(Article from Orlando Sentinel Sports Section  August 13, 2010 from the Front Page)

by Steven Cole Smith

 BITHLO — Rex Hollinger began racing at Orlando Speed World in 1994. As his black number 85 ministock paused on the track’s front straightaway before his feature race Friday night, Hollinger — like every racer — glanced up into the grandstands.

And like every racer at Orlando Speed World these last few years, he saw that the grandstands were almost empty. Less than 200 fans were scattered around a facility that could hold 20 times that.

“It makes me sad,” Hollinger said. “It’s like visiting a sick relative who keeps getting sicker. You wince. And then you wish they could get better.”

OSW was built in 1972 here on the far east edge of the Orlando metroplex, on Highway 50, a long way then and now from large residential areas. On one side of the paved, three-eighths-mile banked oval track is the Speed World dragstrip, which races three times a week and continues to draw a healthy crowd. On the other side is a mud bog used for truck races, and next to that is a motocross track for dirt bikes.

But the centerpiece is the OSW oval track, where racers like Hollinger, of Titusville, have seen the numbers decline on both sides of the track — in the fans in the grandstands, and in the number of race cars in the pits.

In happier times, “You’d have to fight for a place in the pits to park your truck and trailer. If you didn’t get here early enough, you’d have to park back in the woods. We’d typically have at least a hundred race cars.”

Friday night there were 30, and several weeks ago, the last time OSW ran before a few rainouts, there were 25 race cars. With last Friday’s show including seven different classes of cars, there were some thin races — one car in the Bandolero feature, two in the modified feature. There were four Legends cars, four ministocks, five strictly stocks.

So what’s wrong? The economy? “Sure, that’s a part of it,” Hollinger said, but it doesn’t explain why Ocala Speedway’s Friday night show drew 68 cars in just four classes. Last Saturday, Auburndale Speedway had 74 cars. Several Saturdays ago, East Bay Raceway Park near Tampa, in the last race before a series of rainouts, had 77 cars. All those tracks, as well as several others in Central Florida, typically draw far more spectators than OSW.

Theories as to what is wrong with OSW, and how to fix it, abound on local racing websites like Karnac.com and Floridaflagstand.com. Suggestions include the problems associated with racing on Friday — and getting to the track in rush-hour traffic — instead of Saturday. OWS has too many classes of cars.

Or too few. Not enough purse money. A front gate admission price ($10) and pit passes ($25) that are too expensive. Not enough promotion and advertising. The fact that it is a paved track, and would do better as a dirt track. Technical inspection is unfair, and the inspectors have their “favorites.” Rules are enforced unevenly.

Some of those suggestions — in fact, most of them — simply aren’t correct.

The admission and pit pass prices, for instance, are either on par with other tracks, or cheaper. And yes, getting to the track on Friday can be a hassle for both fans and racers, but Ocala Speedway makes it work.

Rusty Marcus was the promoter for Orlando Speed World until two years ago, when he left to take a similar job at a larger Louisiana speedway. “Speed World can be saved,” Marcus says, “and in my opinion, it will survive. The economy is tough — everyone is having to think twice about spending money.

It isn’t easy to go out there and destroy a $60,000 car and be back the next week like nothing ever happened.”

For that reason, Marcus thinks lower-cost classes — like strictly stock, where $2,000 will get you a competitive race car — may be the key to pumping up ailing tracks. “You have to remember the little guys. Everyone gets so impressed with the ‘big money’ racing. The problem with the big money is that it gets bored easily and moves on.” Indeed, the last race at East Bay drew 30 entries for the “four cylinder bomber” class, a true entry-level class of four-cylinder cars that are closer to street cars than race cars.

Dave Westerman spent years at Orlando Speed World, most recently as the announcer, a job he now holds at Auburndale Speedway. But it is not unusual to see Westerman at OSW, as a fan, which he has been for more than 40 years. “The only way the track will be able to survive is under new management that can come up with a plan to deal with the current state of the economy. Many who race there, or did in the past, are either out of work or their business is struggling, meaning less money for what is essentially a hobby. Speed World has always drawn a large percentage of drivers and fans from Brevard County and we know the state of the economy there, and it’s only going to get worse.

The current management has dug such a deep hole for themselves that it will be impossible for them to crawl out of it. A fresh start with a long-term plan to survive at first, then move forward, is what the track needs.”

It could happen. Track owner Robert Hart, a veterinarian by trade, believes that OSW and another track he owns, New Smyrna Speedway, are essentially victims of the up-and-down cycle that affects all tracks. “Fortunately, the tracks are a hobby for me, too. They are not my life support system,” Hart says. “If they were, I’d be in trouble.” He suspects that once the economy turns around, his tracks will, too.

“One thing you have to say about Robert Hart,” said Marcus, Hart’s former employee, “is that he keeps his tracks open, good times or bad.”

Even so, Hart said he has several parties interested in leasing OSW from him, and taking over the management and promotion. He said he has also had offers to sell the property, but in this down market, none of those offers matches what he thinks the property is worth. “I can tell you this — rumors that the track is about to close are not true. But I know things can improve.”

Helpful are the semiannual “Crash-A-Rama” shows, an event Hart said he invented that “is keeping the doors open at a lot of race tracks across the country now.” A Crash-A-Rama is essentially a stunt show, with figure-8 bus races, demolition derbies, professional stuntmen and stuntwomen, and wacky events like the “trailer races,” which has vehicles racing on the speedway towing junk boats on trailers. At $20 admission rain or shine, Crash-A-Rama, usually held in June and November, can draw 6,000 people.

Meanwhile, with a couple of hundred fans in the stands, and 30 race cars in the pits, you have to wonder how long Speed World’s Friday night show can survive.

“Coming here is a regular part of my life,” said racer Hollinger. “I’ve lost tracks where I’ve raced before, like Hialeah in South Florida,” which was sold and became a shopping center. “And I don’t want to lose another one