With a heat wave striking much of the U.S., Lonesome Pine Motorsports Park is offering a cool deal. How does watching the races from an air-conditioned suite, eating lasagna and salad, with unlimited foundation drinks sound? Sounds expensive, right? What if it costs only $29?
“The program has been a tremendous success,” Jeff Roark, general manager of the Coeburn, Virginia, track said. “It was 92 degrees on Saturday night, and we sold 40 seats in the suites on a first come, first serve basis.”
Corporate sponsors get first dibs on suite seating, with those companies often occupying the top floor. Lonesome Pine offers the rest of the space to the general public. With suite access also comes rooftop viewing for a unique perspective on the races.
“You have to think of everything outside the box to be successful in short-track racing today,” said Roark. “Selling those seats has helped. It’s turning out to be a great idea.”
Owner of Lonesome Pine Motorsports Park, Mark Ebert, also owns the Racing Experience. It offers a variety of ride packages in cars that range from NASCAR stock cars, to late models, to modifieds, at tracks ranging from Atlanta Motor Speedway to Wiscasset Speedway in Maine, to Evergreen Speedway in Washington. In addition to his duties at Lonesome Pine, Roark also serves as Vice President of Southern Operations for the Racing Experience.
Roark seems to understand the value of coming up with creative ways to bring people toward the sport and to a track that once sat dormant before his group took over. The track runs a NASCAR-sanctioned racing program on Saturday nights. It features conventional classes, such as late model, limited sportsman, super street, mod-4, street stock, pure-4, pure-4 rookie, Legend cars, and Bandoleros. However, Lonesome Pine isn’t opposed to trying other types of events.
“We’re thinking promotions all of the time,” Roark said. “We’ll have two Tour of Destruction programs, which were very big for us last season. We sold out for the program, which is school bus racing, an enduro, a demo derby and a motorcycle thrill show.”
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
