So where's the crowd?

  

  
Too many empty seats Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   ATLANTA
   It is quite baffling.
   And unsettling.
   The setting here Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway was gorgeous: Blue skies, beautiful weather, 70 degrees.
   The enigma: So where are the fans?
   The Atlanta track has long been a tough draw, with less than sellout crowds. But Sunday's 500 might have been one of the most disappointing.
   Yes, Atlanta is a notoriously tough sports town.
   But NASCAR racing, of course, doesn't have to rely on just local fans to fill its stadiums.
   And this track itself is an excellent design, with several grooves, and a lot of speed (don't listen to anyone wanting to repave it).
   It's been a driver-favorite….up till the introduction of the car-of-tomorrow, which doesn't seem all that suited here, and which certainly has made things tough on Goodyear.
   Yes, last spring's fiasco here didn't help things.
   And the new race car has turned off a lot of fans in general, promoter Bruton Smith says.
   The economy is rough too, though the 130,000 at Las Vegas last weekend would seem to show good marketing can pay off.  
   However the Atlanta market is filled with major companies with interests in racing, like Coca-cola, UPS and Home Depot, and more than 80 percent of the nation's biggest businesses have offices in Atlanta.
   There are some 700 hotels in town, restaurants galore. Interstate highways in every direction.
   This town even hosted the 1996 Olympics.
   And it can't sell a NASCAR race?
   What's the deal here?
   Certainly this race car itself and the hard tires it seems to require don't work for great racing.
   Gil Martin, crew chief for Casey Mears, says Goodyear should stop bringing hard tires here "and just bring Martinsville tires," which are some of the softest on the stock car tour, and leave it up to the drivers and crews to decide just how far to push the limits. That would make for better racing, of course, though all the likely crashes wouldn't make Goodyear happy.
   Regardless of all that, there appears to be something larger at issue here, when considering the poor crowds.
   What that might be, though, is a mystery.
   This track is relatively easy to drive to or fly to, from anywhere in the South, which has been the heart of stock car racing. Granted, the highway system around the speedway hasn't been the greatest, but traffic flow has improved the last few years. But getting here can't be considered a major issue in the weak attendance.
   Yes, this side of Atlanta has long been considered the wrong side of town – the money and the affluent people are on the north side. But the Talladega, Pocono, Darlington, Bristol tracks, and others, perhaps aren't in the greatest locations either, but they draw well. Pocono, in fact, draws its 100,000 for both its June race and just a few weeks later for its late summer race. And Talladega crowds are renowned.
   What is the mystery here – why are crowds never sellouts, why are crowds rarely now even decent?
   That is a question shouting for an answer.
   It may not be an academic question either: if Atlanta Motor Speedway can't sell out, or even fill up, for its two Sprint Cup events, why shouldn't Bruton Smith take one of these dates to, say, Las Vegas Motor Speedway or Kentucky Motor Speedway?

  
Mark Martin's run of bad luck continued in Sunday's Atlanta 500. He started from the pole but blew a tire and crashed. (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)