Gillian Zucker's Take on Sunday's California 500: Is the glass half-full or half-empty? Will Daytona give her support?

   Gillian Zucker, who runs LA's Auto Club Speedway, does a bang-up job of promoting....but the ticket renewal rates are "very low." She gets the fans to the track...and it's up to NASCAR executives to provide the product that keeps them coming back. (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   FONTANA, Calif.
   Gillian Zucker must sometimes feel the pain of Sisyphus, who had to keep hauling that rock back up the mountain day after day, for eternity.
   Because each year she basically has to go out and sell this whole thing all over again. And again.
   Zucker, the woman who's running this place, the woman who wears a Richard Petty smile, the woman who has thrown just about every possible marketing trick at this market except strippers streaking down pit road.
    She says, considering the economy, Sunday's crowd was good. Yes, the 92,000-seat stands were maybe half-full, but the infield was jammed with RV campers, so call the crowd 60,000.
    However, despite Zucker's wide-ranging promotions for her two Cup weekends each season, it is simply hard to sell a product that is this boring. And she concedes the ticket renewal rate by fans is "low," and that may be the most telling point – that fans who come to watch don't usually come back.
   In fact that may be a damning point for the sport's Daytona bosses to consider: Zucker gets fans here, puts on so many side promotions it's dizzying to keep track of, and yet they tend not to come back.
   A better product out on the track?
   Certainly that would help.
   That may be the only missing link in this thing.
   Or maybe NASCAR bosses are just too stubborn to fix the darned cars and slow them down…or change the track….or do anything to change the dynamic that this track has become known for – boring racing.
  

  

  Yes, there is a lot more to do at this place than just watch the race...fortunately. What's this, the MAC Store pavilion in the Fan Zone? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

  

  
Sunday's 500 was, for more than three hours, another snoozer, and only two late crashes, including a huge one on a restart with seven laps to go, provided any drama.
  
   Yes, this track may have been built an hour too far east of Hollywood.
   Yes, this area is known as one of the world's biggest truck stops, with major league cross-county distribution warehouses everywhere, and more big-rig haulers on the roads than probably anywhere else in the country.
   And, yes, this particular piece of land may be more renowned for being next door to the ancient steel mill where Arnold Schwarzenegger played out one of those apocalyptic Terminators.
    Still, if the product itself were better, the crowds would be better. That you can't deny.
    And yet here again Gillian Zucker sits and faces the press, who hit her up on why this place doesn't seem to succeed.
   Of course she knows – as do the media – that answers this track and this market need should be coming from the NASCAR trailer, where NASCAR president Mike Helton and CEO Brian France hole up.
    Zucker insists she doesn't get frustrated with a sometimes seemingly continual battering from the media over boring racing here.
    Yes, the racing is boring. That is difficult to deny.
    But it sometimes seems like Daytona executives have basically told Zucker to 'shut up and promote,' and stop worrying about the product itself, just the sideshows.
   Considering this is the biggest market that this sport plays in, the second-biggest market in the U.S., and one of the world's top markets, that seems a strange reaction from Daytona.
    Maybe NASCAR is afraid to try to succeed in this market. Maybe it is satisfied with just a presence in LA.
    One solution was first raised by Daytona 500 winner Michael Waltrip when he suggested putting restrictor plates on the cars here, to slow them down (from 209 mph into the corners) and bunch them up like at Daytona and Talladega.
    Zucker agreed with the thinking.
    But whenever she brings up that idea, she appears to get the cold shoulder from NASCAR.

  Yes, just get Kalifornia Krazy (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

  

  
Selling NASCAR in Los Angeles/Southern California is still a tough gig, even after playing in this market, on-and-off, since 1958.
   Maybe R. J. Reynolds was right: the best time to try to promote a race in this market might well be late January and early June, which it did back in the 1970s and 1980s, when the LA market seemed so important to the sport.
   Sunday's crowd for the California Pepsi 500 – moved this season from hot, hot Labor Day weekend to mid-October – was again mediocre….though in the current economic climate that might still be pretty good, at maybe 60,000.
    Of course it doesn't help that unemployment in the area is so high, and that home foreclosures are stunning.
   And then there is the competition from other sports, including baseball and the major league playoffs (the Angels sweeping the Red Sox with a dramatic ninth inning rally at Fenway), football, even hockey and horse racing (Santa Anita).
   One of the latest problems – the San Diego newspaper, Jimmie Johnson's hometown paper and a paper with a long history of covering NASCAR, is dropping its NASCAR coverage.
    And the anchor Los Angeles Times is having its problems too.
    But consider this: Saturday's Nationwide race here at Auto Club Speedway was filled wild and crazy, slam-bang racing.
    And yet there was virtually no crowd.
    Then consider this: Sunday's California 500 was typical follow-the-leader stuff…and the 92,000-seat place was maybe half-full.
    It's like a broken record.
       
    Maybe that plan for increasing the banking here from current 14 degrees to a sizzling 23 degrees is the way to go, make it just a little faster than the two-mile Texas World Speedway, and maybe put plates on the cars. If plate racing is good enough for Talladega and Daytona, why not here too?
    Maybe drivers wouldn't like that. Maybe they prefer to get paid big salaries for follow-the-leader stuff like this.
  

  

  Jimmie Johnson celebrates his third straight late season victory at LA's Auto Club Speedway.....(Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

  

  
Zucker tries to be diplomatic about it all – after all the same family that owns this track also owns the sanctioning body.
   "I don't know that you would get a better race at 23 degrees," she says carefully.   "When I first heard that idea, I said 'Great!' I love restrictor plate racing at Daytona and Talladega.
    "But….
   "I think people know this is the fastest race track on the circuit. They're going 209 mph into the first corner. The drivers are already feeling those cars do things they're uncomfortable with.
   "What makes a great race is drivers being comfortable in the car enough that they will try some things that are daring. And I don't think you see that when you get speeds up at this level.
   "Or at least that's what the experts have been telling me."

    So Zucker has to be content to do all the peripheral stuff here…and there's plenty of that, for sure.
   "If you can find one demographic here we haven't targeted, tell me, and we'll go after that for the Auto Club 500 (next February).
   "I would say no. If you went through the Fan Zone, you'd see Viva La Fiesta, which is our Hispanic area in the Fan Zone. Our Latino promotions included King Taco, and we did a lot with Juan Pablo Montoya. We have an incredible relationship with Univision and Telemundo. We have five different Latino radio partners.
   "Budweiser and Bank of America came through too with their Latino programs.
   "And if you look in the grandstands, you'll see those partnerships working.
    "Our kids club program, which we launched in January, has 20,000 members already. They not only got in for free Friday and Saturday, but we set up a scavenger hunt in the Fan Zone, and we had Ryan Newman reading stories to the kids.
   "We had the Foreigner concert, and I've never seen the Fan Zone rock like that.
   "We did a program with T&A Wrestling, which did very well. We did an Angels program and a Dodgers night. And we also did things to appeal to the diehard motorsports fans.
    "In the Party Zone we had Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon back-to-back, and I don't think it gets any better than that. And the fans responded. That Party Zone was three times the size it was in February.
   "If there is something we didn't do, I don't know what. We Tweeted, we Facebooked, we Myspaced….
    "I talked with Brian France before the race, and he asked about what festivities we had going on, so we went over to the Foreigner concert, and we both said 'Wow! Look at how many people are out here.'"
    And all that media pressure to fill the stands?
   "I really felt, going into this race, that we were receiving good support from the media," Zucker said.
    "People are understanding that Southern Californians are great race fans, and the West Coast deserves NASCAR racing, and we deserve a race in the chase.
   "I really felt you all had turned the corner. The media has seen that we market this thing like nobody's business, and the fans respond…but there are other factors that play into this, and you all have recognized that, and we appreciate it.
   "This track deserves a race in the chase, and this track deserves two Cup races.
   "Having this race in the chase made a huge difference. I think the crowd would have been substantially smaller, if we weren't in the chase and enjoying this beautiful fall weather."
    And now on to February?
   The spring event? That February race?
   "Everybody knows we have had challenges with inconsistent weather in January and February. It can be beautiful or it can be cold," she concedes.
    And so it's not unexpected that a possible date swap between this track and Phoenix, which plays in April, has been mentioned.
   "I know Bryan Sperber (head of Phoenix Raceway) hates it when I say it, but I would love his April Cup date," Zucker said with a laugh.

   Gillian Zucker (L) knows the value of star power in LA...but maybe better action on the track is needed too (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)