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Unfortunately, on a forum like this, we are bound to be surrounded by like-minded (in some respects!) motor-sport enthusiasts, but unfortunately, in general terms, I think that 'enthusiasts' are drastically reducing in numbers, so there are less people around to 'feed' the sport.
I’m in my sixties now, but when I was a youngster, I was fanatical about cars and subsequently became interested in motor-sport, of all kinds, with any number and combination of wheels, and along with many like-minded mates have travelled the country (and further) to enjoy watching our passion, be it club racing at Mallory Park, a Grand Prix, night rally, motorcycles or whatever. I have raced myself, helped mates with their race cars & bikes and many years ago even left my job in engineering to join a racing team.
Alongside all of this we were also modifying/tuning our road cars/bike (and driving/riding them way too fast on the road!) as part of our ‘enthusiasm’, being petrol-heads.
From what I’ve seen, the sort of enthusiasm we had doesn’t seem so wide-spread nowadays, not so many young lads (and lasses) appear to be petrol-heads nowadays so I presume (apart from the major meetings) the circuits don’t get the volume of spectators that there used to be, so less gate receipts>
Another factor in the decline of that is that we all appear to be so much busier now than we were when I was a youth. Everybody’s spare time seems to be taken up with more pastimes, reducing the possibilities of a casual spectator going to a circuit at the weekend and becoming hooked on the sport we all love. (I remember when Sunday shopping only consisted of buying a paper, some sweets and ciggies, motor-racing didn’t have to compete with the lure of shopping centres!)
Finally, we come back to the problem of poorly supported race series, not providing a spectacle, to entertain spectators. Maybe there are too many vested interests with different clubs wanting to keep their own series to themselves (I am guessing here, I honestly don’t know), there certainly appears to be a huge variety of different series now than they were and I agree, that combining races would make things better for the (few) spectators, and really for the competitors, as they should have a better chance of finding someone else to compete against in a full grid (if the combined races are well matched) than they would with only 5 cars.
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