NASCAR Finds Traffic Is Lighter

Attendance Down In Bad Economy

In the go-go days of NASCAR, when gas cost 90 cents a gallon and the U.S. economy was hurtling along faster than Dale Earnhardt's black Chevrolet, sellouts were a given at stock-car racing's major venues.

But no longer.

The advent of $4-a-gallon gasoline has spoiled the party for many hard-core NASCAR fans -- particularly those accustomed to loading up the RV and driving 300 miles or more just to revel in the bone-rattling roar and exhaust fumes of 800-horsepower engines as their favorite driver zooms past.

Increasingly, NASCAR fans are waiting until the last minute to buy tickets -- holding off, as so many Americans have these days, until they see whether there's any disposable income left after the month's bills have been paid. Others aren't coming at all.

Stock-car racing, which has recently seen attendance and television ratings plateau after years of meteoric growth, might be a victim of its earlier success. Flush with the sport's popularity, track owners expanded grandstands at a frenzied pace in the 1990s and built new superspeedways in Miami, Dallas-Fort Worth, Chicago, Kansas City, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

With 100,000 or more seats to fill, several of the behemoth tracks bundled tickets to multiple races in season ticket packages. But that makes it tricky to discount unsold or slow-moving tickets in today's tougher economy and still be fair to all customers.

So while some track officials have simply closed off sections of their grandstands, covering unsold seats with advertising banners, others are working double-time to gin up novel promotions to coax fans from the low-cost comfort of their living-room couches.

As part of its "Fans Appreciation Economic Stimulus Plan," New Hampshire Motor Speedway paid one ticket-buyer's home mortgage for six months and gave 20 others a $500 gas card at its June NASCAR race.

At Lowe's Motor Speedway outside Charlotte, every ticket holder for the Oct. 11 race was invited down to pit road for a two-day test session this week to watch top drivers fine-tune their cars. For a NASCAR junkie, that's the equivalent of getting to hold Jim Zorn's clipboard on the sideline during training camp.

"Race fans have been with the sport of NASCAR for 60 years now, but we need to do a better job of bringing the best possible time to those fans who travel from 300 or 400 miles away," track president Marcus Smith said. "No doubt there is a soft economy out there. But thankfully people still want to be entertained."

And at Atlanta Motor Speedway, promoters hope to tap the presidential-election fervor by tossing a tube of lipstick in with each Family Four-Pack (four tickets, four hot dogs and four Cokes for $159) sold for its Oct. 26 race.

"When you put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig -- but when you add it to our ticket package, you get an attractive value," track president Ed Clark said in announcing the deal shortly after the brouhaha erupted over candidates' use of the "lipstick-on-a-pig" cliche.