Soaring gas prices hit NASCAR fans

By: TONY FABRIZIO
Media General News Service

Published: April 28, 2008

TALLADEGA, Ala. — Parking the RV against the fourth-turn fence: $600.

Extra charge for infield wristbands: $105 each.

Fuel to get here: Think body parts.

Unlike most sports, auto racing relies on fans driving hundreds of miles to events such as Sunday’s Aaron’s 499 at Talladega Superspeedway. Record gas prices of more than $3.50 a gallon are putting a hurt on those fans, many of whom drive low-gas-mileage motor homes or trucks towing campers.

Some simply aren’t coming.

“We’re seeing a couple of different messages,” Talladega track president Rick Humphrey said. “All of our reserved RV areas are sold out and have been for quite some time. But on the flip side, with ticket sales, we’re seeing what everybody else is seeing: a dip in the grandstands.”

Humphrey said tickets for today’s race were sold to fans in 20 countries and all 50 states. Most out-of-state patrons are coming from Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida.

Dennise and Bill Vandegrift consider their annual trip to Talladega from Spring Hill a “family tradition.” They see many of the same people every year, including some regulars from New Orleans who bring 150 pounds of crawfish, red potatoes and corn on the cob for a Friday night feast.

The Vandegrifts say the gas fill-ups are painful — they drive a 34-foot Fleetwood Flair motor home — but they aren’t about to give up their choice site against the fourth-turn fence in the “Frontrunners Club 1.”

“It cost us $350 to get here,” said Dennise, who owns a Century 21 real estate office. “Maybe next year this time, it’ll be $500. But I don’t know that we’d give it up. The thing is, they’ve got you. You can’t say, ‘Oh, I’m not going to go this year,’ because your spot won’t be here. We had to wait to get this spot, and it’s like, there’s no way you’re getting my spot.”

Joe Baumann, a die-hard fan who goes to about 24 races a year, drove down from his home in Erie, Pa. Eight beer-drinking buddies rode with him, and a second RV from Erie carried eight more people.

Baumann’s coach uses diesel fuel — which costs up to $4.50 a gallon — and his tank holds 150 gallons.

“It’s about $750 to fill this thing up,” Baumann said at his site while cars shot by at 180 mph a few dozen feet away “We can go probably from home to here and maybe a third of the way back home on that. It’s probably going to be a $1,200 bill for fuel round-trip.”

Baumann used to take his wife to races. Now he takes his pals, because they can chip in for fuel. But not everybody has eight friends who can take several days off of work to go to a NASCAR race.

“Five out of the six races I’ve been to this year, there’ve been a lot of empty seats,” Baumann said. “I mean, even Martinsville [Va.] was down, and you never see that. The weather was bad, but they’re usually sold out.”

With the largest infield of any NASCAR track and total land of more than 800 acres, Talladega can accommodate 30,000 to 40,000 campers. Humphrey points out that camping is free on about 60 percent of the speedway grounds, which can help offset the cost of gas and tickets.

But a trip to the pump can still be sobering.

Reggie Wright of Tampa tows a pop-up camper and was part of a caravan of fans from Tampa who had sites reserved in “West Park B,” outside the first turn. He said fuel costs have gone from being incidental to the race weekend to the trip’s “major expense.”

“It’s more than the tickets, more than the food, more than the beer,” Wright said.

Tampa’s Curtis Johnson and Virginia Jones, veterans of several races at Daytona, are attending their first race at Talladega.

Although they are staying in a hotel 40 miles from the track, Johnson drove his three-quarter-ton pickup truck so he could carry his common-law wife’s oxygen machine and wheelchair.

Johnson figures the high cost of gas will push the trip’s cost to more than $1,300.

“I didn’t quite intend for it to cost this much,” Johnson said. “But you know now how hardcore NASCAR fans are.”

Andy and Judy Baldoni of Dunnellon are Tony Stewart fans who have been to several spring races at Talladega and last year also traveled to races at Atlanta, Charlotte and Martinsville.

They had tickets to today’s race but stayed home because of the gas prices.

“I’ve got a 30-gallon tank on my [Chevrolet] Tahoe, and I pull a camper, and when I pull that I only get like 10 miles per gallon,” Andy said from his home while a NASCAR program on satellite radio played in the background. “It’s about 470 miles from my house to get up there, plus I have a generator to run.

“It was going to cost just too much.”

Baumann, the fan from Pennsylvania, longs for the day when diesel fuel was about $1.60 a gallon. That was in 2004, when he realized his “life dream” and attended all 36 Sprint Cup races.

Even with diesel prices pushing three times that price now, Baumann says he will keep traveling to races as long as he has friends who will help foot the bill. But he knows some fans won’t be able to do as many road trips.

“I mean, the average person, no way,” he said. “Even if he was a real fan and went to 10 or 12 races a year, he’s probably going to cut back to five or six.”

TONY FABRIZIO is a staff writer for The Tampa Tribune