Race track owners, sanctioning body officials and sponsors have a
“problem.” That problem is often the racers, the fans and yes, even
those of us in the media who fail to faithfully mention, in every
story, the full name of a particular race track or event. Given their
choice, the management at the track in Norwalk, Ohio would like all of
us to call the facility by its now proper name, Summit Racing Equipment
Motorsports Park, and quite honestly, we don’t have any problem with
that. They’ve paid for that name change, and “deserve” to have the
track referred to by it.
By the same token, if we’re following “procedure” we should also be
referring to the event as the NHRA Summit Racing Equipment Nationals at
Summit Racing Equipment Motorsports Park.
That’s in the ideal world. In the real world it’s going to take years,
and maybe even decades before anyone consistently refers to the
facility or the event by its full and complete proper name. Until then
everyone’s going to continue to reference the track as simply
“Norwalk.” When someone talks about the race they’re probably going to
call it the “Summit Nationals,” or maybe something even more
simplified, like the “Summit race.”
This is anything but an isolated problem. It’s somewhat
universal. Management would like us to refer to the Mac Tools NHRA U.S.
Nationals at O’Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis, but for all
eternity those of us who live and breathe drag racing will continue to
just refer to it as “Indy.” In reality it’s the AC Delco NHRA
Gatorationals at Gainesville Raceway, but to us it’s always going to be
either “Gsainesville,” or maybe “the Gators.”
