When a club applies for a national they nominate two tyres for that meeting (loosely - a dry tyre and a wet tyre).
We did put an application in a previous year for a national on dirt and if it rains and there is still time to switch then run on the astro. It was awkward to put into words and wasn't well received by the voting committee, it meant uncertainty and possibly having two cars ready for that meeting, plus tyres (at the time I don't think any of us expected having two astro cars as some do now!).
With our dirt track, its arguably better than astro if we have an odd shower as we can pull the covers over and the track restarts at the same pace as prior to the rain, however if we get a very wet day or prolonged showers you lose a lot of track time, whereas you can still carry on racing on a damp astro track if its drizzly all day, it's just a disadvantage to heats immediately after any rain as the track get quicker as it dries.
Dirt tracks are high maintenance, but when in top condition they're really good.
Astro is easier to manage and what most people are used to, even some of the American dirt tracks are moving over to astro, plus recently Yatabe Arena in Japan.
Dirt track driving is (I believe) harder than astro as throttle control is so much more important, a lot of people don't like that, particularly 2wd. RHR dirts clay is quote slippy and doesn't really groove due to our weather, this does however make it excellent on tyres, if we sugar it could potentially be a set per run or two, noone wants that.
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