Merry Christmas to all and a happy New Year to boot! Another racing season has been completed with 2025 looming on the horizon. It feels like it was just yesterday that we were afraid that when the calendar turned that all our electronics and everything else technical in the world might fail and there would be epic problems. Unbelievably, that is now a quarter century removed in our rear view mirror as time marches on at an increasingly fast pace. Accepting that and adjusting to that is sometimes tough to do.
2024 was an interesting year and in many ways, a frustrating one also. The changing landscape that finds tracks changing nights of operation, classes being run and the management of the tracks at the drop of a hat is sometimes hard to keep up with. I don't believe we've ever seen a year before when so many tracks changed, dropped or added events at a moment's notice and for that we can thank, or blame, social media. A few years ago we would never have seen last minute changes to track schedules such as has become common place today and while some tracks have had great success using this formula, others have suffered mightily. For sure, things will likely never be like they used to be and old dinosaurs like myself had better learn to adjust on the fly or be left in the dust.
Many folks would say that I am extremely lucky, or perhaps nuts, to attend one hundred and ninety three racing events during a calendar year. And believe me, I know how fortunate I am to be able to go to that many races if I so choose. If it weren't for an extremely tolerant wife, friends and many great promoters, track owners and management teams, I wouldn't be able to get to near that many races.
However, when the total number of races drops as significantly as it did in 2024, I still feel just a bit melancholy about it. Not since 2017 have my total races attended dropped as much as it did in 2024 when I attended sixteen less races than the previous year. Granted, 2023 was a year that I would not likely ever be able to match again when I saw two hundred and nine races. Every opportunity worked out that year, the weather never misbehaved and fortuitous track scheduling allowed me to see races at places I likely wouldn't have had the chance to do so otherwise.
2024 was more a return to reality and perhaps a little more sensibility that kicked in. Rain was a big factor in 2024 with more rainouts than perhaps the last few years combined. And somewhere along the line I lost that "magic touch" where I could predict just where and when it was going to rain and point my race chasing in another successful direction. 2024 found me making some bad decisions that cost me races along with futile drives.
And probably for the first time, I seriously applied a strategy that would cost me a few races too. Using a strategy given to me by my brother the accountant, I applied the "Cost-Benefit Analysis" certain times during the year. I considered what it would cost to attend certain events and whether the entertainment benefits would off set the cost in time and race related expenses and decide whether or not the trip was actually worth what I would see. About a half dozen times in 2024 I ended up not being able to justify the trips and I stayed home instead of heading to certain events. Some of them rained out but some also raced and I missed out.
Of the one hundred and ninety three races attended, I saw action at sixty different tracks in fourteen states and one Canadian Province. I did not see racing at a single new track for me in 2024 but unlike some race chasers that target certain tracks to attend just to add a new track, I instead go to racing events that interest me and if they happen to be a new track for me, so much the better.
On the positive side, 2024 marked the forty fourth consecutive year that I have attended at least one hundred nights of racing and I have now been to three hundred and thirty four tracks in twenty nine states and three Canadian Provinces.
At this point, 2025 does not look like it will be any better unless things change soon. One midweek track that I attended five times for weekly shows last year has dropped their weekly programs in favor of several weekend specials on nights when I have plenty of tracks to choose from. Another track that I attended six times last year for another midweek program has decided to switch nights for 2025 to a weekend night and it will be very hard to replace the lost shows at either track. And poor car counts at a number of the midweek tracks make attending them at all somewhat questionable.
However, with any kind of luck, while Winter is still being celebrated in these parts, I hope to be seeing racing in three different warm weather states with large car counts and drivers from many different states on hand. The plan is to start out at the Wild West Shootout at Vado Speedway Park in New Mexico for six nights of racing at a truly great facility with Late Models, Modifieds and X Mods all in action.
Then it will be on to central Arizona where for three straight weeks, Brad Whitfield puts on racing at the Central Arizona Raceway in Casa Grande with IMCA and WISSOTA divisions in action along with Late Models.
Then, after a short drive to Florida, the hope is to see two weeks of intense racing at Ocala Speedway for the Lucas Oil Late Models following by a week of racing at Volusia Speedway Park where USAC Sprints, UMP and World of Outlaws Late Models and Big Block Modifieds will all be in action.
Best wishes to all during the off season and with any luck, an early Spring will find me running into a number of familiar faces as we meet somewhere at a dirt track in the Midwest.
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