Bryan Sperber, president of Phoenix International Raceway, was my Newsmaker guest on Wednesday night's The Race Reporters show on Power Up Channel. PIR hosts the Sprint Cup Chase semifinal, the Nov. 15 Checker O'Reilly Auto Parts 500k, plus USAC on Thursday night, Nov. 12; Camping World Trucks on Friday night, Nov. 13; and the Nationwide Series on Saturday, Nov. 14. Terry Blount, of ESPN.com; and Ron Lemasters Jr., of National Speed Sport News, came on for the journalists' roundtable and joined in questioning Sperber.
I asked Sperber about increased cooperation among track operators, drivers, teams and sponsors to out-reach to fans in this current economic environment:
"All of them, the tone of the conversation is, what can we do to help? I like to think that we also, on the track side, exhibit that same level of cooperation. We are able, as a sport, now to work together in ways that we didn't do years ago. The fans are going to benefit from that. The fans will be able to see this level of cooperation in our race weekend, as we did in April, we're going to have drivers and other personalities give of their time to do fan forums in our midway . . . I don't know that we could ever have pulled something like that off a few years ago."
Listen to the entire show using this link:
http://www.modavox.com/voiceamerica/vepisode.aspx?aid=41714
Upcoming The Race Reporters guests:
(Show is live Wednesdays at 7 p.m. EDT, downloadable, and available on-demand at no cost. Click on TRR page logo in upper right-hand column.)
October 21 -- Antron Brown. Panelists: Larry Henry, Bobby Bennett, Corinne Economaki.
October 28 -- A.J. Allmendinger. Panelists: Dave Kallmann, Lewis Franck. Plus, Paul Page.
November 4 -- Mark Kent (GM Racing manager). Panelists: Bob Pockrass, TBA. Plus, Dave (The King) Wilson.
[ more early next week . . . ]
