"Heluva Good! Sour Cream Dips at The Glen, it's a mouthful and I've already gotten the joke," said Rust, the track's president. "But that's OK as long as the partner gets in there and finds value in it. It's good to have fun with it, too. It's a race. It's a NASCAR race. I hope we have it good for a hell of a lot more years."
Watkins Glen is lucky. Despite having to scramble for a new title sponsor for NASCAR's Sprint Cup race after Centurion Boats pulled out of 2009 for financial reasons, the historic road course is holding its own. Terms were not released when Heluva Good!, headquartered in Sodus, N.Y., signed a one-year deal with the track in March, but the value of a Sprint Cup title sponsorship can exceed $1 million.
Rust said reserved camping for the weekend of the NASCAR race in early August is sold out, track rent is also booked for the season, and on opening day in April nearly 1,000 motorists -- a track record -- paid $20 apiece to take three laps around the twisting course made famous by some of the greatest drivers in history: Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart, Bruce McLaren, Graham Hill, Mario Andretti, Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt, Jeff Gordon, and Tony Stewart, to name a few.
"We're a tourist-related area, and where we might lose people from farther outside the state coming in, New Yorkers might look in their own back yard," Rust said. "Hopefully, we'll be OK."
Just in case, Watkins Glen has teamed with McDonald's to lower ticket prices in the McDonald's Family Grandstand for NASCAR weekend. The track, which hosts the Finger Lakes Wine Festival in July, also is replacing most of its vehicle fleet with hybrid cars, including the pace car at all races, and has a new recycling program for everyone camping at the track during major events.
One of those events is an IndyCar Series race sponsored by Camping World. The inaugural IRL Watkins Glen Grand Prix in 2005 was staged in September and the second was held in June before the track decided that Fourth of July weekend was a better fit. Although attendance has not approached NASCAR's numbers, the track's open-wheel legacy offers hope for the future.
"That is the race we have to continue to grow," Rust said. "It's an expensive sanction fee for us, but it does well for us. It's still a young event that moved around a lot in the early going. ...
"It grew last year, and it was one of our only events to grow, and we're actually tracking ahead this year. It offers a big upside for us, but we've got to let people know it's here."
Watkins Glen will take on added importance in the coming years because one of the region's biggest sports attractions is ending. Officials of the LPGA Corning Classic announced last month that the tournament would cease operations after this year's tournament later this month.
With the demise of the tournament, Watkins Glen has lost an important partner in its effort to attract visitors to the picturesque Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, which hasn't been immune to the economic stress all around.
"This whole area is a slice of America. People are losing their jobs, but we're not seeing a dip like you might see in Southern California or New York City or some of the larger metropolitan areas," Rust said. "We're not dropping off drastically, but it's tough times right now."
Although its outlook is now improving, Corning Inc., title sponsor of the Corning Classic since its inception in 1979, has been hit hard in recent months. It had to cut 3,500 jobs and saw its first-quarter profit fall 99 percent.
"The economy has put a stranglehold on trying to meet the requirements. We would be digging a hole for ourselves," Corning Classic president Jack Benjamin said. "We just didn't want to get into the position of putting this on a credit card."
NASCAR has raced annually at Watkins Glen since 1986, continuing the road-racing tradition that began in 1948 and made the area a motor sports mecca. Formula One raced at The Glen for two decades, and the U.S. Grand Prix became a fall tradition until financial difficulties led to its demise after the 1980 race.
The track was not well-maintained in the ensuing two years, but in 1983 Corning Enterprises, a subsidiary of Corning Glass, partnered with International Speedway Corporation to buy the track and rename it Watkins Glen International.
NASCAR weekend, which also features a Nationwide race and a Rolex Sports Car series event, regularly attracts a crowd of more than 100,000.
The Corning Classic provided a financial impact estimated at between $15 million and $17 million. That pales in comparison with the effect the track has on a region known as much for fine wine as the roar of race cars. Rust said a study commissioned by the track shows an overall annual economic impact of more than $175 million.
Even so, Rust isn't taking anything for granted given the economic climate that has resulted in a drop in attendance and TV viewership for NASCAR's top series, and put Detroit's car companies on life support.
"I feel pressure because it's going to be a tough year to compete and get people to come out and spend their discretionary dollars on motor sports," Rust said. "We've got to work very hard to just maintain where we were last year. If we can do what we did last year, if I can keep the admission numbers flat, if I can get camping flat, we're in good shape."
He also knows when all else fails, it also helps to smile.
