Watkins Glen on Monday

I attended the race at Watkins Glen on Monday and, while I enjoyed the race, a couple of comments are necessary.

The race should not have had to been held on Monday. In the good old days (before NASCAR’s gazillion dollar television contracts) ESPN came on the air for this race at 1:00 PM and engines were started at 1:06 PM. Remember that? If that was done this year the race would have reached around half way before the rain started. Since it stopped raining so that the race could have been restarted at 6:00 PM, the entire race could easily have been run on Sunday.

The ratings just came out for the Monday race and, as expected, they are abysmal. I don’t have a clue how the television contracts are worded. There must be a ratings factor in it. Does the network benefit from a long pre-race show? Does anybody watch it? I keep wondering how much the ratings have to go down before big changes are made. NASCAR and ESPN – please feel free to offer me a job to help you out in this area. I can make things better. Just leave a phone number in the COMMENTS.

I have attended 20 of the last 22 races at Watkins Glen. At most, 60% of the fans attended the race on Monday that were there on Sunday. That’s sad. Fans remember those things. After what happened at Richmond last September you can bet I’ll never buy an advanced sale ticket again. NASCAR needs to work with the networks to have a better chance of getting a race in without carrying over to the next day. Granted, a 1:00 PM start will not work all the time, but this is an example of when it can.

At most, only 25% of the food vendors were there and operating on Monday. I guess contracts for getting food to the track end on Sunday?? Whatever the reason, I felt overly gouged for a $6 slice of pizza and a $4 bottle of soda. Maybe those were the prices on Sunday. Whether they were or not, I was held captive to their prices if I wanted to eat.