Thoughts on TORC Chicago "the LIVE round"

[TORC_spotter_870]

I was there and I have not yet watched the broadcast. The crowd was great and they were really jacked up about the racing.

As for the track, it was great for Pro Lite, but the infield hairpins were too narrow for the Pro 2/4's. The track did get rutted up pretty bad, but they did a pretty good job at watering to keep the dust down. Most drivers I heard prefered last years layout.

I think the Joliet market has a lot of potential to be a big venue in years to come.

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[JoeyD23]

Probably cool in person but the broadcast was disappointing. We are spoiled by the high flying tracks of lucas oil. The track there did not look exciting on TV. Even the mogules looked weak. It seems weird listening to a british guy announce OffRoad racing that's not rally. Hard to top what Stout and Steele do, they kick a$$

[pontoontodd]

I did not watch in on Speed, I watched in online. Not sure if it was the same feed or not.

Any time I can watch short course racing I am exicted (much less live) so I don't want to dwell on the negative. The announcing and camera angles were OK but I thought that there was room for improvement there, they were always zoomed in at corners and it just looked like the trucks were going through hairpins the whole race. From friends I had at the event they said the track was super high speed, and I did not think that the broadcast captured this. The biggest issue though was the track prep, it totally went away part way through the race. Not sure if there is anything that can be done about that but it seemed worse than I am used to seeing.

You were right and your friends were wrong. There were four tight u-turns making it by far the slowest TORC track we've ever raced on (40some mph average laps). Pro buggy and lite lap times were only a second or two off Pro 2. I think it was a fun track and it was good to see a different layout vs. the standard U shape.
That track was black dirt. There was supposedly some roundy-round series that told them they'd need 12" of real clay to race there. Not sure if better prep would have been possible, I think it was actually pretty good considering what they had to work with, but we did race first.
There definitely weren't any big jumps, I suppose that makes a better show. The Pro 2 and 4 races were much more exciting Thursday night, for some reason they were just parades on Friday night. I thought the TV was good overall, showed most of the fields and most of the races, talked about more than just the leaders.
Totally agree that they should televise BR or Crandon instead. Is it really that big of a deal to have a live show? It's delayed anyhow, what's a few more hours?