Summit Point Track Days:What Comes Next?

Alright guys, we're back this week with a new topic. We're going to talk about Summit Point access changes. Alright. So, as many of you have seen or whoever follows, you know, Summit, they changed some of their, you know, some of the things that they're going to be doing moving forward. Basically getting rid of Friday at the Track, Seat Time, things like that. They're going to be keeping it basically open for like, you know, you can still rent the track, major events, things like that.

My take on these things, right, just like most racetracks, I personally don't know their finances, neither do many of us. Usually things like this happen because of a financial standpoint, meaning they're either A, not getting enough attendance on Friday at the Track. They're not getting enough Seat Time attendance, meaning, you know, not many people are signing up. Or B, what's going on is they see the potential where they can rent out the track more often, meaning like, let's say on a Friday night, they can rent out the track, or during the times that they have Seat Time.

You know, that's something we'll never know, that's something that's going to be up in the air. As far as my personal opinion on it, right? Well, where does the culture come from? The whole racing culture, right? Meeting up at the track with your friends, starting with, you know, nothing crazy. You know, seeing what your car can do, starting to build, starting to put money into your vehicle, starting to slowly go to the track, progress further, get it moving, right?

And that's how the kind of the society, you know, the car club society sticks together and comes about. I feel like Friday at the Track is great for newcomers, new guys that are going to the track, getting ideas, never experienced the track. That's a perfect time for them to experience it. Perfect way for them to actually experience it. Same thing with Seat Time, right? Let's say you just, you know, built your, I don't know, let's say M340 or M3, M4, M5, M8, whatever the car is, you know, 370Z, GT-R.

You know, let's say you put, you know, you just did some downpipes, bigger turbos, you know, full exhaust, tune, and you know, you want to see what your car can do. Perfect time to do that, right? Bring it down to Friday night at the Track, run, do a couple of runs, hang out with the boys, see what they got, what they're up to, get some ideas, talk with other enthusiasts as well.

You know, so that's kind of takes away from the community a little bit in my eyes. Same thing with the Seat Time, right? Like if, you know, you're starting to get better, you know, you're familiar with the track, you actually want to get like, good at what you're practicing running down the track.

You know, all these things are really important to keep kind of the car club, the car community alive.

But again, you know, we have been losing tracks in the last, you know, 10 years, you know, everything, you know, tracks have been slowly shutting down, you know, minimalizing their events, because a, you know, property cost, meaning property taxes going up everywhere. It's getting expensive. Maintenance is getting expensive. Paying people is very expensive, right? You still got to pay these people, whether you got events going on or not.

If the track's not making money, they're still dishing money out to pay their employees. They kind of got to figure out, you know, what they got to do. So at the same time, it's kind of like a double-edged sword here, right? It can hurt the car community, but at the same time, if it saves the track and it keeps them going and it keeps them moving in the right direction, that's probably the best thing they could do because there isn't many tracks, right? So maybe they can kind of figure out a way where they can maybe add those things back at a different time, maybe have adding more days that they're open, you know, maybe doing their events on different times.

So it's kind of like a matter of time just to see where things are going to probably, you know, which way that things are going to pan out. But I genuinely do think that it's upsetting. It's, you know, it is going to hurt the car community because, you know, now the guy that's, you know, wants to run his car down the track for the first time may not have a place to do so.

So my personal opinion is it's upsetting, but hopefully they got something better coming up for us. Catch you on the next one, guys.