Originally Posted by Revoguy
...the only other indoor electric off road track is like 21/2 hours away...
That can't be right. It only take me two hours on the dot to get to Chilli from Topeka, not speeding...and you're in KC?
We run electric at our outdoor track here in Topeka. It's not a real big class, but we usually have a heat. There's nowhere to run locally during the winter though, so it's Chilli or bust!
I'm not big on carpet either, but after a month or two of driving two hours one way to Chilli, the KC carpet track looks mighty good.
It's too bad that the KC indoor offroad track closed. That last year, they were averaging 50-70 each Sat. night. I'm surprised a city the size of KC can't support and indoor track. From the results on the website...it's barely supporting the outdoor track.
Nitro everything is popular right now for many reasons, but I think that the sound, and the smell of burning nitro have a lot to do with it, as well as being easier to drive. As far as low electric turnouts all over the country, I don't know that the length of heats or mains has a lot to do with it. Outdoor tracks have much less overhead to them. More outdoor tracks equal more people running nitro. Outdoor tracks that get well used, also get highly blown out, and that makes it tough on the electric cars and deters some people from running electric. Indoor tracks, which are usually the preferred venue for any electric racing, generally aren't money makers, and are often lucky to break even, and in the summer, when people don't want to be inside after being cooped up all winter, it's even tougher to pay the bills. With no good place to run electric, some people jump over to nitro.
I hope that emerging motor and battery technology can somewhat revive the country's interest in running electric, but I'm not holding my breath.