iNSIDE SCOOP: Adding By Subtracting

Daytona International Speedway is the spiritual home of NASCAR, if not the place where all the teams are. That would be Charlotte and its close environs.

When the speedway makes changes, any kind of changes, it’s news, and this may be the biggest news in 50 years.

The renovation of the iconic speed plant will forever change the look of the place, and I imagine the feel as well, though it won’t be a huge difference on track.

The thing that jumped out at me in the reporting of ISC’s approval of the plan was the fact that Daytona International Speedway will lose about 50,000 seats to make it happen.

That’s not a bad thing, really. The Super Stretch stands on the backstretch will be torn down, and some of the front straight stands will be sacrificed to the building of suites. That is also not a bad thing.

When NASCAR went boom in the late 1980s and early 1990s, tracks responded by building more seats to handle the demand. ISC, SMI, independents…they all did it, and why wouldn’t they? If you can fill the stands at 100,000, and you have 150,000 requests, you can still increase your seating and make money.

Tracks like Rockingham and North Wilkesboro are no longer on the schedule because they were limited in seating capacity, and Darlington and Atlanta were both cut from two races a year to one.

The flip side of all that is, when demand starts to fall behind the capacity, you have seats that are unfilled and you’re not making the money you were. It’s the ebb and flow of business.

ISC, the entity formed by Big Bill France to finance the construction of Daytona and Talladega, is publicly traded. Its job, besides providing facilities, is to make money for shareholders in the form of dividends. If the capacity is more than the demand, then you’re not optimizing your facility.

That’s a bad thing.

Daytona was, to be honest, due to be upgraded. The facilities are adequate for the events run, including Speedweeks, Bike Week, the Rolex 24 and the July 4 race, but for a track to make money, it has to earn all year round.

Charlotte Motor Speedway is active in some form or fashion for around 300 of 365 days. I know; I can hear the activity from my house.

From the drawings, you can tell that this is going to be a humdinger of a re-do, and that’s a good thing. Moving more people faster through the gates, to areas better designed to hold them is always a good thing.

I am kind of looking forward to the first time I see the new place in toto. Daytona is nearly as familiar to me as Indianapolis, and it is always a good thing to have something new to entice the fan base with.

Something tells me it will be a while before the stands will be added back in, but that could be a good thing for a while. Ebb and flow, ebb and flow..