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Mid-Michigan Raceway Park in Palo has suspended their season effective immediately.
The track will re-open on August 9th, 2009 for the Casey Eberspeker Memorial race, close again till the Corn Harvest, being held on September 25th, 26th and 27th.
Speaking with track owner Gene Hendrickson he said “You can’t put a show on with 11 cars. I don’t feel my general admission wants to watch 11 cars. I’m not losing money, for some reason racers aren’t racers anymore. What bothers me the most is we had some loyal spectators, but we had to turn them away because the driver’s abandoned them.” Gene said I don’t ever want to walk into a restaurant and hear “I paid $10 to watch 10 cars”.
Mid-Michigan Raceway Park has traditionally had a small but loyal collection of fans and drivers. In 2009, the crowd counts were down some, but the car count was down significantly. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t the total number of cars that raced, but the number that appeared each Sunday.
“If i had all the cars that have been there every week, we’d be running.” said Gene. “We’ve had 70 different race cars on the track this season. But its 20 this Sunday and a different 20 the next Sunday. They all say they love the track and they love how its prepared and how the events are run. But then they don’t come back every week.”
“Ron (Flinn, owner of Crystal Motor Speedway) is getting 150 cars a night and I can’t get 20. Is it the money ? I don’t think so, we pay about the same. My son got $125 for finishing fourth, that’s the same as we pay. They pay a little more at the top, but not anymore down through the field. If you finish first, second or third every week, then go race there, but if you finish 4th or farther back every week, you’d do better here. I don’t understand why they don’t come back.”
For Gene, running the track is a labor of love. “I’m not a salesman, I’m not a liar. I can’t run around promising this and promising that and knowing full well I ain’t going to deliver on any of it. Let those great promoters go out and lie to the fans and to their drivers and the sponsors. They seem to like it. I can’t do it.”
This past Sunday MMRP only had 11 cars show up. Instead of putting on an 11 car show, Gene gave all the drivers their pit pass money back and all the spectators their admission money back. He let the drivers go out and have some fun and let the fans stay and watch, but he was quite frank saying “I can’t hold the track till guys decide to show up. Its a shame, but I don’t know what to say. I’m at a point where I have tried and tried and we just aren’t getting the cars.”
