"Turbo" I agree with what you're saying, but would like to play "devil's advocate", somewhat. In the "good old days" that you make reference to, consider how the race formats were made up. For a long time, you had two classes of cars, late models (later street stocks) and modifieds. The traditional starting field was 24 cars.
There'd be 3 heat races, a consolation and a feature. And due to the lower cost to compete, back then, you'd generally see 28-32 cars in each class, vying for one of those 24 spots in the feature. Over time, costs went up and the fields dwindled. And at the same time, to a certain degree, so did the crowds. Some of the excitement went away, as heats and consolation races no longer had as much significance, because all the cars automatically made the feature. The preliminary races were simply to determine starting positions, nothing more. Great for the racers, no doubt, but less excitement for the fans.
This, combined with fewer people simply not interested in cars, anymore, and it's just become difficult to cultivate "die hard fans". And also, even after all these years, you still have the same old "elephant in the room", the disgruntled neighbors, who moved near an existing race track, then whine about the noise. In all honesty, I got away from the races for a while, but got back to the shows at Spencer's, in 2019 and 2021. And when there, I ran into a few guys that I knew, "way back when". We got talking, and the subject of noise came up. They were telling me that the same people, 20 years later, are STILL complaining, and still want to get the track shut down. It makes a promoter think twice, before investing any money into improving the facility, in an effort to attract more people, wondering if he'll get a return on it, should the neighbors finally being successful in getting the track closed down for good.