As earlier speculated, the Busch Series has scheduled two road races for the 2005 season. The Nazareth Speedway race has been a thorn in the side of NASCAR and track owner International Speedway Corp. (ISC) because of practically non-existent ticket sales. It's understandable for a track not to be sole out for all of its series events, but the Nazareth facility was lucky if it filled half of its 30k seats for a Busch Series event.
After closing the Nazareth Speedway, the race will be moved to its sister track at Watkins Glen, also owned by ISC. We all know that The Glen is a road course, and that a few years ago, the Busch Series used to race there along with the Busch North Series. In order for it to be cost efficient for Busch Series owners to build road racing cars, there had to be more than one road racing event. Instead of having an event at the Sonoma, California's Infineon Raceway like the IRL Series did, NASCAR decided to go south of the border to Mexico and hold a Busch Series road racing event down there near Mexico City
A sizable number of racing insiders think this is a really bold move for the sanctioning body, whose main objective over the years has been to cut costs for the financially strapped Busch Series. Now they have caused the Busch Series team owners to build road racing cars, and to also have to travel out of the United States to participate in a sanctioned NASCAR Busch Series event. How is that going to save the financially burdened Busch Series team owners money?
A statement by a Busch Series team owner a few years ago comes to mind. If I'm not mistaken, I think it was James Finch who stated that Jimmy Spencer won the Richmond race in his car and the Busch Series purse was $18k. Finch lamented that his tire bill for the event was $12k, not to mention having to pay the other racing expenses, including travel and living expenses for his team during the race weekend. The bottom line? Finch won the race, but lost thousands of dollars doing it. NASCAR tosses the Busch Series race winners scraps while the Cup Series winners and race participants make the big bucks. NASCAR has promised to do something to alleviate the problem for the series owners, but all they seem to do year after year, is to make things harder and wonder why the series is now being filled up with moonlighting Cup drivers.
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