I've run a little site that's covered a small NASCAR series (formerly Busch North, then Busch East, now Camping World East Series) for about 12 years now. I've gone from NASCAR telling me "we don't feed web sites" to having their media people asking me to help them out with some program they're running or to be at an event they want a little extra coverage at.
Like I said, I started it in 1996 and my coding ability hasn't progressed much since that point. It's content-driven rather than any ooh-ahh design appeal. We do live at-track reporting and then after the event I'll put up a bunch of photos that the wife takes over the course of the event.
Back when it started I had a message board but shut that down when it became too much work to babysit, and haven't looked back. I figure if you do a good enough job producing content, you don't need the public chiming in, especially when you don't know what they're going to say.
For the curious:
EastSeries.com - Complete Coverage of the NASCAR Camping World East Series
I also do some sites for a few of the teams on the series for fun money but will probably be giving that up, too much work for not enough fun. Might even give up chasing racing sooner rather than later, might be time for a new hobby.
For stuff that isn't really racing related I throw it on my sporadically updated, minimalist 'personal' site
Claffie.com