Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

Just to be clear, I'm really just talking about the heat races.  If someone earns the pole for the feature then that's fine, even though they may run off with it.   At least there may be lap traffic to contend with, or maybe someone gets faster at the end and chases them down.    Invert the heats, but reward them for passing the cars.   Maybe like Knoxville?   Of course I'm sure that'll start another discussion...

Brad- how 'bout don't put 12 cars in a heat race? The same math that is used to determine that there are not enough cars for four heat races can also be used to determine there are too many to put in four heat races. The teams starting in the back of a 12 or 13 car heat race have no incentive to come back next time High Limit is in town.

Maybe take a look at what Brett Deyo has done with the northeast mods and split it into two regional titles north and south but instead east and west. Now I'm spitballing here but it might work instead of stepping on too many toes. Make a midweek title also if so desired separate or combined between the two. 

I like to see atleast some races or if car counts are big that they do something like a "Run it Back" type style heat races!! How they decide to do it or the many other ways to do it is up them! Example could be like a group heat 1 would base off where they started for the first 8 laps of a heat race or whatever laps may be or should be depending on the track but  say 1st part of heat race is done then run a quick 6 lap heat race and have the cars that started the 1st section of heat race 1 start backwards towards the rear and cars that started in the rear start up front of section 2 of Heat race 1!!! Duel heats!! Gives the little teams a chance and it would put on a show at the same time!!! Average their starting and finishing in both duels some how and sets up your dash all together at the same time without doing another pull your number where you start in the dash type of stuff because I've it soooooo many times the best car from hot laps to qualifying to heat races gets punished by that little draw for that dash and has to play catch up the rest of the night!!! 

If your talking weekly Knoxville, weekly needs tweeking. Sure they get points for timing and heats and it lines up the main but if you get quick time you make the A main even if you drop out of your heat. AND say you didnt get a good time in qualifying do to equipment failure, you can start the tail of the heat and win it and only be rewarded still going to the B main. The other part on weekly that sucks is if the car count is 20 and under the quick time guy can dog it in the heat to ensure he gets front row of the A main when they invert for the A. 

If there's no qualifying & starting heat lineups are picked randomly, nobody is getting "punished" for being fast... straight up racing. Rewards guys who are fast in traffic rather than fast on an empty track

That could've been a variation of it.  My understanding of the rule was the leader of the race could take off anywhere between turn two and the start finish line.  Ever since I learned how this rule worked, I never was a big fan of starting out in turn four with a cone rule.  Too many people try to jump or time the restart.  I liked the outlaw restart because the leader still had an advantage.

So are you saying that escalating costs of racing should just be ignored?  That's what was done in NASCAR and look how it turned out for them?  In reality it didn't really hurt NASCAR from a car numbers standpoint terribley, yet.  15 years ago they had roughly 50 people qualifying for 43 spots.  Today they have roughly 35 people qualifying for 40 spots.  Yes there's significantly less cars but still enough cars to put on a quality race (However it's really hurt them in other parts of the sport).

But the difference in NASCAR and the WOO is NASCAR is a traveling circuis, the WOO relies a lot on local drivers for their show.  I don't think anybody is going to want to watch a race where 12-15 race.  So my personal opinion is the WOO has done a poor job of controlling or lowering costs for sprint car racing.  A few big easy things I can think of is first outlawing exotic metals on racecars (titanium, carbon fiber etc), everybody is now using them and it's done nothing to help the racing, only raise the price of it.  The other thing is, it's time for a new engine architecture.  Chrysler sells Hellcat Chargers and Challengers with roughly the same amount of horsepower as a WOO sprint car with a factory waranty for roughly the same price as a 410 CI engine. I'm not saying a hellcat motor dropped into a sprint car is the solution, I'm just saying there's cheaper ways to make horsepower.  Another thing I see as beneficial is a gear rule, to keep the RPMs around 7,000.  Also from what I've heard there's ridiculous amounts of money being spent on shocks right now, so what it they did a thing where officials put spec shocks on the cars right before the race and pulled them off right after?

I know the big issue or argument with making these kinds of changes is that it makes people's existing parts obsolete.  But there's ways around it.  You can issue a 5 year phase out plan.  If they want to run exotic metals make them add weight somewhere else.

Yes sprint cars are expensive and always have been but I think the idea of "fuck the local guy if he can't spend what we do" is an attitude that will hurt sprint car racing as a whole.

It's ironic you think the soaring costs is what did in Nascar.  What did in Nascar was Nascar trying to bring down the costs by introducing the IROC-like, Car Of Tomorrow.  (COT)  The racing, after this introduction, sucked even worse than it did before, but there was an illusion of great racing because 60% of the cars finished on the lead lap.  When Nascar actually thrived, the guys with the big budgets, and high-dollar motors ruled the entire series and it was not uncommon for 1 or 2 cars on the lead lap, while the 9th place finisher was 10 laps down.  I'm not going to say I'm not in favor of motor restrictions, but people have to be on board with it, and no one really is.  If you mention the only 2 things that could realistically bring down motor costs----crate engines and motor claims----- everyone freaks out.  But, those are the only 2 things that could do it.  Period.  I can't think of anything else.  

The good news for me is, I have never spent a single penny on a racing engine, nor am I responsible for how much money teams want to spend.  I also don't have any ambition at all to figure out how to bring motor costs down as that is up to the teams to do.  The cost of the race motor escalated the minute the 2nd race car was built.  Yes, it's 2023, but if you go back 100 years, someone at Indianapolis in 1923 was bitching because the cost of racing parts and motors was too high to be competitive.  Guaranteed.  Fast foward 20 years.  Costs will be too high.  Ask my grandpa back in 1980 and he'll tell you the cost of farming makes it not worth doing anymore.  Fast forward to 2000, and my dad would tell you the cost of farming makes it not worth doing anymore.  Go to my local bar in 2023, all the farmers sit there and tell you the costs make it not worth doing anymore.  Yet, they all got in brand new trucks, and drove away in 1980, 2000, and 2023.  

So, I'm not interested at all in what they spend, nor listening to the latest version of "things today are so expensive".... 

I like to watch good sprint car races. It does not matter if they are 305's, 360's or 410's. Winged and wingless. I also like midget races but not as much (yet). When the big guns come to race and some locals join the field it is interesting. I do not expect the locals to fare well against the traveling big guns. If they do that is great.

What about increasing the car weights a little? That might make using titanium, carbon fiber, etc.. less of an advantage.

Drivers/teams/car owners will always seek getting an edge. The more rules there are the more expensive it will get, look at NASCAR. Those teams are really up against a wall due to NASCAR rules, templates, parts supplied by one source, etc.. Crazy!

I was watching on Flo the racing at Stockton on Saturday night. There were wingless 360's, winged 360's and winged 410's. The announcers mentioned one guy's car was running his own chassis and he built his own engines. It is great that this can still be done even if he did not have much success, I honestly did not pay attention to how he did. Just have to give him a lot of credit. I'd bet his total investment was way less than the others. The three classes had a total of 58 entries (MyRacrPass). It made for a decent TV show I think. The track looked a little rough at times even one winner commented on it during the heat races (I think). He compared it to a farm field or something like that.  Keep in mind that the more cars racing the more the track can get beat up during preliminary races. Grooming and repairing the track is a by product of racing on dirt.  Money is also made selling swag and concessions. NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, etc. temas make their profits from tickets, swag and concessions. Thoose events have plenty of down time. Racing may not.  TV revenue pays for the overhead (the actual teams). They survived without people in the seats during the pandemic, they did not prosper. You don't need an accounting degree to figure that out. After the fans returned to the stadiums the prices for concessions went thru the roof.  Using plastic to pay everything at an event only means people found out how much they spent long after the events.  OUCH!

Hope this help clear things up?

"Hope this help clear things up?

You're joking, right?

Brad-

If you have enough cars to run a C-main, don't. Run 2 B-mains, taking the top 2 cars from each. Running a C-main generally means that the guys who started up front will advance to the back of the B-main- where they generally finish. Twp B-mains would help good cars that had earlier misfortunes make up some ground. If Saturday's WoO race had run 2 B-mains, Gravel and Kahne would have still made the feature. Guys like Macri and Randall may have made the feature. 

Seems like an excellent idea to me.

Some folks are always in a self imposed fog . . . . .

Starters. These cars need starters. 

Get a traveling safety team in place.  

Some tracks out there have no business getting a race. The speed of the cars today is exciting to watch. Depending upon what area of the country your racing at almost every car there other than the tour followers is there to fill the field.  Some California guys on the bullrings and of course central pa  where do you see a local guy winning ? 

TT's, inversions and everything else is never going to change. Track prep is so dependent on local weather it is really difficult to get the track to make all the fans happy.  

Safety

Their new car definetly sucks, but there are quite a few more reasons why NASCAR is bleeding fans.   

......and it has zero to do with the costs of the race teams.  That was my only point.  Nascar made racing more affordable for the teams, not more expensive.  And yet, they still hemorrhaged fans.  Yes, there are less teams in Nascar, but that is because sponsorship dollars are not as easy to get, even with the cheaper cars and motors.  Remember when Nascar teams needed a garage full of cars for all different tracks?  The COT and NextGen, coupled with plug and play "IROC" parts were aimed at easing the incredible costs to put a Nascar team on the track.  I believe there are entire teams budgeted for less than what they were paying the driver alone back in the early-2000's.  

My point was, bringing motor costs down will not "save" sprint car racing.  Motor costs will continue to grow as long as team owners continue to buy them.  

Wrong! What is needed is more and better push trucks.  Knoxville appears to be the only track with enough push trucks to go around, and some of them are not really up to what I think they should be.  Around 25 years ago, St. Francois County Speedway in Farmington, Missouri had 6 or 7 actual push buggies plus a wrecker or two.  I once timed them and they pushed off a 20-car A main in less than 1 1/2 minutes.

I would disagree.  This is why we are still stuck in the stone ages.  What does a starter weigh today?  And the answer is to add more 70's and 80's pick-up trucks to the infield.  This is why we don't really move forward.  It's 2023.  These cars should not need to be pushed.  I really don't care either if they are, but if someone asked me what made the most sense, I'd say it's a no brainer............get rid of the push trucks.  

Sptint cars and NASCAR both have wheels and both race mostly race in a circle. Beyond that, I think they are a lot more different than they are alike. That means comparisons between the two are seldom apples to apples. 

Lowering engine costs didn't help NASCAR car counts because the owners are millionaires with big corporate sponsors. Sprint car racing is about 20 full time teams that depend on sponsorship dollars and several hundred local drivers with small amounts of sponsorship money. I'd say the costs of engines and parts make a tremndous difference in the car count at a sprint car race.