Is motorsports in trouble at it's most accessible level?

We all thought it was going to be the electric car, death of the manual transmission, the economy, autonomous vehicles or those god damn millennials who won't get off my lawn that would eventually kill off motorsport in North America. However, sales numbers suggest a larger concern to the sustainability of autocross, the gateway into competition for most HPDE and competitive racers, the CUV. In 2018 only 5.3 million new cars were purchased, the fewest since 1958. More and more mall crawlers that are too tall to take part in driving competition are being sold. This is a problem. It'll mean fewer cheaper cars to build in 5-10 years, limited parts availability, lower entry numbers and higher cost per a participant in the hobby that we enjoy. 

Reduced new car sales is a drop in the bucket of trouble autocross is facing.

Rapid extinction of available venues is Number One on the hit parade, followed closely by increasing insurance costs.

Yeah, crossovers are probably last on my list of threats.  I'm a junior grumpy old man but when I was a whippersnapper it was fwd 4 cylinders that were going to kill it, so color me skeptical that this is the time that car preference is going to kill autocross.

I live in a city of over three million people. On a busy weekend 160 of them show up to autocross. I don't think car numbers are the issue. 

A lot of cars out there aren't particularly good for motorsports anyway - and if CUVs are all that's available, somebody will figure out how to race them.

The loss of venue issue is front and center for us here in central Florida with the loss of Brooksville.

Like echoed above, it will be cost and availability that kill it. It is now working out to be a full day with an actual cost of $40+, not including gas, tires, brakes, etc. The opportunity cost is often over $200, again not including gas, tires, brakes, etc. And I have to drive about an hour--and the venues are getting more and more expensive, and/or farther away. 

If you want to have hope, look to go-karting. I can get to 3 indoor "real" go kart tracks within an hours drive--one of them is only 10 minutes away. I think 1 of these places was around 15 years ago, and only 2 of them 10 years ago. 

Meanwhile, in my oddball region, attendance is up every year from when I started, and we are turning down venues asking us to come run there because we already have a handful of really good sites. 

Thankfully, the loss of retail shopping centers will provide ample opportunities for additional new sites. 

NickD said:

Meanwhile, in my oddball region, attendance is up every year from when I started, and we are turning down venues asking us to come run there because we already have a handful of really good sites. 

Here's my perspective, probably not bringing much useful to the conversation, but I'll throw it up here.

Just in your region, as well as the rest of New York State, I used to race horses at Vernon Downs, the state fair at Syracuse, Buffalo, Batavia, Saratoga, Monticello, Goshen, Yonkers, and Roosevelt raceway in Westbury Long island.

I worked on a total of 50 harness tracks. This loss of venue situation really has me spooked. It's one of the main reasons that horse racing is dying.

one difference with horse racing compared to autocross is that the loss of venues is all secondary to the drop in attendance. Is autocross remaining popular? I know that as far as the FAST club that raced very frequently at Brooksville, I always had to register early to get a spot. They would frequently have two events a month as a minimum. Popularity doesn't seem to be an issue.

Around here, the loss of suitable venue will kill it first.

We are down to basically one site in our region and it's not a good venue. Our best venue is gone and being turned into condos. The wife is going to speak to a airport today about running out there.

Local regulations about parking lot design killed the large expanses of asphalt that used to be so common. Modern parking lots are now tree and flower bed infested and unusable for autocross. 

The SCCA region I just moved away from has had to cobble together their autocross program - which is/used to be a lot more popular than the track program after losing access to a local-ish track and now needing to drive 4-5h to Thunderhill - for the last couple of years. They kinda sorta managed to put something together for last year and it looks like they've managed to get more regular access to a closer site this year, but from what I heard from friends there the reoccuring issues are putting people off autocrossing.

Oh, and the area has a reputation for illegal street racing. I'm sure the lack of access to local-ish drag strips and autocross venues doesn't have anything to do with that, at all.

captdownshift said:

Thankfully, the loss of retail shopping centers will provide ample opportunities for additional new sites. 

Actually, it won't, for a variety of reasons:

1. There's almost no incentive in it for the property owner / manager.  For what, $2500 a day, they get all kinds of perceived liability and headaches and exposure to noise complaints, etc.  Any amount of rent that is even remotely affordable to a club is not even worth mentioning to a property management company owning dozens of big properties.
    
2. Most jurisdictions have development rules that make large, unbroken parking areas a thing of the past.  Modern zoning ordinances mean landscaping islands, stormwater management systems, etc. that break up most large lots into small areas of a couple hundred spots or fewer.

That is what we are facing.  Fortunately we have 2 sites, although one is only available on Tuesday evenings.  The other is a police training center, but it's an hour and a half from our home base.

1) we have been making headway with malls - something about big corporations needing a certain amount of community involvement blah blah blah, and SCCA Street Survival counts.  So they host 1x street survival and 2-3x autocrosses each year. 3 or 4 of those sites and you've got a season.  Thankfully around here we have a fair amount of older malls with open parking since like you said...

2) Modern parking lots really do suck, and the fact that no new autocrossable ones are being built any more is huge part of the issue.  Sites come and go, always have.  But no new ones are being built anymore, period.

In reply to captdownshift :

They tend to get knocked down and turned into other things within a year here.

BoxheadTim said:

Oh, and the area has a reputation for illegal street racing. I'm sure the lack of access to local-ish drag strips and autocross venues doesn't have anything to do with that, at all.

it really has nothing to do with it.  The people who are going to street race illegally are going to street race illegally.  It’s big around here too.  We also are smack in the middle (one hour or less) of 4 dragstrips(one of them being premier big time flagship track), 3 autocross groups, as well as Mid-Ohio and Nelson Ledges.  You can race pretty cheaply every day of the week if you wanted to.  Easy access to legal racing doesn’t stop suburbanite kids from trying to be Brian and Dom.  

While parking lots with trees etc aren't great for auto-x, I appreciate them a whole lot more than just a huge swath of concrete.

For me, I won't go do an auto-x where the site is so small that the course is ~40 seconds.  It's already a poor seat time/time spent equation and with a short course its even worse. 

Regarding autocross and parking lots, the only new lots I've seen come into use relatively recently around here are the ones at Metlife Stadium where NNJR and MSNE run. The rest are just a series of losses. The only reason we still have the lots we run on at FCSCC is because they are essentially the cap on a lot of toxic waste. The site is the old Army Engine plant in Stratford. Anyone that invests in the site for a new project has to contend with the EPA before they do any new construction and the site itself is not particularly attractive for commercial or residential development.

Check out our website if you are in or around Southern CT and want to autox btw!  http://www.fcscc.com

We lost our local lot in 2017 when the property it was on was sold.  Went from 8 events a year less than an hour away to 2. It was hard enough trying to get people into it when it was right down the street, now that it's almost 2 hours each way, nobody is interested at all for 6-10 minutes of seat time. 

Part of that is the SCCA though and the way the regions are divided up though. Even if we found a good spot nearby, because the region is "based"or whatever where it is we couldn't use it. At least that's how it was explained to me. 

On the flip side, with a lot of help and people from other regions, we have been able to get a rally cross program started, and that shows promise.

I agree loss of suitable venues is the biggest threat. 

Around here, all the best lots are under DOD jurisdiction and the local clubs don't have the horsepower to overcome the understandable risk aversion of the various commanding officers.

If SCCA could leverage Street Survival to partner with DOD, brass in DC might be able to give the local command something to hang their hat on.

There is no amount of money that will buy us access to the sites, but a MWR benefit to service members just might.

RevRico said:

 

Part of that is the SCCA though and the way the regions are divided up though. Even if we found a good spot nearby, because the region is "based"or whatever where it is we couldn't use it. At least that's how it was explained to me. 

This is the disgusting rotten underbelly of the SCCA. Good 'ol boy politics at it's worst. 

Good news about the wife's meeting with the airport. They have a unused runway that is 200' x 4700' they would love us to use for no or little money.

Bad news about that, it was last paved in 1946. It might be a little rough.

We will still end up using it because of desperation. 

Floating Doc said:

The loss of venue issue is front and center for us here in central Florida with the loss of Brooksville.

Oh boy, that really stinks.  Our available sites in Central Florida (as around the country) are really dwindling.  I've been searching for something around Melbourne for years and have come up empty.

docwyte said:

While parking lots with trees etc aren't great for auto-x, I appreciate them a whole lot more than just a huge swath of concrete.

For me, I won't go do an auto-x where the site is so small that the course is ~40 seconds.  It's already a poor seat time/time spent equation and with a short course its even worse. 

I've done about 18 events in the one year that I've been competing. I've never seen a FTD over 45 or 50 seconds, usually in the high 30 second range. 

I'm okay with that, I'll take what I can get.