Chicagoland Speedway cuts to the chase

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Scott Paddock has his work cut out for him.

The first-year president of the Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet has to bring fans back to the 10-year-old track after two subpar years that saw a drop in attendance and a new schedule that doesn’t include an IndyCar race but does feature the first NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup race in September.

And that Sprint Cup event — even though it is the first of the sport’s 10-race playoff — is going head-to-head against potential baseball pennant chases, the final round of the BMW golf championship at Cog Hill in nearby Lemont and hopefully the Bears, if the NFL and the union come up with a new collective-bargaining agreement.

“There is still a lockout, isn’t there?” Paddock laughed. “NASCAR needs to have motorsports entertainment to be successful in this market. For 26 weeks, everyone is going to be talking about the first race in the chase [in Chicago].”

Paddock, who played college basketball at Notre Dame, was named Speedway president in January after a stint as Gatorade’s director of sports marketing. Paddock oversees the 1,300-acre property that also includes the Route 66 Raceway drag strip and a dirt track.

Paddock replaced Craig Rust, who abruptly resigned last September. Rust resurfaced in March as president of the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, Ohio.

But before Rust left, NASCAR announced in August that it was changing the 2011 Cup date for Chicagoland from July to September, hoping the first Chase race would generate more interest in the sport here.

Because of the move, the IndyCar series could not find an alternate date at the Speedway and decided to drop the Joliet track from its schedule.

“When I first came on board, I sent out a letter to most of our fans because I wanted to have a forum,” Paddock said. “That was one of the things they were most vocal about: the IndyCars not coming here this year. It may be a smaller audience, but it is a vocal one. I’m going to make it a priority to get those discussions going. I think [IndyCar] wants to come back.”

The Speedway’s first major date — and test of its new marketing scheme and Paddock’s leadership — is June 4 with the Nationwide and ARCA series races. With NASCAR’s date change, this will be the first time in the Speedway’s history that a Nationwide race is run on its own and not piggybacked onto a Cup race. Nationwide is considered the sport’s minor-league affiliate.

Danica Patrick and Trevor Bayne should help attract fans to the Speedway.

Patrick is in her second season running a part-time NASCAR Nationwide schedule — 12 of 34 races — and she made history March 5 with a fourth-place finish at Las Vegas, the best-ever finish for a woman in NASCAR. But her contract with Michael Andretti’s IndyCar team expires this year, which could set up some drama in Joliet if Patrick doesn’t renew with Andretti and announces she will race stock cars full time in 2012.

And then there is Bayne, who at 20 became the youngest Daytona 500 winner ever in February. Paddock and other Speedway representatives hosted Bayne two days after his Daytona win and were impressed at his fan following.

“That would normally be a trip to New York,” Paddock said. “But because NASCAR is focused on Chicago, they made sure he came here.”

Dawn Martin, the Speedway’s senior manager of consumer marketing, also is hedging her bets on Bayne and Patrick helping to bring fans back to the track.

“Her team has been great, and we want to work with her in this market and do some things,” Martin said. “[Bayne] came out and enjoyed his time here in Chicago and we got great feedback. He is such a great story.”

The track’s first night race in 2008 was nearly a sellout of 75,000 fans, but attendance figures dropped sharply in 2009 and 2010. Part of the problem was the track’s bundling of tickets for not only the NASCAR weekend in July, but also the IndyCar weekend in September. Many NASCAR fans did not want to attend the IndyCar race, so they stayed away in 2009. The ticket policy was changed last year to unbundle the tickets, but the damage was done.

Paddock admits that the ticket bundles were a big mistake as the economy worsened, and that the Speedway should have listened to fans who did not want to buy the IndyCar bundle and terminated the ticket policy sooner.

“We are going to let the fan feedback drive what we do from a marketing and guest-services perspective,” Paddock said. “We’ve blown up that track-pack commitment. If you want to attend any one of our races, you have the ability to do that.”

Paddock also said the Speedway will allow coolers for the first time, bowing to fan demand.

“We have an opportunity to bring fans back into the fold that maybe we’ve priced out,” Paddock said. “We have to make sure we hit it out of the park with a memorable experience.”