NASCAR driver and St. Louis native Ken Wallace was taken aback when he heard that Gateway International Raceway wouldn't host races in the Nationwide and Camping World truck series in 2011.
"I can't believe it. Actually, I'm saddened," he said. Ken is a member of St. Louis' royal racing family, which also includes brothers Rusty and Mike and his nephew, Steve.
"To me, growing up in St. Louis, you dreamed of NASCAR races in St. Louis," he said. "I guess the stands were empty. But that's kind of the environment. All the races we're going to are half-full. We're in a bad economy. In a year, we've lost three tracks."
One of the others is in Memphis and is owned by the same company as Gateway, Dover Motorsports. The other is near Milwaukee. Gateway seats about 55,000. Dover Motorsports does not release attendance figures, but estimates put the most recent crowd at about 30,000.
"You see the Cardinals filling Busch Stadium 80 times a year, so you know the money is there," he said. "We can't even get 40,000 people to a race two times a year. But I truly don't blame the fans."
Instead, Wallace attributed the track's demise to bad design and poor scheduling. The 1.25-mile layout is unlike any other in NASCAR. The track isn't banked, and each of the turns requires a different car setup, making it difficult to drive. In addition, the size of the parcel of land made it impossible for all the fans to park nearby. Lack of access roads meant that they often had to wait for more than an hour to get off the property after a race.
"It's no secret that they did a bad job designing Gateway," he said. "It should have been a lot smaller, maybe like Richmond, so we could put all our fans on the grounds and let them park close by."
Richmond International Raceway in Virginia has a ¾-mile track and seats 97,000 with parking on the grounds for everyone. Gateway also pales in comparison to the closest NASCAR track, Kansas Speedway, just outside Kansas City. Built in 1999, just three years after Gateway, Kansas seats 82,000 and has hosted events on the Nationwide and truck serees, as well as the Indy Racing League and NASCAR's flagship Sprint Cup Series.
Gateway's Nationwide event traditionally has been scheduled for mid-July, when temperatures reach the upper 90s. Even when the race started in the evening, the stifling conditions limited the size of the crowd.
"My Aunt Millie couldn't go because it's so brutal hot," he said. "I don't blame the fans. I blame the designers for a track that's not fan-friendly. And we should have gotten away from the brutal weather."
In addition to the Wallace family, the area has been the early stomping grounds for other NASCAR notables. Carl Edwards, who won the most recent Nationwide race at Gateway,still maintains a home in Columbia, Mo. Jamie McMurray, winner of the last week's Brickyard 400, was born and raised in Joplin. Ken Schrader, who raced with Rusty on the Sprint Cup circuit, is from Fenton. Justin Allgaier, who races in the Nationwide series, hails from Springfield, Ill. All considered Gateway their home track.
"This is what the Wallaces, the Schraders, the Carl Edwards and the Jamie McMurrays of the world have to say now. ‘We'll see you at Kansas, I guess,'" he said. "It kills me to say that."
