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Wednesday, June 27
IRL stages first race in NASCAR hotbed
Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va.-- The sleek Indy Racing League cars don't
look, sound or run like the NASCAR sedans that draw fans in huge
numbers all over the South.
But this weekend, Richmond International Raceway will find out
if open-wheel racing can generate interest in this corner of stock
car country. It is struggling to establish itself in Atlanta, and
no longer races in Charlotte.
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The fans will see a lot of close side-by-side racing. Having these cars bump is not something we like to do, but with how close the racing will be here, you may see some of that. ” |
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— Hornish |
Track officials won't say how many fans have taken advantage of
low-cost tickets to Saturday night's SunTrust Indy Challenge, the
inaugural Indy-car race on the three-quarter-mile oval.
But they hope to draw 50,000-60,000 fans to the 100,000-seat
facility -- about the same number that attend a NASCAR Busch series
event. They also have priced tickets at a high of $35, about half
what fans pay to attend Winston Cup races at the track.
"The key for us is let's get a number and then grow it from
year to year," said Doug Fritz, the track's general manager. "We
just want to expose the product."
Fritz is hoping the adage that racing fans are racing fans
proves true, but he also knows that Indy-car competition is not at
all like the banging and bumping of stock cars, almost as much a
staple of Southern culture as tobacco and Confederate lore.
Speed, more than anything, separates Indy cars from stock cars.
The IRL cars travel as much as 40 mph faster than Winston Cup cars
here, and the result of contact is usually severe.
"If we touch each other, we both go to the wall," said driver
Airton Dare.
Unlike stock cars, which return and run banged up -- sometimes
with missing fenders or hoods -- Indy cars generally are finished
after contact.
Dare and others who tested in Richmond are eager to race on the
d-shaped oval, often described as a short track with a
superspeedway feel. It will be the shortest track on which IRL has
raced in its six years.
Dare, the Rookie of the Year in 2000, took an immediate liking
to the track the first time he ran on it in testing last week.
"I don't want the other guys from the other tracks to be mad at
me, but I think it is the best track I've been to so far, and the
most fun track for sure," he said. "The mile-and-a-half tracks
that we run, you've got to be real gentle with the steering wheel,
be really nice and concentrate, and it's a lot easier."
On the shorter Richmond surface, a driver is busy all the time,
Dare said.
"You dive into the corner, get out of the throttle, try to
bring the front of the car in, you've got some bumps and then you
oversteer and come back to the throttle again," he said. "It's
going to be a lot of fun."
Ever since Buzz Calkins became one of the first series regulars
to test here in March, more than a dozen more have run laps on the
track. Most are uncertain how the series will adapt to a NASCAR
bullring.
"I think there will be a lot of attrition, honestly," Calkins
said. "It's going to be tricky. I think it's going to be a
survival race for sure."
How to survive is another matter. With up to 22 cars on the
track making laps at 165 mph, mirrors on both sides will get plenty
of use. But Dare thinks the key for him will be running hard.
"You have to be a lot more aggressive, and your concentration
has to be a lot more than the other places just because everything
happens so fast around you," he said. "The reaction has to be
quicker."
And that, IRL points leader Sam Hornish Jr. said, might make the
first race in Richmond more like a NASCAR event than anyone has
imagined.
"The fans will see a lot of close side-by-side racing," he
said. "Having these cars bump is not something we like to do, but
with how close the racing will be here, you may see some of that."
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