Weather, scheduling blamed for attendance woes, loss of Cup races at Atlanta, California

The weather. The date. Other entertainment and leisure options.

Those are some of the reasons why Auto Club Speedway in California and Atlanta Motor Speedway struggled to sell tickets and why their tracks lost a Sprint Cup race, the operators of those tracks say. Both tracks will host just one Sprint Cup race instead of two in 2011.

International Speedway Corp. realigned a race from Auto Club to Kansas Speedway while Speedway Motorsports Inc. realigned a date from Atlanta to Kentucky. Atlanta lost its March date while Auto Club Speedway lost its Chase date in October while its February race will move to March.

“March is not a favorable period of time,” SMI Chairman Bruton Smith said Tuesday about his former Atlanta date. “Everything we do is an outdoor sport, so you’re subjecting everything you do to the elements. And the elements down there that was an enemy of ours was rain, rain and rain.

“March never did work out very well ever. I remember going down there four times for the same race. March is not a good time for Atlanta for an outdoor event.”

The weather also was a factor in Auto Club Speedway’s poor attendance, track president Gillian Zucker said Tuesday. She saw a recent February race at her track postponed because of rain and also saw incredible heat plague another event when it had the Labor Day weekend date.

“Enough cannot be said about how important a good weather window is in Southern California,” Zucker said. “The vast majority of the time it is really nice here. So when it’s not, you just don’t want to go outside and sit in the cold and the rain.

“When you talk about Southern California that’s known internationally for having some of the best weather in the world, the fact that this race has had cold weather, rain and a rainout for the past three years is devastating to it and the fans.”

In some ways, it’s hard to believe that Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest media market, and Atlanta, the eighth-largest, both lost Cup dates. Auto Club Speedway drew 72,000 for its race in February and Atlanta drew 85,000 in March, according to NASCAR estimates. Since those estimates include infield attendance, there were at least an estimated 20,000 empty seats at each venue.

Atlanta, which got the Labor Day weekend from California in 2009, used to be one of the top television markets for NASCAR but has dwindled in recent years.

“We’re not leaving the area,” NASCAR Senior Vice President of Racing Operations Steve O’Donnell said. “Labor Day is a big event. We can really target everything towards the Labor Day event. That’s important to us.

“We’re still in Atlanta. If you can take one race and go to Kentucky and sell out there, it’s a better schedule.”

That’s why Smith moved a date to Kentucky even though he said he still believes in the Atlanta market. Zucker said she believes that having a track an hour from Los Angeles still can attract a NASCAR fan base.

Zucker said having the February date right after the Daytona 500 reduced the interest of sponsors in the first California race each season.

“Coming off of Daytona is a very difficult date from the perspective of corporate support,” she said. “The vast majority of sponsors entertain in Daytona for the Daytona 500 and the next week, they typically don’t travel across the country and entertain again.

“The benefit here is that you’re better able to tap into a corporate base at the end of March.”

Zucker is optimistic that Auto Club Speedway could have two races again in the future. She said not having to compete with the Academy Awards in Hollywood in February also will help increase exposure for the Cup race.

“This is the 2011 NASCAR racing schedule,” she said Tuesday after it was announced her track would lose a Cup race. “There’s nothing to say that two races won’t be back here in the future if you think about all the things that worked against the racing here.

“There are just general market things that are never going to go away. There happen to be a million other options for people in Southern California. It is a vast and extremely expensive marketplace. Even spending three or four times as much as other facilities spend, there is no way to blanket the media in terms of awareness. … This market could support two races during good weather windows and great scheduling.”

For now, ISC will focus on increasing the number of racing series that compete at the track – Zucker mentioned the Indy Racing League, ARCA, Camping World Truck Series and Grand-Am as potential events – and building the one Cup event there.

“We have shifted that [Cup event] into a very good weather window,” said ISC Chief Executive Officer Lesa France Kennedy, who also is a NASCAR Executive Vice President. “It is closer to the traditional date that we had at the Auto Club Speedway, and we feel like we can really put a lot of effort and energy into that event.

“It was weighed carefully, along with everything that is happening at all of our ISC tracks. It was a good decision.”

Roger Penske, whose company owned Auto Club Speedway before selling that and other tracks to ISC in 1999, said the Southern California market might just be a one-race market.

“You’re competing with so many different things in California,” Penske said. “When you load up Phoenix, Las Vegas and California all at the same time, week after week, you might lose some of that fan base.

“… It is a great market. Maybe because of the times that we’re having from the standpoint of economics, it makes more sense to have one big event and then go forward in the future.”

Jimmie Johnson, a California native, agreed.

“Growing up out there, it was very tough to get much NASCAR or [be] exposed to NASCAR racing, and this will hurt that for the fan base out there,” Johnson said. “But at the end of the day, we need our grandstands full of people.”

“… I have friends that I grew up with that were season-ticket holders at California Speedway and when there was one date, there was a need and an urgency to go. When they had the second date, life makes things busy and you don’t have as much time and the spring event would come along and it would be on the calendar so they would say, ‘We’ll go to the fall race.’ The fall race would come along and something will be on the calendar again that they needed to do and, ‘Well, we’ll go to the spring race.’”