This is the complete NASCAR Fiesta Mart 75 from Houston Motorsports park on 3-24-12.

NASCAR Modified Feature:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaQyob6c-rg

Damn them guys ran out of patience in that race

On that last lap, Paul White, running third, ran out of fuel and the rest of the field made like ping pong balls down the front straight!

Nick

Hopefully they got that out of their systems and Speedfest will be a little less eventful.

I thought it was good. The low liners got moved. Exciting race.

How does that make it exciting?

They will figure it out on their own, who they can block and who they cannot. Takes a few fenders to figure it out. Now that is exciting, watching them figure it out. Beats a train show.

I would much rather watch a guy try to figure out how to get around someone WITHOUT having to drive through them to do it. Now that is exciting!!! I'd be willing to bet that owners and drivers alike would agree with that being more exciting and less expensive.

probably, but fans enjoy it.

Maybe, but they enjoy a good hard run and a clean pass even more. What fans definitely don't enjoy is all the delays caused by the cautions.

Dont kid yourself, you know in the back of your mind what they like.

A true fan does NOT like to see cars driving through other cars. They want to watch "RACING". Yes a few like to go to the races to see the wrecks but they are not like most of the fans who like to watch racing. Anytime a "Yellow" comes out we all know it going to be a little later in getting home. And if its a major wreck we all know there is a good chance we wont see that car back next week (or longer). As the season goes on and this becomes a habit many cars will be torn up beyond repair or not as competitive as it once was. Then before you know it a few drivers will say "Enough" and decide not to race there anymore. We pay good money to watch races and the owners of the cars pay good money to build and race them for us. I'll stop now before I say something that will get me in trouble.

As a spectator, I enjoy the double-row restarts and the strategies caused by the cone.

He must have just started watching NASCAR when the implemented "boys have at it".

You guys crack me up. Do you really think the fans care how many hours it takes or how much it money it takes to fix that car? Madhouse rules prevent blocking and "protecting the low line". Madhouse rules rock dude.

we saw some awesome racing last year when the races got close in the trucks mods and prostocks and I'm sure we'll see it agai this year. Once the field got off the top of each other and had room to race there was some awesome runs in the mod race. First race of the year, first race in a class for some. Will there be some rivalries that last all year because of this race? I'm sure. Despite how many fans left there were a lot of fans still there to see the end. It'll be another great solid year at HMP and I'm looking forward to watching it all!

Yup, just as I figured. Regardless of TV dubbing those shows as "reality", they are anything but! Anyway, to each his own.

I don't think maverick is talking about the show itself. It's the Madhouse Rules that he's enjoying.

Nick

That he got of off the show. None-the-less, I am totally against what he claims to be good racing.

A couple of points:

1) Actually, HMP's John Mandabach got the rules from the show and implemented them last season.

2) There weren't any empty seats in those huge, aluminum, HMP grandstands. Folks were standing on the sidewalks . I guess some aren't "totally against" what they feel is good racing.

Nick

Nick

You've got it partially right. The fans love the Madhouse Rules, but only when it leads to fast paced, competitive racing. The fans even like a slow driver being moved out of the way by a faster driver when they refuse to move or when they're mirror driving. But, when there's caution after caution and delay upon delay, fans get bored and frustrated and they leave, as happened Sat nite. People started leaving in the middle of what's supposed to be the feature race (and is scheduled last so they will stay for the whole show).
As I said above, fans love good racing with lots of action - they don't like long and repeated delays caused by........well you fill in the blank.

Actually, the current race rules developed from a long conversation with the owner of Bowman Gray Stadium, Gray Garrison and NOT from the show Madhouse. Gray convinced us that respect is given and earned on the race track. It's what the racers want, what the fans want and most times ends in better racing. It takes 95% of the race call subjectivity out of the mix. However, sometimes a black flag can help.

If racers want completely non-contact racing, we can recommend a good road course track on the other side of Houston. However, HMP does not want all the crashes either. We don't believe that fans enjoy long delay and lots of yellows. And we KNOW what happens at 10:30pm regardless of what is happening on the track. However, we will not be making any knee jerk reactions to what happened last Saturday night. We are confident our racers have the talent and intelligence to figure it out on the race track. We may warm up the black flag for those that need some additional encouragement. We will continue on the current path and focus on ending the show by 10-10:30pm. Our racers at HMP understand the importance of this as well and we are very appreciative of their support.

Hopefully, the fans will give us another chance to prove we can put on a great show and get them home at a decent hour. We will find out on April 7th at Fiesta's Speedfest presented by Cricket Wireless.

Personally I would respect the driver that could drive around my driver cleanly more than the one that drove through him; this is speaking as a fan. I have no vested interest in your track persoanlly but I have a huge interest in the sport itself. I really can't complain though since your stands were packed.

Not after 10:00! It took 1 1/2 hrs to get the last 10 laps complete. I repeat, hope everyone got it out of their system.

That was a very good night of racing.I have waited to see if any of the posts saying otherwise would convince me.I was one of those that got up with 15 laps to go and watched from the sidewalk.The racing has nothing to to with it.I have learned that I can get home by 2am instead of 2:30-3am if I am one of the leading cars out of the parking lot.Almost all of the spectators sitting next to us left more due to the mosquitoes than anything else.The marketing, dollar beer, and hot dogs have a lot to do with the size of the crowd,but one of the biggest improvements is the grooming of the racing surface to create more side by side racing as well as the madhouse restarts.Fans do not want to see a lot of wrecks and have to sit through a lot of cautions but,we know it is a product of good hard racing.None of us like to watch racers follow the leader so they won't hurt someone's feelings.Good hard nose racing will always result in some accidents.And yes they are almost always "accidents".Once in a while someone gets mean and it is unfortunate.The uproar about Bristol is related to the subject of this thread.There are some fans who say the Bristol boo birds only want to see more wrecking.This just isn't true.They just don't want to watch the side by side racing where each driver picks a lane and then tips their hats to each other as they slowly but surely work they way around each other.Just like they do in practice.Fans want to know that there is a chance the pass will fail,and sometimes that failure ends up in an accident,unfortunately.If the racers take some seriously about touching each other,then kiss those full grandstands goodbye.The cheap concessions get new people to the track but the show is what keeps them coming back.

Is a wreck caused by a driver being mean,or was he/she just trying to win a race by progressing forward in the field?Sometimes trying to make a pass results in a driver going in to deep,judging a breaking point wrong,brakes lock up,over accelerating on exit of a turn resulting in a tapped left rear quarter.All of those will end if you guys just follow the leader.And all of us mislabeled "wreck lovers" will go away and you wont have to put up with us.And Maverick is right in saying it is most fans.Where he is wrong is we are not wreck lovers but hard nosed, exciting, tough racing lovers.And that,unfortunately results in those hated wrecks and cautions.

Please don't get politically correct and ruin the sport like so much else in life has been.

I never said that hard racing didn't include accidents. I never said anything that you are referring to. What I DID say was that driving through another driver isn't racing! You want to talk about ruining racing, keep cheering on the non drivers that drive through and not around, keep encouraging them while they keep tearing cars up and see if there is any racing to watch...full stands or not!!! If you want to watch drivers drive through each other, go watch a county fair demolition derby and keep it off of the oval!

Why go to the county fair? The beer and hot dogs are too expensive there. Nothing better than the oval track with $1 hot dogs, $1 beer and cokes, the smell of burning rubber and the sound of metal crunching. Paradise man..

Is this too soon?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSwgNj9z8XM

However exciting it is for the fans.....I can promise you We did not work all winter on our car so it could look like it did when we left HMP last week. I can tell you for sure and with out a doubt......If cars get tore up week after week....the car count will drop because most guys can't afford to repair thier cars every week. At some point you are going to have to make DRIVERS responsible for passing clean or you will not have to worry about it at all.

I'm not telling John how to do it. I just hate to see al of his hard work go down the tubes because there is no responsibility taken for wrecked cars. We have been in racing along time, and this will eventually KILL car count. We (Howard Willis #23)were involved in a RACING incident unfortunately. A car lost it while passing us and we got collected. But there was a lot of "Dumping" going on out there which should be unexcusable. Thats not racing. IMO.

Earl

that would be a good tv commerial

What happened to Howard Willis should not have happened. At every first race of the season, the skill level of every driver is again examined by other drivers and adjustments are made on the second race of the season and for the rest of the season. Look for Willis to contend for the championship.

Those videos are amazing...the videographer has some real skill..

I thought some "adjustments" were going to be made after the final caution. There were three cars contending for the lead, three laps left, and there had been one spin per lap for the last several laps. Two of the lead cars had gotten to that position by spinning others out of their way. Three laps, three cars -The only question was who was going to take out whom.

I don't think that some of these drivers that are VERY aggressive in taking out others must not think that PAYBACK is just around the corner. Pretty sure it will come back on them at some point when they don't expect it when they are looking to take the checkered but then it all falls apart when they are the victim and won't finish the race or finish out of the top 10. That's when you sit back and think.

An action packed race WITHOUT anyone driving through anyone. The leader used the low line, the high line and other lapped cars to put distance between him and the rest of the field.

This is how you drive

And the grandstands were basically empty! I know, I know. It was night 1 of a two nite show, but still...

Nick

it was the first race of the season. I expect things to settle down quickly for all the classes. Look at how great the racing was last year when we finished the season.

It was the first night of qualifying for King of America Modified race; $15,000 to win. Since I sense doubt in your post I will make sure to find and post last years finale and this years just to show you. None-the-less that was far better racing in my opinion.

So Nick, are you saying that in order to have a successful track you need the drivers to drive like morons and almost wreck every lap?
In my opinion HMP is the most successful track in TX right now.
But the reason is because the purses are the highest in the state.
High purse= High car count= Full stands. Once the car count drops dramatically back to 8 or 9 modifieds like it was before the Hausler Bounty last season (which it most likely will if they dont settle down, but I hope it doesn't) the fan count will also fall.
No one likes to watch races with low car counts.

Now don't get me wrong, HMP is my favorite track to go to in TX and I'm going to have a Modified out there around mid-season, but the Mod race did get out of hand

Come on guys, all I said was that the grandstands were basically empty. Did I miss the point or something? LOL. And trying to compare dirt track mods with asphalt mods is more or less like apples and oranges. I've done both, so please don't try to tell me they are the same deal. They are not.

I'm not advocating people driving through others, but I will say that the drivers can, and do, keep far better track of who did what to whom than any set of track officials. Yes, there will be some paybacks coming to those that took extreme advantage of the Madhouse Rules this past Saturday, but in the end, new rivalries are flourishing, more and more folks are building and buying cars to race in the the two top divisions and the fans are coming in droves. Most of them have no idea what the purse it. They just know that there will be some entertaining racing and $10 bucks will give a family of five a hot dog and a coke for each! Some tracks I've been to charge that much for one hot dog and one coke!

Yes, HMP has found a great combination of promotion, management, purse, concessions, rules and public relations. - not to mention excellent and loyal track sponsors.

Nick

I was comparing good racing to bad racing.

I think the problem comes in when the innocent cars get torn up in the payback wrecks over and over. Then the innocent cars quit coming back and we all know the rest of the story.

It was the first night of qualifying for King of America Modified race; $15,000 to win. Since I sense doubt in your post I will make sure to find and post last years finale and this years just to show you. None-the-less that was far better racing in my opinion.

Here is last year's final race.

Good racing and PACKED STANDS

So recap...75 laps, only a handful of cautions, $15,000 to win and $1,500 to start and no one drove through anyone; I'd say that was a much better race. Oh yeah, it was freezing cold that night too!

We all have our preferences. I personally love dirt track racing for many of the reasons you site.

But asphalt racing is an entirely different animal. Usually there is a preferred line on the asphalt and teams usually set up to run that line. A tiny change in the setup and the car is now junk. So competition for that preferred line is always going to be present in short track racing, in Texas at least. I personally have experienced paved tracks that were built (by luck or design) to be multi-groove tracks. Those few tracks are like gold and drivers love to race there. Beach Ridge Motor Speedway and Oxford Plains (both in Maine) come to mind.

So, the question always becomes how to control the carnage as drivers seek that preferred line. In Texas we have seen everything from the "all involved rule" to the "at fault" rule to a combination of the two rules, to "make up the rules as we go along" rule. None of those have proven very satisfactory. John Mandabach has decided that the racers can pretty much make and enforce their own way of controlling overly aggressive drivers and has implemented the Madhouse Rule. So far, a few drivers have gone to the extreme in taking advantage of that rule and we saw some of that last Saturday at HMP. I think it will all calm down once a driver or two have had a friendly conversation or two with those who got dumped. Or, if that doesn't work, a "what comes 'round" reminder on track.

To any who feel I am in any way against dirt track racing, they just don't know me at all. Dirt track racing is 10-times more fun than asphalt racing, but asphalt racing is 10-times more technical than dirt track racing. I just happen to enjoy the physics and dynamics of asphalt suspensions and enjoy working with teams that want to learn.

Nick

This reminds me of what led to the demise of the super late models.

Oh man, I see it now, the world is coming to an end. They touched.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpWmm9hznFA

Sir, please put the cup of kool-aid down and step away from the keyboard...LOL