There hasn’t been much in the way of positive NASCAR news this year. Rather than building more grandstands for overflow crowds, some tracks are reducing seating capacity—flagship Daytona International Speedway is trimming its bleachers by around 15 percent. Five-time champion Jimmie Johnson seems to be rolling along uneventfully to a sixth crown. And Danica Patrick, who NASCAR publicists were hoping might have won three or four races so far in first full season, is turning out to be a mid-packer at best. But , if you dig deep enough, there is some unexpected good news to be found, in all places, smack in the middle of a bunch of corn fields in western Ohio. And it will occur, of all times, on a Wednesday night. And it has been sold out, nearly 18,000 seats, since January.
Eldora Speedway, the half-mile dirt track that isn’t on the way to much of anywhere, is hosting the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series on July 24th. It’s the first time a major NASCAR series has run on a dirt track since September 30, 1970, when Richard Petty drove a Plymouth to victory at State Fairgrounds Speedway in Raleigh, North Carolina. State Fairgrounds Speedway isn’t around anymore. Neither is Plymouth, for that matter. Has anybody seen Richard Petty lately?
Wednesday’s race, the CarCash Mudsummer Classic, is the result of a conversation a couple of years ago between the track’s owner, former Sprint Cup champion Tony Stewart, and NASCAR. Stewart bought Eldora from Earl Baltes, who owned it for 50 years. To understand Eldora, you have to understand Earl Baltes, now 92.
The CIA could not have done a better job of disguising a brilliant, savvy promoter as a backwoods hayseed, complete with dungarees, suspenders, a baseball cap with the bill turned up, and Elvis sideburns. A former bandleader, Baltes turned Eldora into a magic place—where else could a fan sit at the top of the grandstands, lean over while watching the race, and order a shot from a full bar? Baltes made Eldora into one of those valuable properties that is known worldwide by just one name, like Daytona, Talladega, Sebring, or Le Mans.
In 2001, he ran a late-model race that paid $1 million to the winner, which was Donnie Moran. Afterward, when we asked Baltes how the night went, he answered with his trademark line: “If I coulda sold one more hot dog, I woulda broke even.” If Baltes is there Wednesday night, ask him about the time he had Pancho Carter preside over the wedding of two gorillas. No, we are not making that up. With Earl Baltes, you don’t have to.
When the time finally came to sell Eldora, the list of buyers who might operate Eldora in the manner in which we’ve become accustomed to was pretty short. At the top was Stewart, an Indiana native who raced at Eldora long before any of us heard of him. He has done a commendable job of making improvements at a pace that has not at all disturbed the ambiance. He brought in a seasoned promoter, Roger Slack, schooled at the knee of one of the few racing promoters in Baltes’s league of legends: Humpy Wheeler at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
As for Wednesday night, well, if anyone was going to set NASCAR back nearly 43 years—and we mean that in a good way—it was going to be Stewart and Eldora.
“When we talked to NASCAR a couple of years ago, it was more like a joke than anything else,” Stewart tells Car and Driver. “Then last year, they asked if we were serious, and we said we were. Since then, it has been full speed ahead.” After all, the ARCA series continues to run two dirt track races a year, and they are among the most popular on the schedule.
“I think NASCAR is trying to find something different, something than can bring new energy to the series,” Stewart says. Of course, “new” is a relative term —although he’s 42, he wasn’t born when NASCAR last ran on dirt.
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The truck series normally allows 36 entrants per race, but given the size of Eldora, that’s been trimmed to 30. The top 20 in points are locked in, and the final 10 spots for the 150-lap main event will be determined by a series of five-lap heat races. There are 36 drivers on the preliminary entry list, including some dirt-track ringers like late-model star Scott Bloomquist in a truck owned by Kyle Busch, and former sprint-car ace turned NASCAR driver, Dave Blaney, in a truck owned by current Sprint Cup champ Brad Keselowski. So far, Stewart’s name isn’t on the entry list—“I have enough to do that night,” he says.
Will the Mudsummer Classic be an annual event? “I think everybody, including NASCAR and us, wants to see how this one goes,” Stewart says. And if he ends up one hot dog short of breaking even, he knows who to go to for advice.
Source: CarAndDriver
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