Car Events Struggle to Fill Seats

By Johnny McDonald

Motor-sports productions can be complicated affairs. Do you service the competitors or the fans? Above all, the life’s blood is a generous sponsor.

Two cases in point are the recent Champion Off-Road races on Otay Mesa Ranch and the Coronado Classic. The first dealt with something new, the other with nostalgia.

Neither event seemed to set the world afire. Despite an expensive advertising campaign, CORR organizer Jim Baldwin drew less than half the spectators needed to fill the 29,000-seat grandstand acquired from the Long Beach Grand Prix Association.

Still, the event had a solid foundation, with Nissan and Lucas Oil as chief sponsors.

Not so with Classics’ Steve Earle, who had to set his sights lower because of the major sponsorship loss of Chrysler and support from the Holiday Bowl.

The Speed Festival is hosted by the Navy Region Southwest and the Morale, Welfare and Recreation Program. A percentage of the gate receipts goes to the military.

Earle acknowledged that the event likely would not return without major sponsorship, and prospects remain dim unless local businesses again can carry some of the promotional load.

In Baldwin’s case, the developer believed San Diegans would take to his version of motor sports as they did in the Midwest, particularly because this area pioneered off-road racing.

Unlike Earle, Baldwin must find new land on which the buggy and truck drivers can play. He plans to subdivide the rest of the barley field he used and pointed to a hill on the horizon for his next adventure.

In each case, the promoter is satisfying the need for speed. Baldwin deals with the present and Earle the past, with veteran sports cars of a bygone era.

Past San Diego County auto-race productions have suffered a variety of disappointments.

The Del Mar sports car races, under the guidance of Long Beach Grand Prix impresario Christopher Pook, drew respectable crowds in the 1980s, but the sanctioning International Motor Sports Association could not guarantee quality cars. The races were dropped.

The Mickey Thompson Entertainment Group discontinued its closed-course stadium off-road series, which included Qualcomm, when entries tailed off and Toyota pulled its trucks.

It was a foregone conclusion that racing would end at Cajon Speedway as attendance lagged from the formidable years of the 1970s and 80s.

Longtime promoter Earle Brucker said he probably would have closed long ago but he felt obligated to the drivers. In so doing, Cajon opened its programs to affordable cars such as Pony, Bomber and Street Stocks.

Historically, the most successful promoters were Tom Haynes and Frank Guthrie, who fell into a gold mine with old 24,000-seat Balboa Stadium. Night after night, fans would fill the huge horseshoe.

Except for the war years, the two men profited until 1961, when racing was displaced by the Chargers.

There are still fans who like to sit in on the excitement, but more and more prefer to watch weekend races on television.

As for the drivers, they’re still willing to pay the entry fee that generates the money to be won.