ASCAR, What Do You Think?

Aussie 05 · 5 Jun 2002, 21:30 (Ref:305766)

It's still early days but i think ASCAR is on the up. I think over the years it's just going to go from strength to strength.

To make a good series you need nice looking cars and above all competitive drivers. The cars don't look bad, room for improvement and the drivers, i was shocked by how many top quality drivers switched to the series. It's tough times and the drivers just wanna race so i suppose ASCAR was the cheapest and best option. I think the series may have been in the right place at the right time and it looks as if it will really benefit from all these top drivers.

If i had a team i would be looking at tthe series, get in early and set up shop so by the time the series because really popular you are already a dominant force.

There was also a lack of Oval racing in Europe so ASCAR should fill this slot. What they wanna do in my opinion is add 3 road courses as there's about that many in Nascar, extend more through-out Europe if possible and combine the ASCAR weekend with the new to arrive EuroLights Championship, then they could provide a full oval weekend package.

Also they should have bought the rights to the Nascar name and called it Nascar: Euro Series/Cup to go with Winston and Busch.

Ellie · 6 Jun 2002, 15:57 (Ref:306507)

I watched ASCAR for the first time this weekend, it was from Germany and I have got to say that I really enjoyed it.

Going 5 wide into that first coner was nail bitting stuff. I will be watching it again very soon.

Aussie 05 · 6 Jun 2002, 17:06 (Ref:306549)

Yeah was a shame about the non-existant crowd though. Was good anyway though.

All the drivers eemed really ot under the collar or something as they all seemed really agro in the post race talks, specially Plato was who was expecting to get his head punched in after he ran that guy off the circuit. If i was the go alongside i would have just held my line and turned Plato round, then he would have learned his lesson.

Speedworx · 6 Jun 2002, 20:04 (Ref:306682)

Sadly the Sunday and probably the more attended day was rained out in Germany.

Rockingham was well attended. Also it was the first time in Germany for the ASCAR series.

Personally, I love the series and I can't wait to go watch it this weekend.

Aussie 05 · 7 Jun 2002, 17:33 (Ref:307594)

Oh really i didn't know that.

theracegypsy · 7 Jun 2002, 21:27 (Ref:307765)

Yea, it's got the makings......
By the way 5 wide into turn 1 is wrong, it was definately 6 wide, I know , I was the course observer on turn 1 that weekend, shame about the weather on sunday.

MrTTraces · 8 Jun 2002, 16:21 (Ref:308137)

not been to a ASCAR race yet to give my judgement however after tomoorow i will

MrTTraces · 9 Jun 2002, 19:18 (Ref:308765)

my above post should have read not been to an ascar race this yr.

sadly it was rained off but the support races were entertaining plus the fact that they got the support races to have an extra non championship race each to fill the ascar gap was good to.

Aussie 05 · 10 Jun 2002, 19:22 (Ref:309917)

Oh that was good of them.

garry · 13 Jun 2002, 16:58 (Ref:312814)

I think that ASCAR looks good and seems to offer the drivers a very good package. However, there must be reasons that long oval racing has not taken off in the past and 1 of those must be that it is not suited to our type of climate. I do not see how a series can be run successfully if a race has to be cancelled due to rain. If ( as is possible ) over half the races get cancelled due to the wheather the support for it will dindle as there is no way that all the races can be rescheduled. Plus soon the spectators will not bother to turn up just in case and sponsors will get fed up having to reorganise hospitality etc.

Aussie 05 · 13 Jun 2002, 17:37 (Ref:312853)

Yeah Garry thats quite a good point. Well hopefully we'll have a long dry summer, yeah like thats ever going to happen. : )

Rambo · 14 Jun 2002, 14:20 (Ref:313573)

Brooklands used to be very popular before the war. It's just a case of making it a fun day out for the family. In the US, motor racing, baseball, American football - are all popular with families and women as much as men. If we could get ASCAR to be as much of a spectacle as NASCAR (which was supposed to be the fastest growing sport in the US - and if you see those crowds you can believe it!) then I don't see why ASCAR can't be popular. Bikes are popular (120,000 at Brands - more than the Brit F1 GP) because of the action. Ovals should be more action packed than circuit-racing, but won't be with a sparse field. Half the reason I suggested a short-oval in another thread.

Speedworx · 14 Jun 2002, 17:43 (Ref:313711)

I enjoyed the whole weekend, even if the Sunday races were rained off.

Darren Turner winning the Saturday race was great and spending the Sunday in the Team West-Tec pits.

Aussie 05 · 14 Jun 2002, 17:47 (Ref:313715)

When i heard they were building an oval i was happy and thought it would be cool to see a CART race there but why the hell did they do a 4 cornered, lowley banked, slow oval. It doesn't promote as close racing as the super speedways as you can't go like 2 wide through the turn, you can but it's harder than on a Super Speedway and also they have to coming off the throttle for some of the turns (they may also down shift but i'm not totally sure on that) it was a bit of a poor oval i thought. I assume they did it so it could be used as a race track too, but you could have still built a Super Speedway and used only a part of the start/finish straight, which is all they use now anyway.

Also what was the point of having 2 identical oval in Europe?

If they really wanted to show the Brits oval racing they should have built a big Super Speedway like Texas, Talledaga or California.

Speedworx · 14 Jun 2002, 17:58 (Ref:313729)

OMG, how stupid are u!!!!!

Rockingham and Eurospeedway are completely different. Eurospeedway is much faster and have 3 corners. Rockingham is a different length and is slower and more technical.

Both were built for CART, which can't run on many super speedways, because there is too much banking. They are perfect the way they are.

Aussie 05 · 14 Jun 2002, 20:45 (Ref:313893)

Quote:

Originally posted by hakkiman
OMG, how stupid are u!!!!!

Rockingham and Eurospeedway are completely different. Eurospeedway is much faster and have 3 corners. Rockingham is a different length and is slower and more technical.

Both were built for CART, which can't run on many super speedways, because there is too much banking. They are perfect the way they are.

Oi i hope your just messing around about that first comment, if not f*ck you - how dare you talk to me like that. I didn't come here to get abused!

As for the being the same i take back my comment i was under the impression they were identical. I was told they were exactly the same.

As for them being built for CART, well i don't see why they can't build a Super Speedway as IRL races at texas and CART races at California Speedway which are all fairly steeply banked.

Speedworx · 14 Jun 2002, 20:51 (Ref:313899)

I was joking with my first comment.

Fontana is the only super speedway that CART runs on as far as I know. Maybe if oval racing takes off in Europe, they will build a super speedway.

Remember, tracks like Texas are not suitable for CART.

Aussie 05 · 14 Jun 2002, 20:59 (Ref:313906)

Yeah but they are suitable for IRL, so i don't see what the big difference is.

I don't know, was just a bit disappointed when i saw Rockingham.

Speedworx · 15 Jun 2002, 15:37 (Ref:314405)

Why were u dissapointed?

Jordi · 16 Jun 2002, 01:30 (Ref:314691)

The difference between tracks being suitable or not is that the IRL cars are about 15-20 miles slower than the CART cars, and the CART cars, doing 235+ at Texas with 24 degrees of banking, uh, they got incredible G-force loads and the drivers were about to pass out after 20 laps.

Aussie 05 · 16 Jun 2002, 08:55 (Ref:314822)

Oh. I just wanted to see a high speed Super Speedway.

TimD · 18 Jun 2002, 21:39 (Ref:316533)

Quote:

Originally posted by Rambo
Brooklands used to be very popular before the war.

Rambo, you're quite right. The difference between then and now is that Brooklands was a concrete banking, and they raced in all but the wettest weather.

Yep - oval racing in the rain.

I've done some checking, and I think there were five scheduled meetings in the 28 seasons of racing there, which had to be abandoned due to abnormally adverse weather. In those events, the race would be rescheduled for later in the week. I concede that this would not be an option in the present day....!

SJ Spode · 20 Jun 2002, 16:12 (Ref:317699)

Bad news for EuroSpeedway. According to Autosport it's applied for bankrupcy to its local court, having racked up heavy losses since it opened. The regional gov't is helping look for potential buyers.

Imagine the debt if it had been a Super Speedway...

Rambo · 27 Jun 2002, 16:15 (Ref:322935)

Quote:

Originally posted by Jordi
The difference between tracks being suitable or not is that the IRL cars are about 15-20 miles slower than the CART cars, and the CART cars, doing 235+ at Texas with 24 degrees of banking, uh, they got incredible G-force loads and the drivers were about to pass out after 20 laps.

High-banked superspeedways are just too fast. You obviously couldn't run at Daytona or Talladega with Champcars. Even NASCARS are restricted. Texas is ridiculously fast, as are other tracks built to virtually the same specs - and look at the number of crashes there've been at Texas. Charlotte is basically the same layout, and the IRL dumped that after the crowd fatalities. Atlanta is even faster and you couldn't go there either with CART.

Michigan and California have much lower banking, but even they were getting so fast CART spent years trying to work out the best way of slowing the cars down.

There's no point in building a high-banked track over here as the only cars that would use it would be ASCAR - and then I don't know - they were designed as short-track cars over in the US, and I don't know if they'd get approval for running on a track that fast, to be honest.

I love that kind of racing too - but you have to be practical and realistic.

Reido Rules · 27 Jun 2002, 22:42 (Ref:323153)

Superspeedways cost a lot!!! and that was the main reason behind not building one.

Money is a restriction and I would think that it would be hard to find a backer that would give so many millions for a prodject that wouldn't be too successful in the UK and Europe.

Superspeedways need large grids otherwise the series looks stupid, and there is no real draft to create mass overtaking.

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