Racin’ the way it oughta be?

With the summer Bristol race coming up fast, actually two weeks away, it’s not a sell out? Well slap that wall and get out the Bondo, are you really surprised?

There was a time when if you didn’t renew your tickets when you got that letter, you were stuck out in the parking lot listening on your radio, hearing the roar of the engines and cheers from the crowd. Heck, people kept their seats forever and left the rights to those tickets to family and friends in their Last Will and Testament.

In past years, if you were “going to Bristol,” race fans envied you and wanted details to fill in the commercial blanks after you returned home. You had tickets and they could only dream or pay a scalper to get them.

Not so any more.

The spring race only occupied 120,000 of the 160,000 available seats. Track officials say 14-days-out, it’s close to a sellout, but won’t give specifics. One of the few local bus tours to the summer race has seats still open. It’s sponsored by the Alum Creek Lions Club.

Sidebar: If you are interested in going, contact that club, cost is $185 and includes transportation, seat between turns 3 and 4 and food before you leave the track to return home. Call Paul Wheeler at 304-746-4415 or contact him by email at pwhee71827@aol.com)

And it’s not just Bristol. Each week, if you look hard and fast, you’ll catch a glimpse of empty seats at every venue, no matter how much TNT, ABC, FOX and ESPN try to steer the cameras clear of vast empty sections.

So why are people staying away in droves? The blogisphere says it’s the racing, not the economy. After Bruton reconfigured the track to progressive banking, it just wasn’t Bristol any more. No hard-nosed, get outta my way, bumpin’ beatin’ bangin’ door to door and to the wall, racing.

It's not Concrete Chaos, like NASCAR has boasted in the past.

There are few cautions, which isn’t always a bad thing, but it can make for a boring race. Here’s where detractors have their say, “it’s just going in circles,” and they're right. Well, until the last 20 laps, when everyone wants to win and will get down to the business of racing. The rest of the race is pretty much flipped on auto-pilot.

It just doesn’t meet the track slogan any longer - Racin’ the way it oughta be!