the business of DIRT

By Adam Cornell

MYRACEPASS is a game changer in the dirt track racing industry. For the fans, it’s an app for mobile devices that allows the user to see driver info, track lineups and race results at an almost real-time rate. This increases fan engagement even while sitting in the stands at the track. For tracks, promoters and scorers, it’s a track management tool that has revolutionized how to register drivers, manage in-race lineups, track points and ease the process of end-of-night payouts. MyRacePass has proven to be such a disrupter in traditional track management, that we reached out to the people who built it. It may seem like it suddenly came out of nowhere in the last couple of years, but the story behind the birth of MyRacePass goes back a decade and a half.

“We’ve been at this a lot longer than most people probably realize,” Josh Holt, co-founder of MyRacePass said recently. “We started this company back in 2008, so we’re coming up on the 15-year anniversary very soon. It was myself, Ross VanEck and Zach Camus who started it. Ross and Zach are very, very good programmers and developers. We each do what we do and without all of us, MyRacePass wouldn’t exist. A lot of what we planned back then in 2008, we’re seeing it come to fruition just now.

“My background was racing,” Holt said. “I started racing go-karts when I was 6, started racing sprint cars when I was 14. And it was the same story as most start up teams. We didn’t have any money and I had to learn marketing for sponsorships. I got pretty good at it and started helping other drivers with resumés to get sponsorships too. It was actually Zach who came and said, we should do websites for racers. And that’s kind of how the whole thing got started.”

“Initially, we started a company called Driver Websites and we built a lot of websites for teams and drivers,” Holt continued. “Once we had that footprint all across the country and we started working with tracks and started building the race management system, we eventually got to the point where we’re at with the app and the site and everything the way it works now.”

From humble beginnings, MyRacePass has grown into a company that works with hundreds of racetracks, from all across the country, listing the stats for thousands of racers. It took some hands-on experience to hone MyRacePass into what it needed to be.

“In 2012, I took on the management of Rapid Speedway in Rock Rapids, Iowa. Zach and Ross and I would be at the track each and every Friday night for racing and we’d think, what can we do with software to make this whole process easier to manage. The problem with being a promoter in a small town is you have to wear like 75 different hats to manage the whole thing. You have to be an expert in food vending, t-shirts sales, dirt surface and track prep, event planning and everything. So, we looked at the situation and asked, how can we make software that will make this process for promoters and scorers more efficient so it takes far less of their time allowing them focus on all the other things at the track? Secondly, how can we help to make this a really effective marketing tool for them as well, so they can more easily promote their track each week?”

“As a scorer uses our software, as they do the back gate check-ins, set the lineups, post the results, the live-timing, track the points and print the checks, the scorers aren’t just scorers anymore, they’re marketing for the racetrack. They are essentially providing content for race fans at the track who can watch on the app as it happens in realtime on their phones,” Holt said.

Indeed, the live access to the timing, lineups and results all in the palm of a race fan’s hands completely changes the dynamic of being at the track. You’re no longer limited to only knowing the top five finishers from the lap board, you get the entire list of results just about as they cross the finish line and the scorer posts the results. The MyRacePass app has now become an essential part of watching a race live and in person.

“It’s our goal to create a tool that makes promoters and scorers more efficient at what they do, give them a vehicle to easily promote the track and offer a fan-engagement tool. Because in the end, it’s all about fan engagement,” Holt said.

“Additionally, for the casual fan sitting in the stands, they don’t know who that driver is out there. Maybe they know one or two drivers, but they don’t know where the others are from. So, front-facing that on their phone, they can look up the drivers and where they’re from and maybe they’ll get another connection there, like maybe they’re from the same hometown or something. Engaging the fans, while they’re at the track, connecting them to the action and what’s going on, that’s another big goal of our software,” Holt added.

“We did a soft launch of the MyRacePass app at the Wissota 100 in 2017, and then we did the hard launch at the Chili Bowl early the next year,” Holt described.

From that point on, it’s been a growing creation, adding more tracks, racers and app users ever since. To put some numbers to it, 80% of the oval tracks in the US this season alone have been touched in some capacity by MyRacePass. Whether that’s the track itself that uses the MyRacePass software or it’s a traveling series that comes through, MyRacePass has grown to have widespread use as of 2022.

For tracks that have considered using MyRacePass but aren’t sure of the advantages, it literally shaves hours off promotions, ticket sales, registration, scoring, points standings, and payouts. For fans it provides an even more intimate connection to the track. And even though there is a learning curve, MyRacePass has set up training and online groups to help with the onboarding process, assistance with learning the software, and an easy-touse resource almost like a Frequently Asked Questions message board that can provide ideas and suggestions for promotions, events and more.

MyRacePass provides racetrack management software that streamlines the processes that always take the longest: registration, ticket sales, tracking results, awarding points and paying checks at the end of the night. The software also provides content for the MyRacePass app which delivers fans a more intimate connection to their hometown track, drivers and the overall racing experience.

MyRacePass has created a reasonably priced solution for racetracks and promoters to have all the resources they need to run and promote an event no matter where in the country they are located. With the advent of better high-speed mobile phone service in rural areas and even satellite internet, even the most remote tracks will be able to utilize MyRacePass effectively.

When I said we are living in the golden age of dirt track racing in my column in the last issue, this is what I was talking about. Because of the ingenuity of people like Josh Holt, Zach Camus and Ross VanEck as well as the rest of the team at MyRacePass, experiencing dirt track racing in-person at the track will never be the same. It will be even better.

By Vahok Hill