Toledo Speedway

By Karl Fredrickson

Reprinted with permission, from the December, 2008 issue of Speedway Illustrated.

Despite the economic woes of last year, the only thing that dampened short-track oval racing at most speedways was the heavy spring rain. By midsummer, record car counts and full grandstands were being reported at tracks across the country, a trend that continued through the fall. My information comes from press releases, qualified sources, and friends. And of course I also saw it for myself.

This is an extraordinary achievement that I hope is not overlooked when the auto racing industry gathers for the Performance Racing Industry trade show in early December. In the booths and over dinners, principals from every form of motorsport convene to converse about the state of their end of the industry during the Orlando show.

Maybe you, like tens of thousands of oval racers, imply went about preparing your car, loading it, and heading to the track (when it wasn't raining). Then when the green waved, you put the hammer down, threw the car into the odd-numbered corners and stood on the gas in the even-numbered ones.

Just like always.

The economic warning signs didn't matter to you. It didn't register that gas prices were inching up over the last couple years until they went into the stratosphere by midsummer. Those higher gas prices translated to higher everything else. Some guys races a little closer to home, but made no major adjustments to their racing program. Instead racers saved where possible in other areas, like brown-bagging a lunch two or three times a week.

Simply finding a way to do what you love may not strike you as remarkable. But that attitude, which is nearly universal in motorsports, reflects the same kind of guts that it takes to race in the first place.

Other areas of the automotive industry feel a deep cut when the economy tightens. Not this one. If we scale back at all, the cuts aren't nearly as dramatic as they are elsewhere.

So oval racers, like always, held up their end of the bargain. It's clear that if we can go racing, we will go racing. You deserve the automotive industry's praise, not to mention a reward in the form of innovative, low-cost parts and tools, like they've been delivering to us for years.

Our entire country needs the determined attitude of a racer, especially on Wall Street, where so much of the future is traded on speculation. How many times have we hear, "The market plunged today on fears..."?

The racer's attitude is that the market is going to do what it's going to do. Either way we go racing. That is one reason that racers, from strictly stock to Sprint Cup, live a life that so many envy. Real racers avoid the trap that captures too many people: The mistaken belief that those living the life they covet have somehow been awarded it, stumbled into it, or were born into it. (Okay, forget that last one.)

But the general population resigns itself to a lifetime of watching others go for the gusto while they go for the remote. Racers know there's no reason not to live a life that most dream of living.

But you need determination to make it happen because success won't be apparent overnight. You may not consider a big wreck that cleaned off the right front and the subsequent late nights a success. And on Monday morning you may look at a pushrod that broke when you over-revved the motor because of a bump on a restart that lifted your rear tires as a nuisance. But one day you'll look at it all as a tremendous achievement. You went racing. When the economy struggled, you went racing. When the season wasn't what you hoped for, you went racing. No matter what, you went racing. Until your fortunes turned around.

Someday you'll look back. You'll flip through photos of different cars, different paint jobs, different divisions, and different outcomes. Wrecked cars and winning cars. And you'll have no idea what the price of gas was, or whether Wall Street plunged or soared that week. What you will know, however, is that you raced. And lived a life that so many envy.