Humpy Wheeler
On Tuesday, InsideDirtRacing.com posted the first of a two part series based on an interview conducted with legendary racing promoter H.A. ‘Humpy’ Wheeler on the television show Three Wide Life aired by Fox Sports Southeast. As was stated at the beginning of that piece, it would seem appropriate to consider the thoughts of the former director of the Charlotte Motor Speedway in the week leading up to NASCAR’s premier event, the Daytona 500. Since the subject of much of that interview revolved around the downturn of NASCAR’s attendance and TV ratings while short track racing does not appear to be suffering the same fate, a consideration of Wheeler’s statements seem fitting for a website dedicated to the coverage of dirt racing.
As Michael Moats and I have discussed here multiple times, a concern going forward for short track racing is that the age demographic among fans who frequent the venues that host that type of racing. However, Wheeler believes short track racing has an element of excitement that resembles that of other successful forms of entertainment.
“It’s like what Walt Disney told John Lasseter when he first got into the animated picture business,”Wheeler recounted. “Walt Disney said, ‘John, in the first 90 seconds of that cartoon you better have a villain or you’ve lost the kids… and the adults. You have that at the short tracks. People instinctively know that.”
But Wheeler points out that in today’s era it is more difficult to reach the audience that will someday serve as the primary race goers. Young people have so many entertainment options available to them now that racing has to find ways to grab and hold their attention in order to hook them on the sport.
“The problem that we’re confronted with today is reaching the mind of a twelve year old boy, that’s all you’ve got to do,” Wheeler insisted. “That’s the last time you’re really going to have pure unadulterated fun without hormones. You’re competing with Pixar films that cost millions to produce. When he comes out to a racetrack, it better be as good as what he’s been doing or you’re going to lose him. So, he sits there and sees those colorful cars and thinks this is neat. When they start racing, if there’s not a wreck or a pass, you’re starting to lose him because he’s not sure where the villain is. But if sees some bumping and grinding, he’ll figure the villain out.”
As has been stated here on this site numerous times, expecting a kid of that age to sit still and wait through two hours of hot laps and qualifying runs the risk of losing his attention forever.
“But you’ll lose him if there isn’t some action, and once you lose him, he’s not coming back,” Wheeler declared. “These kids are into instant fun and it better be fun that instant. They’re not going to wait around and read the dictionary to figure out what fun is. They know it.”
Wheeler then went on to address another issue confronting all forms of racing today and the problems associated with ever increasing costs to be involved in the sport.
“Racing has gotten too expensive,” Wheeler said. “That’s where these driver development things came along. You’ve got some kid whose uncle finances him and builds a great race car for him and he’s just got more money behind him than he knows what to do with.”
The promoter then cited an example from the past to make his point.
“I asked A.J Foyt a couple of years ago ‘What would you do if you were 20 years old down in Houston racing a sprint car or a midget?’,” Wheeler recalled. “He said, ‘I couldn’t race. I didn’t have any money.’ He was so talented that maybe he would have gotten through. That’s what you wonder about.”
So, can a driver make it to the highest levels of racing based on talent alone?
“I remember sitting there among 170,000 people at Charlotte looking down at the start of a race wondering, ‘Are these the best race drivers in the world down there?’ because the people paid a lot of money to see them. I’m telling you, it isn’t. There are really good drivers out in the corn fields of Iowa and the sagebrush in Texas that will never get an opportunity to move up because they don’t know how to do it, they don’t have the money to do it, and they may not have the looks or the diction to do it today because we’ve corporatized these drivers. We’ve got to get away from that. We’ve got to get real guys back in and you do it by reducing the cost of racing. And that’s something that we’re going after big time. If you reduce the cost of racing at the base level tracks, it will work its way up.”
It would seem from the comments outlined in the two pieces presented here on this site, one of the sport’s most knowledgeable and successful promoters believes that there is an opportunity for short track racing, which would certainly include dirt tracks, to increase its fan base as NASCAR experiences a decline. However, the challenge is for short tracks all over the country to make their product as entertaining as possible without straying too far from the roots of the sport.
This sport must find a way to capture the interest of those young people Wheeler spoke of and hook them before it is too late. Or else, there may not be a sport for much longer.
