Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 26, 1994 TAG: 9404250011
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: MARTINSVILLE LENGTH: Long
Among the records at the Hanes 500 had to be most sunburned spectators, since the NASCAR race attracted the largest crowd at a sports event in Western Virginia history.
Martinsville remains the shortest of the short tracks in Winston Cup racing, and it's the oldest oval that annually has run NASCAR-sanctioned races in what is now the Winston Cup series. However, it no longer is a "nice little race track" - although compared to Daytona, Talladega and Charlotte, that label still fits.
Martinsville still is a nice, terrifically tidy place, but while visitors used to remark about the ducks and azaleas that made speedway founder Clay Earles' track different, now it's seats that are blooming above the .526-mile oval.
The sprouting Winston Cup fandom has proven to Earles that if he builds it, they will come. The estimated crowd of 59,000 filled the plant, including a 3,300-seat addition to the Clay Earles Tower above turn 2.
Those new seats were sold out in three days, at $45 apiece. There's more where that came from.
"I didn't foresee anything like this in the beginning, although maybe I should have," Earles said at a place that predates NASCAR.
Dirt-drenched Red Byron won the first Martinsville race on Sept. 7, 1947, getting $500 of a $2,000 purse. Earles started that day with 750 seats. The race attracted a paying crowd of 6,013.
NASCAR was founded in 1948. On Sept. 25, 1949, the organization's Strictly Stock Division - Winston Cup today - made its first trip around the half-mile dirt oval. Byron, in an Oldsmobile 88, beat Lee Petty, who was driving a Plymouth.
Martinsville wasn't paved until 1955, the year Earles first turned a profit. The purse for Sunday's Hanes 500 was $729,631. The gross revenue from ticket sales and concessions probably was in the $3 million range.
"I first came here as a teen-ager, and I'm 37 now, so it was awhile ago," said Rick Mast, the Rockbridge Baths driver who finished eighth Sunday. "This is still one of the better-kept and prettier facilities we run.
"I remember the first time I came by here. I had been down in Madison [N.C.] running dirt-track [races], and on the way back home we stopped here and looked inside the fence right over there, by turn 4.
"I said, `Man, oh man, if I could just ever run here . . . ' This looked like the biggest place in the world."
Only the cement bleachers stood then, about 22,000 seats. The inside lane has been brought down one more groove. The competitiveness and expansion of the Winston Cup circuit has jammed the infield, too.
"For Sportsman races, Martinsville was like Daytona is for Winston Cup," Mast said. "It was a huge deal."
The physical plant is only going to grow at Martinsville. Earles said more construction isn't likely in the next year, but after that, the skyline may disappear above turns 3 and 4.
He may be 80, but he can see forever.
"We have room for 22,000 to 25,000 more seats down there," Earles said of the north end of the speedway, where the main scoreboard stands. "It depends a lot on the economy, but if the economy stays good, within two years we could have at least some of it up there."
The economy in Winston Cup racing has never been better, and it is estimated that the Henry County region gets a combined economic impact of $9 million from the two Winston Cup events held annually at the speedway.
No, those extra spectators won't have to park in LA, which is where Earles says he was born - "Lower Axton." He recently purchased another 48 acres, leaving 60 unused acres for 8,000 parked cars. That takes Earles' speedway land to about 250 acres.
"I was sure I could make a few dollars with it," Earles said of his sport. "I just thought it would make me a nice hobby. I had some service stations, and I was working in real estate."
He still does. Squeezed only by the Norfolk Southern tracks behind the east straightaway, the speedway continues to go high-rise. When the new seats are built, a four-sided, $175,000 scoreboard will stand on stilt-pylons above the infield.
That said, there's a notion in NASCAR that the increased professional interest in the sport eventually will drive short tracks into the pits. The fans don't seem to be buying that, however.
All four short tracks - Martinsville, Richmond, Bristol and North Wilkesboro - have sold out their spring events. Atlanta, Rockingham and Darlington couldn't do that. Maybe the spectators like what they see when they can see the whole race.
Earles promises those loyal fans that before anyone gets rid of short-track racing - which takes the NASCAR stars back to their Saturday night roots on dirt ovals - someone will have to bury him first.
Literally.
"I was here before they started racing on the big tracks, and I'll be here when they're gone," Earles said. "As long as I am here, and after I'm gone, they'll be racing here.
"If anybody's going anywhere, I don't think it's going to be one of the short tracks - and I know it's not going to be this one.
"I'll spend the last nickel I've got - and I've got a few of 'em - to see I'm there."
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB