Hey Terri you don't have to convince me, Joe Whittaker or the past and presents Barrie ownership we all know it's sad but true it's true.
the problem for the Barrie ownership is that Barrie cannot have a succesfull invitational because drivers from other tracks will not attend because they are scared of the track and its "tear em up" reputation. Since it re-opened Barrie has put on the absolute best llm and thundercar invitationals and all and listen up ALL of them have received little or no support from drivers from other tracks especially when you consider Sunset is within 1/2 hr.
The big issue with the Thunder invitational last year at Barrie, was it was run a week before the end of the Sunset season. Many positions were on the line, and guys could not afford to get their cars banged up. On the other hand Barries points were done the night before so those guys were free to run. For support, Herb put his championship possibly on the line, and risked his car in the invitational. thats balls, thats support...
That same weekend it was the last points night on Friday for Kawartha. The orginal plan was that Barrie's thunder invitational was a 2 day deal. As a Kawarthat car, I would've had to pull an all nighter to swap gears to make it there for Saterday.
I really think Barrie should rethink the date.
The thunder invitational ended up with a full field anyhow. Any more cars would've just meant that some guys wouldn't be making the show. 3 - 50 laps of VERY CLEAN racing...
rossevans30 I noticed your logo
"If you spend as much time working on your car as you did online, you would be fast" - Stompin Tom Walters.
Did he actually say that to you coz if he did its true its true lol.
Barrie has had that issue since the 70's. The Barrie drivers have always been the best in the province for travelling to invitationals, going back to the Wardle, Shaughnessy, Erb, days. The other tracks have not been very good reciprocating, with almost no other drivers returning the favour and showing up at Barrie Invitationals. I would not blame the new owners for not following through with this, as there is only one track that will benefit, and it won't be their own.
nobody yet has mentioned the difference in track surfaces between Sunset and Barrie. The towel city tired do not last as long at Sunset as they do Barrie. Obviously because of the gritty track surface at Sunset. Dad could probably get 3 nights out of Towel City Tired at Sunset. Dave Doucette told dad that he buys a brand new set of Barrie tires and races one night at Sunset and then they are junk. Different tracks are going to prefer different tires. If guys are getting 5 or so nights on the Hoosiers at Sunset and they pay $45 more per tire, I think it would cost Sunset TC drivers more to switch to the Towel City tires because they would just get chewed faster. So I am going to base a little math on how fast dad screwed 4 brand new tires at Sunset. 3 nights. We'll pretend for math sake that there are 20 race nights in 2009.
4 towel city tires at $90 a piece = $360 you would need 7 sets of tires to make it the year if you only ran 3 nights on each set. barring you don't have any tires cut obviously.
so 7 sets X $360.00 = $2520.00 for the season on Towel City Tires.
4 Hoosiers at $135 a piece = $540 a set. You would need 4 sets of tires going by what I am reading people say about how the Hoosiers wear down at Sunset.
so 4 sets X $540.00 = $2160.00
That is a savings of $360.00....money that could be spent on making the car handle buy buying a couple of shocks or something. I know if I had the choice to run at Sunset for the whole year I would want the longest lasting tire to save money for other things to make the car go faster....just my 2 cents.