: Do you think you’ll have to expand the March Meet to a four-day event in the future?

BB: We may have to, because right now we are turning away cars and that is a shame when people who want to come across the country and attend the March Meet and we are forced to put a cap on it turning cars away, that’s a real shame.  The cap right now is five hundred total racecars, and that is a lot.  If we have any kind of weather conditions or any delays of any kind, that is asking a lot of us to complete that race and the last thing that I want to have to do is have a bunch of cars that we can’t race.  We can’t control the weather, but that can happen, we run in March, which is not a good time of the year to be outrunning the weather factor.  We have been very lucky the past few years and that has been great for us, but I think a fourth day is something we’ll have to look at because there is such a growing interest in going to nostalgia racing as a whole.  Not just Bakersfield, but more guys want to go to Fontana, Speedworld, Sacramento, Boise… we are all going to have to let these shows get bigger because more guys want to do it.  It’s great!

: Is there still a future for bracket racing at Auto Club Famoso Raceway?

BB: Oh yeah there is, obviously we are spoiled when it comes to nostalgia racing and we tend to bring in those kind of shows more than anything else with the American Nostalgia Racing Association (ANRA), West Coast Hot Rod Association, obviously the March Meet, Drag Fest and the Reunion.  We have Friday night racing, but the problem with bracket racing is that financially it is tough to do – there’s not a lot of money being made off of that and as a track operator you are there to turn a profit.  I can’t make improvements in our property unless I turn a profit so you tend to lean toward holding events that make money, that’s just the way it is in business.  You want to make money first before anything else, there’s just not a lot of money for the track involved in bracket racing so it tends to get the back burner a little bit, we are guilty of that, but we are holding our Summit Bracket Series, we are not cutting that at all, same as it was before an eight-race series, but bracket racing is getting tough, nostalgia racing is kinda taking over a little bit and that is mostly index racing that is heads-up racing.  Bracket racing is evolving. That's a good way to put it.  It’s fun to come to a nostalgia race when there is a good crowd, it’s really frustrating to come to a bracket race when no one is there to watch it, that’s a tough part of us running the Summit Series and look at our Lucas Oil Series to a certain extent, that’s NHRA Racing too, but when you say Nitro… that works for Bakersfield.  You know we have nitro fans here from the 1950s. Obviously we never stopped racing Nitro – when the NHRA Nitro ban took place in the mid-fifties we kept running Nitro here, so I guess are fans are “Nitro spoiled” I guess we’ll say and they’ll come out when there is nitro, when there is not – they tend to stay away.

: Your father John keeps talking about retiring, is he really going to do that? Can he do that?

BB: No (Laughing), no, I’ve told my dad to his face, that he is not going to slow down until we are putting dirt over you; he’s not going to stop.  Yes, he does keep talking about retiring, he’s 67 I believe, and he’s certainly earned the right to retire.  He’s worked hard all his life, he put me through college and my sisters, helped us all out to get us going, he’s earned it, but I wouldn’t fault him at all if he just wanted to walk away some day, but he’s been there since the first March Meet and I really doubt he can walk away.  I never sat him down and said, “What are you going to do, what do you want to do?”  He’s talked about it, but that is usually during the season when we are all burnt out, we are all working hard, we are all tired and then in the off season sit around for a couple of weeks and say, “Man, we need to get racing again, we are bored here.”