Daytona fans not racing to buy tickets

February 14, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Reggie Jenkins stands on a corner across from the entrance outside turn four at Daytona International Speedway with a homemade sign that reads “Buy/Sell Tickets.”

The 47-year-old scalper has been working this spot in early February for almost a decade. It’s usually prime real estate as thousands of fans make their way from the adjacent parking lots into the home of the Daytona 500.

This year, though, things are different. Here it is Friday afternoon, barely 48 hours before the green flag drops in NASCAR’s Super Bowl, and business is decidedly slow.

“Usually, Friday things pick up a little,” said Jenkins, who lives in nearby Deland. “People are looking to upgrade their 500 tickets or try and pick up a couple of tickets to Saturday’s [Nationwide Series] race.”

Instead, all Jenkins appears to be working on is a sunburn.

A car stops to ask him what he’s got and when he says he’ll take $100 for grandstand tickets with a face value of $135, the car pulls away.

“It’s hard to sell ’em when you know there’s so many out there,” he said.

For the first time in years, NASCAR’s biggest race is struggling to fill every seat in Daytona’s massive grandstands, part of the fallout from the nation’s economic collapse.

While NASCAR officials still expect a sellout, they had to cut select ticket prices just days before the race to get there.

“This is a fixture in American culture — this sport,” NASCAR chairman Brian France said last month. “We have seen tough times before. We’re actually optimistic about ’09 for a lot of reasons.”

So is Richard Beverly. The 38-year-old Beverly started coming to the 500 with his father 20 years ago. He’s only missed a handful of races since, and didn’t opt to change plans even as the economy crumbled. He watched Nationwide Series qualifying on Friday afternoon from a deck tucked against the lake in Daytona’s infield.

Beverly bought his tickets for Speedweeks almost a year ago and decided to cut short his vacation last summer to save up a little scratch for sunny Florida in early February.

“How does it get better than this?” said Beverly, who lives in Atlanta. “If this was the only vacation I knew I was going to get all year, I’d still do it.”