The race in Kentucky Saturday night was great. There was a close battle for the lead at the end and the race was run before a sellout crowd. Sort of. The only problem was that not all of that sellout crowd managed to make it to the track in time for the race.
Track owner Bruton Smith used the tag line "get lucky in Kentucky" in the months that led up to the tracks first cup date. "Lucky" is a word that I'm sure the fans that made it to the race would use. Those that didn't would probably use words like "inexcusable", "horrid", "atrocious" and some other words that are not fit to print. Some may have even uttered the words that no track promoter wants to hear: Never coming back.
Unless you were getting Twitter updates throughout the race or were physically at the track, you had no idea how bad the traffic situation was. The best way to describe it would be to call it an unmitigated disaster. The track just was not prepared for the amount of people that showed up, despite knowing for months that the first cup event at Kentucky Speedway would kinda be a big deal and more than a few people might show up for it.
Cars were backed up on I-71 for hours before the race was even close to starting. A line of cars that seemed to stretch on for miles was shown on Nascar Raceday, the pre-race show on Speed Channel. The show started a 4:30 pm and the race didn't start for three more hours. But cars were still backed up on 71 for at least twenty miles. Cars were still being parked as late as 100 laps into the race.
Track officials thought that the parking at the track, along with off-site parking areas, would provide enough room for all 107,000 fans to park. But clearly, they didn't anticipate the number of cars that showed up. The track didn't even have enough port-o-pots for fans that did make it in to use. One fan reported on Twitter that there was one port-o-pot every ten rows of cars. With about four people in a car, I'll wait till I get home thanks.
But undoubtedly the most sickening thing about last night's debacle is that track officials eventually ran out of room to park cars. That means that fans had to be turned away. Fans who had sat in traffic for as long a six hours, intent on seeing the first race at Kentucky, who spent their hard earned money on tickets and fuel to get to the track, were told they couldn't get in because there was no room to park. All that time, money and patience had gone for naught. Absolutely inexcusable.
The first thing the track needs to do, if anything can be done to make it up to these frustrated, heartbroken fans, is apologize. Track GM Mark Simendinger released a statement acknowledging the problem and promising better accommodations next season. Nowhere in the statement were the words "apologize" or "sorry" and until those words show up, fans are not going to forgive Kentucky Speedway.
The track will also need to offer some incentives for fans who either showed up late or never made it at all. Something along the lines of if you showed up late, you get 25% off your ticket for next years event. If you never made it at all, you get an immediate, full refund of your ticket price from this season and a free ticket to next season's event as a sign of benevolence. The fans are what drive this sport and somewhere around 5,000 of them never got to see what they paid for Saturday night. That's 5,000 who probably won't come back to Kentucky, or worse, may be turned off Nascar for good unless the track makes up for their mistake.
And let's be clear. This is not Nascar's fault by any stretch. Parking cars and making accommodations is the sole responsibility of the speedway. I guess they didn't think to add parking when they built those new grandstands to seat more fans. Maybe they were expecting some of them to walk? Daytona and Talladega continually see crowds in excess of what Kentucky officials saw Saturday and they never have a problem with parking. But Bruton Smith is a master of manipulation and this will all be a ploy to get the state to build new roads to ease any future congestion. Exaggerating that between 15, 000 and 20, 000 fans got shut out coupled with the fact Smith got on Nascar Raceday and proclaimed "I-71 sucks!" while it had two open inbound lanes that went completely unutilized, is just the leverage he needs to get state assistance.
But he can't wait for the state. He can't wait till next weekend either for that matter. People in the sport like Smith, Darrell Waltrip, even some Nascar execs have said that the speedway will do all it can to help make the situation for next year much better. But talk is cheap. Fixing the problems that left fans unable to witness the electric atmosphere of the first cup race in the "Bluegrass State" needs to happen now. If those diehard fans that got shut out don't see actual, physical efforts towards improvements made right away, this may be the first and last cup race at the Kentucky Speedway.
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