If Natchez had a racetrack, balloon race weekend would be our Talladega, our Daytona 500.

Just like NASCAR fans flock to racetracks all across the country for race weekends, thousands of fans flock to Natchez for the sights, sounds of a different kind of race — the Great Mississippi River Balloon Race.

But unlike the gasoline gulping monsters of the super speedway, the balloon race pilots don’t earn great riches off their hobby — they mostly race for fun.

Many balloon race sponsors participate more for the love of the event and for doing what is good for Natchez than for the personal gain for sponsorships.

That love for Natchez and the desire to create a fun event to help local cash registers ring and raise some funds for the Historic Natchez Foundation — the race’s beneficiary — was and is the point of the whole thing.

This week, race organizers — a group of nearly tireless volunteers — announced a desire to create a rainy day fund for the event to help create a safety blanket for the years in which the weather doesn’t cooperate and ticket sales are down.

Events such as the balloon race, which draws big name, regional musical acts in addition to all of the balloonists, are an extremely costly endeavor.

Asking local businesses to help become “friends” of the race and put $100 into a rainy day fund is a good idea and one that is more than fair for an event so large and so helpful to the area’s economy.