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August 15, 2006

Trackside: Change doesn’t come easy in auto racing

By Joe Buckles

TERRE HAUTE — By nature, racers are noted for their reluctance to accept change. It’s a trait that U.S. Auto Club officials know all that well these days.

In a move that they hoped would help pump new life in to their stagnant Silver Crown series has all but backfired on the Speedway-based sanctioning body.

The introduction of the “New Generation” cars for the pavement tracks has not generated the results that the brass at USAC had envisioned.

Small car counts and wide-spread dissension among many of its club members has left USAC’s premier circuit in turmoil and the future of the new cars for the time being in doubt.

It’s a subject officials didn’t care to discuss and one that several car owners and drivers reluctantly express their views on during the recent Sumar Classic.

Some view the current controversy as only temporary growing pains that will gradually disappear once more of the new cars arrive on the scene.

Other view it in a much different light and one they fear threatens the future of USAC.

Car owners, many who had the most to lose with the introduction of the new pavement creations have been the most vocal about the changes.

Terre Haute sprint and Silver Car owner Bill Biddle has watched with interest the way the current dilemma has played out. The local businessman continues to field a car for the USAC dirt tracks but like many has reframed from purchasing one the new cars.

He continues to run his pavement cars but instead on the splinter Premier Racing Association circuit. He thinks there’s a place for both series but is not certain how many of his fellow car owners share the same chain of thought.

Questioned if he feared for the future of the Silver Crown series he expressed the views most commonly heard from many USAC car owners.

“I’m not concerned because I enjoy running the cars I’ve got. I hope Jason McCord and Jason Smith [PRA founders] program’s works so we can to continue to run the older cars,” expressed Biddle.

He’s sees the upstart series as plus for champ cars on two fronts.

“You can’t take these kids off the quarter mile tracks and put them on the mile and halves. When USAC made the decision to go with the new cars I talked to several USAC representative. I told them I thought they should keep the main series so that it would allow development of the young drivers,” offered Biddle.

“Along with that it gives 50-60 car owners resources to move their equipment so they could move to the next series. By stopping it leaves everybody in a hole with hundred of thousand dollars worth of equipment and no place to use it.”

He says his he will sit down over the winter and reevaluate his future plans in racing.

“I’m in a wait-and-see mode. We’re looking at our entire program. We have to decide what we want to race and what we don’t want to race. The sprint cars are racing to much, paying to little and traveling to much.”

Biddle says the new cars would be an expensive proposition for car owners. “You would have to have a couple cars and backup equipment. It would take $300,000 to do it right.”

The fact the new cars have encounter more than their share of gremlins right out of the box has not gone unnoticed by the skeptics of the new cars.

“When you spend the money they are on the new cars and they aren’t able to get them functional and raceable through the R&D; program how many are going to be able to hang on during that 2-3 year period?” he asked.

“If you had 30 to 40 car owners you’d have more opportunities to make it move. But by destroying the other series they alienated so many car owners they aren’t interested in working with them.”

“They had 60 registered Silver Crown cars and they have 14 now. It shows the split is pretty deep right now.”

Two drivers who figure prominently in Silver Crown racing Brian Tyler and Russ Gamester share their love for the big cars but take different views on how the changes are playing out.

No driver has more Silver Crown starts than Gamester. He would like to be running on the pavement but says USAC forced car owners like himself into a corner.

“It’s a shame what’s happening. I enjoying running USAC. I have nothing against them. I understand what they are trying to do. They [USAC] just did it so wrong. They gave us the ultimatum to buy a new car or not come run with them. That is wrong,” said the six-time winner in the big cars.

“If you knew where the money is coming from, you know why it was done that way,” said Gamester.

Tyler says it will take time but believes the new cars will eventually catch on with the racers and fans alike.

“Like any new series, it’s going to take a year or two to get its feet on the ground. The IRL struggled getting cars. It took a couple of years for them to get full fields,” voiced Tyler, who currently ranks second in Silver Crown points.

“There’s been a couple of races where there were only five or six cars running at the finish but four of them were racing for the win. It’s just going to take time,” offered the two-time Silver Crown champion.

Time in which many fear the big-car series’ future lies precariously in the balance.



Joe Buckles can be reached by mail at the Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808.

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