Race of their lives
New owner faces long haul at a small-town short track
The rumble of a distant lawn mower, the whoosh of a passing motorist and the buzz of a pesky fly hung in the air at Bronson Speedway. The rural quiet of a warm Saturday allowed Ann Young, the owner of the small-town racetrack in Archer, Florida, to listen to her doubts. Maybe she had made the wrong decision when she bought the speedway in 2011. Maybe running a short track on the weekends, about 1,770km from her family and her home in New York, was not worth the effort.
Bronson Speedway sits on 14.5 grassy hectares just outside the Florida town for which it is named: Bronson, population 1,100. The wood-plank grandstands do not quite reach the top of the sabal palm that brushes up against the scoring tower. A black-and-white-chequered path leads to a white wood-panelled concession stand with three red-frame windows. A collectibles store stands a few feet away, but there are no souvenirs inside and the door appears to be painted shut.
‘‘I just feel like there’s a reason why I need to be here,’’ Young said. ‘‘I don’t really know what it is yet.’’
The idea to buy the track started, almost as a joke, when Young and her husband, Chris, 60, were discussing a retirement project at their home in Calverton, New York, in 2010.
Ann Young, 55, has been a registered nurse for 34 years, working her way up from a nursing school in Brooklyn to running the operating room at Brookhaven Memorial Hospital Medical Centre in Patchogue, New York. But her family’s passion has always been auto racing. Young has been going to racetracks since she was five. Chris raced cars for more than four decades. And their son, Christopher, 19, started racing at 14.
To humour her husband, Ann Young searched online using the phrase ‘‘racetrack for sale’’, and the words ‘‘Bronson Speedway’’ appeared in the results. Knowing nothing about Bronson, Florida, or how to run a racetrack, she read on.
A visit to Bronson and months of negotiating landed the Youngs an abandoned, 600m, high-bank asphalt oval track with a garage and two mobile homes for US$700,000 (21.7 million baht), according to Levy County property records.
‘‘I bought a speedway, they gave me the keys, and I went, ‘Oh, what do I do now?’ ’’ she said.
Ten days after buying the track, the Youngs held a meet-and-greet for area residents and drivers. A group of them, curious to meet the new owners, turned up.
‘‘We had a pretty good opening day,’’ Ann Young said, ‘‘but it was downhill after that.’’
More than two years later, the racetrack has made no money. Young has had to dip into her family’s savings to make repairs, secure permits, update licences and sometimes pay the drivers’ purses. Some racetrack staff members and volunteers have moved on to other jobs, or left because of disagreements with management about personnel and rule changes, the details of which they aired on online discussion boards.
On any given Saturday night, stars are born; drivers are mentored
Some of the missteps have been selfinflicted; when a couple of cars showed for one sportsman class race, Young cut the purse in half, angering the drivers.
‘‘It was a mistake I would never make again,’’ she admitted, adding, ‘‘What that guy cost me on the internet is what I didn’t pay on the purse.’’
Bringing in fans has been Young’s steepest challenge, but she is not alone. There are 1,396 registered racetracks in the US and Canada, according to the National Speedway Directory. The attendance drop-off at small-town tracks has been attributed to more entertainment options, televised races and higher fuel prices, according to interviews with more than a dozen racetrack owners and promoters. But what has stayed the same at these smaller tracks are the personal connections that owners, drivers and staff members have to the sport. Small-town racing runs deeper than money. It is often tied to family.
‘‘A lot of people who are buying the racetracks, they typically have some type of involvement in the industry,’’ said Tim Frost, the publisher of the National Speedway Directory. ‘‘They raced as a kid, or they had a parent involved in the industry.’’
Like other owners and promoters, Young has had to rethink the business model of a small-town racetrack by turning it into a broader entertainment venue. She has hosted a political rally and an antique car show at the racetrack, and she plans to hold small concerts and open a mud bog. Other racetracks have hosted demolition derbies, freestyle motocross events, monster truck shows and fireworks displays.
But by hosting non-racing events, she and other racetrack owners run the risk of distancing the image of their tracks from the family experience of smalltown Saturday night racing — the one Young had sitting with her parents and brother in the grandstands, watching her daredevil neighbour race, or when she helped reattach a muffler to her son’s car during a race while standing in as his crew chief.
‘‘On any given Saturday night, on any given hometown grass-roots racetrack, stars are born; drivers are mentored,’’ Ann Young said. ‘‘It doesn’t matter if you’re driving in a strictly stock or you’re in the highest division you can go in, the skill that it takes is what you’re developing at a Saturday night racetrack.
‘‘Those guys that are racing at Daytona, started at a Saturday night racetrack.’’
Eleven hours after the metal gates to Bronson Speedway opened on that Saturday, early in June, Ann Young’s worries were drowned out by the revving of engines, a fan’s shout of ‘‘Let’s go, Danny!’’ and the race announcer’s pitch for the concession stand’s homemade angel food cake.
Young tried not to think about her many concerns; instead she focused on making sure the 114 ticketholders sprinkled around the grounds were having a good time.
‘‘Failure is not an option,’’ Young said. ‘‘We haven’t had the opportunity yet to really focus on just Bronson Speedway. And at the end of the day, yes, we are losing money, without a doubt. At the end of the day, when I show up there on Saturday, I show up to every show with a renewed hope that it’s going to turn around.’’