Quote:
Originally Posted by broadrun96
I might have to catch the K&N guys, they put on a great race at Road Atlanta a few years back. They ran fast and clean enough I think everyone was caught out on how fast the race went. I think it was supposed to be around 90 minutes and they got done closer to an hour. Watching them through the Esses and into 5 was great fun from Spectator Hill, they were sliding and fighting through but stayed clean so the road courses will be a good watch at least.
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That race was the demise of and probably the cause of the end of the K&N East Series in Georgia. The previous years, the race had been run, just up the road, at Gresham Motorsports Park, in Jefferson, GA. I went to the K&N races there and they were OUTSTANDING races! Then, NASCAR bought Road Atlanta and scheduled/moved the K&N race from GMP to Road Atlanta and worse, scheduled it as a support race for sportscar racing and on a Friday morning/early afternoon, to boot. STUPID move, to say the least! Schedule a stock car race, at a track and in front of fans, of a different form of racing, that care absolutely nothing about, in most cases, literally hating, stock car racing and run it at a time when most people, that would attend it are at work. The results were at the very least, absolutely predictable -- very poor attendance by NASCAR fans and practically ZERO interest, from the fans that were at the track.
VERY poor handling of the K&N race, by NASCAR! What they should have done, was to not ever have taken the race from Gresham Motorsports Park to start with! Or, if they had to insist on moving it to the Road Atlanta area, they should have purchased Lanier Speedway, directly across Hwy 53, from Road Atlanta, at the same time that they bought Road Atlanta. That would have given them a track, more suitable for the K&N cars to race on and one that NASCAR fans would have far more likely attended. The K&N Series is largely a Friday/Saturday night, short track series. It would have made allot more sense to have run it on Friday night, plus the land across the street, that Lanier is on, would have been readily available for additional parking for events at Road Atlanta. Seems like a complete no brainer to me.
In lieu of this, if NASCAR just had to have this race on the road-course, since they own Road Atlanta, they should have scheduled a (now called)Xfinity Series/Camping World Truck Series event on a separate weekend, with the K&K East Series as a support series for those series races for the weekend. Again, VERY poor handling of this series, by NASCAR, that killed the K&N East Racing Series in Georgia.
Although I do not like road-racing, I almost went to the K&N race that you attended broadrun96. I was going to attend it, with a friend that was/is an avid sportscar/road-racing fan. He had not ever seen stock cars race and had talked me into meeting him at the track on that Friday to watch the K&N race and whatever else was going on there, that day. I had to call him and back out at the last moment. The company that I was working for, at the time, called me, the night before the race and told me that I would have to work, even though I had been promised that I would be off, for the month prior the that Friday. That is the reason that I no longer work for that company -- that was one of the numerous times that they had promised that I could be off, well in advanced of the day that I asked off for, only to tell me, at the last moment that I would have to cancel my plans and work on the day that I was promised off! Anyway, my friend understood and went on to the races, that Friday, he had originally planned to go to Saturday/Sunday races of that weekend. He told me that he enjoyed the K&N Race, said much the same that you did. He wandered around the various areas, to get different vantages of the cars going around the track and was impressed with the performance of both the drivers and the cars. He made the point about the fans, that I mentioned above. He said that from everything that he observed, the overall majority of the sportscar fans were totally disinterested in the K&N race. He said that only a very few paid any attention, at all to the race. They either ignored or were unaware that there was even a race going on. Most were busy partying, eating, going to and from vendors, concession stands, etc. They could have, in his words, "cared less that there was a race going on". I'm guessing that you and he, broadrun96, were about the only ones that paid any attention to the K&N race and with that much disinterest and lack of attendance, I'm not at all surprised that NASCAR pulled the plug on the K&N Series in Georgia.