johnny. Maybe because this is a sport and we idolize those who win maybe we have created this racetrack mentality, but is it right?
Local track owners do not really work together for the good of the sport, instead they help with the division. Someone starts a series, builds it up to car counts in the teens, and then bam there is a disagreement and the series is split and starts running at two different race tracks. The owners and promoters are part of this problem. This dilutes the field and cheats the fans!

All the tracks are in competition for sponsors and another bad part of our sport they are in competition with their own racers for sponsors. What we need is for tracks and racecar sponsors to work together maybe sell a bigger package, sponsor my track on this night and sponsor this racecar and the racecar will be at your place of business this many days, and on your night your employees get in free. Again we have to learn to work together. We say we are racing family but put a dollar in between and are we really?

Finally, when it comes to schedules can’t we work together? This is where the sanctioning bodies come in, they run roughshod over the tracks of which sanction with them. Classic example is IMCA wants all tracks to close for their Boone event so the drivers will come to Boone for their event. The USRA Nationals does the same thing and most tracks comply, but at least the Nationals are at the very end of the season. Then after both of these events late in the season both sanction bodies continue to allow tracks to give points for several more weeks. Maybe the season should end with their main events as far as national points?

More than anything the thing that will continue the decline of our sport is the selfishness. Maybe that is the way it is supposed to be, maybe that is how we continue to have splits. Maybe that is how new sanctioning bodies are developed, maybe what is a negative can be turned to a positive with the right people in place. Maybe it is time to make something like that happen. Imagine a sanction body where the racer, the track owner, and race fan are all happy. Imagine an organization where all the tech guys have the same training and apply the rules the same way. Imagine what we can do if we all work together to drive out the selfishness. Maybe I am dreaming about racing in heaven, but who knows with the right buttons pushed, maybe that is where we are headed?