I for one never missed a Fri, or Saturday, yeah, we used to be able to run a full 1/4 program starting at 6:00 on fri and be finished at by 1:00am with 2 time trials on a fri., since I was 18. In the last couple of years my kids consumed more of my time and unfortunately they don't care for racing.
I pit with 4-5 other cars/families, and those which can, and do still want to run, skip the 1/8 mile days, which meant that we didn't race since Aug. We are lucky and appreciative though that our track still runs an 1/4 mile program occasionally and we'll be there those days.
Seems when I go to the track now the majority has RV's and enclosed trailers and acts like they are some professional team and they run their cars like professionals (take forever, need 8 people on the starting line, and 2 to put their bracket car in the beams, not to mention the sea of quads/ golf carts). Programs went much quicker when it was simpler.
My good friend has a mid 7 second rail, drives to the staging lanes by himself, burns out , stage, and runs and drives back to pits all on his own.
But it is America. Truly, thank God for that! Just my