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

cubicdollars brings up the point of other sports (football, baseball..etc) and what parents spend on their kids. Believe me some parents spend just as much to get their kids to be the next sports stars. Sending them to certain private schools who put out star atheletes, camps, and on and on. The spending by wealthy parents on their kids is not limited to sprint cars.

I do think Dave brings up some great points.

In this day and age if there were no wealthy parents there would be a lot fewer Sprint Cars.

And by the way. When the Schatz family Sprinter used to show up at Cedar Lake some of the local guys looked at him as the kid with the silver spoon. Donnie was still in high school and the family had more money to spend on their racing than most of the other local teams. Everyone knew he was good but there was always that question of how much of it was the equipment and how much was talent. Obviously he has proved anyone that used to think that back in his 360 days wrong.

Stan Meissner

Hey staggerman, you bring up a good point. Yes parents are spending thousands on their kids for other sports camps and classes or spending megabucks for their daughters to become cheerleaders. I don't spend thousands sending my 14 yr. old son to specialty baseball camps because he basically knows the fundamentals, just needs more repetition and he will be fine. His goal is a baseball scholarship and his Jr. high coach already told him what he needs to do, and that is not spending thousands. I am seeing alot of the boys my son has either played with or against, whose parents spent all that money, quit baseball and other sports because they were tired of it and burned out.

Much the same with the little rich kids in todays racing. They spend all their money for their kids to become successful and that is possible even with limited amount of talent. They all want their sons to become the next Jeff Gordon or Tony Stewart or become R&D driver for a top NASCAR team. That is totally wrong. And then in the end I see these teenage boys who came in like a storm with an unlimited pocket book get burned out and quit the sport, leaving their parents to sell off the equipment at half the price.

Dave is right and I like his direction. The top majority of sprint car drivers have been covered over and over and not really interesting to read anymore, which is why I don't buy or subscribe to any magazines anymore. In my opinion, coverage needs to go to those who work hard 40 hrs. a week to not only make a living but also have money to do their hobby that they love and care for so much. That would almost fit your weekly racer who travels to different tracks and racing series, all to be back at work Monday morning.

David Smith Jr.
www.oklahomatidbits.com

Really?? I heard he brought $250,000 to the team and that is why he is in it. I don't think OKCFan was knocking him, just stating the fact that rides are bought these days.

Another interesting point. When I was a kid my cousin and uncle wrenched a Supermodified driven by Jerry Richert Sr. This was in the early 60's and my dad would stop by the garage and have a beer with the guys while they were working on the car. Hall of Fame driver, Knoxville Nationals winner and many time IMCA Champion Jerry Richert would be there sometimes. I knew him as the driver from Forest Lake who worked at Whirlpool on the east side of St. Paul. Back in those days nobody mentioned the words career in regards to Sprint Car drivers. They were just guys who worked at local businesses during the week, hung around the garage and went racing on the weekends. Those were much simpler times. Open trailers, crack open a beer after the races and shoot the breeze until track management turned the pit lights on and off indicating the gate would soon be locked. We watched a lot of other drivers who are now considered "legends" who had great "careers." I think you could have asked those guys back then what their career was and they'd have responded immediately with their day job. Others in that group included Barry Kettering, Russ Laursen and Scratch Daniels, all were working guys who liked to race on the weekends.

There are still people out there just having fun racing but they're not going to end up in any HOF like those guys from the 60's did. H*ll, if those guys I mentioned were just getting started today they might have ended up making a living racing if they were fortunate enough to land a ride so somebody could see how good they were. All of them were bigger in stature than today's Sprint Car drivers and all were working men with regular jobs who today would struggle to be able to afford to race.

Stan Meissner

Dustin brought Donahue Harley Davidson, Loukes & Associates and one of the family businesses, Lindquist Pole Buildings, to the new team. Only one was a family business, the others signed on to help out with the Lindquist 360 team and it's no secret that they came along to help out this season as they're all prominently displayed on the car. My point was that Dustin started out with only the family business and had to prove himself before those other businesses signed on with his 360 team.

I'm sorry if I misinterpreted OKCFan's message but it seemed to be implying that Dustin didn't have the necessary talent to have gotten the ride. I'm kind of anal about defending the drivers that come out of the upper Midwest because they never seem to get the credit they deserve.

If you read my posts on the old Open Wheel Wizard you'd have seen me bragging up a couple of Wissota 360 drivers by the name of Schatz and Whitney. I took some heat about that back then but I continued to tell the rest of the Sprint Car world that they were going to make an impact. Another good one was Kent Winters and now lo and behold his son Scott is making a name for himself with father Kent manning the wrenches. If you're a Late Model fan I bragged up Jimmy Mars, Pat Doar and Joel Cryderman and all of those guys are well known by Late Model fans.

I have been wrong about a few but we won't talk about those

Stan Meissner

thats cool STanM I understand that. I wasn't trying to take any sort of a shot at Lindquist, I saw him a race a few times down by OK and at Knoxville and he has a lot of talent. My only point was that there were better and more deserving drivers that didn;t get the shot....and these were the drivers that he used last season whenever the mood suited him. He didn't have a full-time driver so he called up a few that would give him a chance to win whenever they hit the track. But the whole time he could care less bout the great drivers in his car - he's just lookin for anybody who can bring a bunch of doe tot he table. Definitely not a knock on Dustin Lindquist. I wish him the best of luck. If anything I'm knockin against Guy Forbrook. But I can also put myself in different shoes and see why Forbrook would want a situation like what he has now. He's not the footing the entire bill himself.

BTW I understand your sentiments about drivers from your area (upper midwest). I don't like knockin on ANY locals outside of my area, as I have never seen enough of them or anything like that to form much of an opinion. But speaking of Minnesota drivers.........Minnesota's Roger Rager had a pretty decent run with the Sprint Bandits this week. Glad he did well.......especially after making that far of a tow!

How much would could a wouldchuck chuck if a 
wouldchuck could chuck would

360's were going to be the $$$ answer for the high cost of a 410, now 305's??? What a bunch of **** , If you let them use Titanium and all that other high $$$ stuff you will be right back to where you started. It's insane to do the same thing over and,well you know.

Half the lies they tell about me aren't true. 

Yeah, old Roger still knows how to get around the track. He's the only active driver still in the sport that spend some time in my relatives cars and they got out of racing in 1976. Speaking of Rager, he's the first driver from our area that Donahue and Loukes got involved with. Now in addition to Roger they're helping Dustin out and last year Donahue was sponsoring Craig Dollansky as well but I'm not sure if they're on board for this season.

I think you can relate to how I feel coming from an area where we've got a lot of talented racers that don't get much recognition from the rest of the country. This isn't exactly a hotbed of Sprint racing so I can understand why that is but there's some good racers up here. Guy hasn't had a Minnesota driver in his car for many years and I think Dustin is going to learn a lot from him. On the other side of the coin Dustin is good with the fans and a great representative for the sponsors and that is something you need to have nowadays. In addition to that Dustin has a lot of fans up here in the area where the Forbrook team is based out of so I think it's a good move. Iowa teams hire Iowa drivers, Pennsylvania teams hire Posse drivers and California teams recruit talent from their home state as well. We're very happy up here to see Dustin get this opportunity and Mr. Forbrook I think might be sticking with this deal longer than what we've seen in recent years.

Dustin is definitely going to be going through a learning curve this season as he's never seen many of the tracks he'll be visiting for the first time. I think he has already proved right from the outset down in Florida that he can go to a new track and have a good night. He's only going to get better and I'm really looking forward to seeing him in this car. I think the amount of support that he brought to this team might result in more stability than you've seen from them in the past as well. You look around at all successful racers and the one thing that stands out is that they've been together for a long time. With Dustin the Forbrook team has that opportunity to get that consistency they seem to have been missing.

Stan Meissner

Argie: you really want a story?... look no farther than Allan Krimes!

http://alankrimes.com/

http://www.ijustwannarace.com/alankrimes.htm

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7374012418042718318&hl=en

http://www.ydr.com/racing/ci_4146049

theory: rich owners can buy everything they need to dominate 410 racing.

if this theory was true, the #20 car should be pounding the competition...let me know when that starts working.

cubic: i'm shocked (sic) that you failed to mention Krimes, certainly you have seen him race? maybe that would screw upthe momentum of your conspiracy theory!

Lincoln 1845 ft/.35 mile T1=118MPH 
Eldora 2287 ft/.43mile T3=135MPH
Port 2716 ft/.51 mile T3=TBD
Grove 2792 ft/.53 mile T3=135MPH
Selinsgrove 2847 ft/.54 mile T1=136MPH
"I didn't move to PA from El Paso in search of better 
weather." Van May

BIGFISH you keep bringing up titanium and while it is expensive I have found you can buy quite a bit of lightly used titanium parts (driveshafts, torsion stops, etc) at a decent price at swap meets, especially in PA and IA since basically all the 410 guys have the lightweight stuff. We have bought titanium bolts for a entire car this year on e-bay for under a $100 as there are good deals out there. With the ASCS weight rule you can put together a car without titanium and still be close to the 1475. Why outlaw lighter components when you have a weight rule to regulate the sitution.

Krimes is impressive. Krimes, Carber, etc, are true inspirations for up and coming racers everywhere. They made the transition to 410s look easy. I'm not sure of the Krimes' sponsorship situation, but I believe their team is family owned. I also consider Craig Keel and Donnie Kreitz Jr. low dollar owner/drivers. I am hoping to see Kreitz get some victories this year.

 
 
 
They don't even know how to spell sprint car 
much less chromoly...http://www.ycmco.com

OK,here's the site where some of the owner ,drivers from ASCA are discussing the problem and money involved. Why don't you just post that all they have to do is go on ebay etc, to make it all good. I'll be looking for the post,even better the reply's....Kenny http://www.abcmotorsports.com/index.htm

Half the lies they tell about me aren't true. 

A minimum weight rule does not make up for less rotating weight. There's a significant difference between saving weight on wing supports, torsion stops, etc. versus saving weight on lower shafts, drive shafts, brake rotors, etc...CZ

Yep,and they can also use the "saved" weight and place it on the bottom of the car,a definite advantage. Overall weight does not tell the whole story.

Half the lies they tell about me aren't true. 

We are as blue collar as you can get,we just got back into sprint car racing after many years off, I think the thing that seperates our type from big dollar teams is we cant afford to tear stuff up more than a couple times a year or we are done, we know that going in and have to race accordingly.A local big dollar team destroyed a car on saturday night - by the time I got to their shop Sunday they had a better peice all done and ready to go for that nights races. They looked at the scrap alun. as beer money. I would have had to recycle to buy some old used parts that noone wanted .If we are able to compete and roll it in (little old rinky)trailer we are happy.

I think as far as Sprint Car racing goes the term "blue collar" might not be in the same context as it was 20 or 30 years ago. Today the "blue collar" Sprint Car owners I know might wear a blue collar to work but they're business owners, home builders, excavating companies or in the case of the Lindquists they own a pole barn and hardware business. My cousin who owned Sprint Cars in the 60's and 70's was a welder who punched a time clock. Today unless somebody who punches a time clock for a living has some generous sponsors they're probably not going to own a Sprint. Maybe some type of limited Modified or Stock Car but for the most part Sprints are out of their reach.

I know one guy who truly is blue collar in the punch the time clock sense who put together an IMCA Sprint Car for his kid a couple years ago. They even won a Feature at Arlington, Minnesota, same place where Lindquist started in Sprints. They scrounged around for used parts, bent wings, used tires, and managed to stay out there for most of a season until the wadded up a car and hurt the motor. Last year they had to park it which was a good thing for me because now he helps other racers in the pits and always has a cooler full of cold beer for after the races

Stan Meissner

The 305's may be the coming thing, but what happens when they follow the trend of the 360's..... when the 305's get to $30,000 are they gonna start running V6's? When does it end? Even around here, some of the mini stocks have 10 grand in their motors...

Fenders are like vacuums... they both suck.

Stan it's too bad our "local 360 series" doesn't exist anymore. Yeah, I know the late models can put on an OK show, but I really miss the wings up here.............

Fenders are like vacuums... they both suck.

That's exactly my point,it keeps happening over and over again..Oh, lets allow this and that until your right back to where you started.

Half the lies they tell about me aren't true.