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  *Comments on the 1999 Advance Auto Parts 300:*
  View the most recent comment <#7> | Post a comment <#post>


  1.   RaceFanX posted:
  02.13.2020 - 3:04 pm
   Rate this comment:      (1)      (0)

Rookie Derrick Gilchrist passes Jimmie Johnson late in the race and then
holds off eventual champion Tim Sauter en route to his first-ever ASA
victory. This was just Gilchrist's third ASA start after Ken Schrader
called him up to race his #52 after his success in NASCAR All-Pro racing.


  2.   JSPorts posted:
  02.13.2020 - 3:11 pm
   Rate this comment:      (1)      (0)

Jimmie's 1st career win would come 4 races later at Memphis. Wish this
series was still around.


  3.   RaceFanX posted:
  02.13.2020 - 3:22 pm
   Rate this comment:      (1)      (0)

Everyone does, ASA was both an incredible hot bed for breeding NASCAR
talent and a great series in own right with a colorful cast of regulars
who hung around year after year (Eddy, St. Amant, Senneker, Hanson,
Holzhausen, Mike Miller, etc.).


  4.   Sector posted:
  02.13.2020 - 3:51 pm
   Rate this comment:      (1)      (0)

Would the series be virtually dead had it been still around?

In recent years ARCA, NASCAR Pro East & Pro West series weren't
attracting a lot of "talents." Indy Light Series is basically another,
and even the NASCAR Xfinity Series has been a huge joke in recent years,
which would that be the case for ASA these days?


  5.   possum posted:
  02.13.2020 - 6:57 pm
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@4 - that's an unanswerable question :-) However, considering that in
the ASA's glory days there were half a dozen or more similar series (ASA
in the midwest, All-Pro in the southeast, ACT in the northeast, etc),
and all of them are gone now, odds are if the ASA had stayed as a
"Cup-style" series it would have disappeared long ago. As a super late
model series, had it been well-managed (which it was not, neither piece
of it) conceivably they might have held together better than the likes
of the USAR, given their tradition and fan base. But odds are that
rising costs and falling interest in motor sports would have left them
no better than the other SLM series we have today.


  6.   RaceFanX posted:
  02.13.2020 - 7:28 pm
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Given how many of the smaller stock car series failed or were contracted
in the coming years I doubt ASA would have made it. The short track
exclusive series, minus Pro Cup, largely died out and while ASA made
some moves to lower costs their push to become more of a national series
and add superspeedway races didn't really work out. They never fully
recovered after they got burned by the TNN TV deal going south for
circumstances beyond their control.


  7.   KW posted:
  02.13.2020 - 8:39 pm
   Rate this comment:      (0)      (0)

Rex Robbins book "Let's Go Racing" explained a lot about the end of ASA.
He'd sold the series mostly due to health issues that both he and his
wife were having but also the TV deal was a killer. He said something
like he knew how to grow the series but he wasn't up to trying to make
it smaller like it needed to be to survive. ASA was at the right place
in the right time for national level short track racing, but that time
ended.


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