General News
10 March, 2023
Letter to the Editor - Speedway days
Let’s step back in time for a moment, back in simpler times of speedway when your favourite driver was your dad or mum or the neighbour up the street. My first contact with speedway was many years ago, as a pre-teen lad, when my dad took me to...
Let’s step back in time for a moment, back in simpler times of speedway when your favourite driver was your dad or mum or the neighbour up the street.
My first contact with speedway was many years ago, as a pre-teen lad, when my dad took me to a country track where almost all the field was made up of neighbours.
Friends from my hometown with station wagons, picnic lunches and a thermos cheered on dad or mum or the family friend.
In the years since, the evolution of the speedway supporter and the fan experience has changed from a time where photographers would sell their photos the weekend after from the back of a car’ and the autograph book was the choice of the fan - although getting dad’s autograph probably wasn’t a real highlight.
With inter-club racing and travel to other tracks came the more fervent support of your club hot shoe and groups of ‘out of towners’ voicing their support for the local hero.
Sometimes the clubs from the bush would head for the big smoke for the ‘big shows’ and someone might have gone to the local screen printer and made up some team shirts.
With the costs involved in travel and keeping up with the Jones’ as far as technology and vehicle builds go, the cost of racing had gotten away from the everyday family, and more drivers became spectators or left the sport entirely.
Fast forward to today and the supporter is also struggling with the costs.
The old $5 screen-printed t-shirt has given way to the $75 sublimated shirt and $40 hat to support someone else’s dad, mum or relative.
While I’m not saying that support has dropped completely off, what I have noticed is the support tends to centre around the ‘Big Show’ - the winged sprintcars, super sedans, modified sedans and, in a smaller way, street stocks, which I see as still a part of the grass roots of speedway.
As both a member of the media and as a competitor, I tend to stay away from the big tracks and stay with smaller shows as a way to help support more of the grass roots of our sport.
At a recent show in regional South Australia, I was on the infield photographing a junior division of F500’s when I saw, what I consider, the epitome of grass roots support.
Family members of drivers used what they had to show their support, from the public spectator area, with a large piece of cardboard and a black felt pen. All the while standing and cheering the young driver throughout the day.
Is there still a place for grass roots speedway in this day and age?
I certainly think so, and hope that clubs can still keep shows on their schedules even though the returns at the front gate may be lower and, hopefully, don’t have to rely on back gate money to survive.
For the sake of our grass roots fans.
Mark Cowin