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

More weight, more regulation, more similarity in the 
cars.... that will ensure plenty of thrills for years 
to come.  Only the most average talent behind the 
wheel will be needed with such awesome equipment on 
the track!
minthess 8.28.14

I'm guessing at least first 2 rows of Sat. B-Main would stick & stay. Whole lot of racing Fri. to get back to A-main

My guess is that the top 24 will stick (16 in the A and the top 8 in the B). The next 25 or so will opt to run and then 2 guys will get top 10 starting spots in the B that would have probably been in the D main Saturday instead.

I still HATE the re-setting of the field Friday Night. The best part of the week was the low-buck (or inexperienced guys) that qualified 17-20 of the feature or toward the front of the B.

I'll give you a scenario. Driver XX has a GREAT night and is 27th in points (would have put him starting 7th in the B Main on Saturday with a guaranteed payout of $1100 on Saturday Night).

Now, he's forced to run Friday (provided that 17-26th in points elect not to race Friday) and he has motor trouble, bad time trial, or blows a tire and now ends up mid-pack in the C main on Saturday. Not only has he endured another night of expenses on his car, his guaranteed payout on Saturday night went from $1100 to $825. That $275 could be the difference between him coming back to compete the following year.

I still think that the car count will DECREASE significantly in years 2 and 3 of this format. It's great for the big teams, but it's terrible for teh little ones (and there are a LOT more little teams than there are big teams).

If they combined their points from Friday and their qualifying night and set the remainder of the B - E mains, I'd be ok with it (you'd only be locking the top 4 finishers from Friday into the feature and Wednesday and Thursday qualifying nights would still carry a lot of weight toward the lineups on Saturday Night.

Now your qualifying night can basically be thrown out and have no bearing (so, you can suck it up on Wednesday, qualify terrible, run terrible in your heat and miss the A, and then bring a new car, motor, combination out on Friday and all of a sudden you can be in the A main or start 11th in the B. Little teams aren't the beneficiary here IMO.

For those that say they don't care about the little teams, the most popular win EVER of the Nationals was Bobby Allen in 1990, he was a "low buck" team at the time. Carmen Manzardo was a low-buck team and just outrunning Steve Kinser for 4 or 5 laps of a heat race made him a legend to the fans. Max Dumesney outrunning Wolfgang during the "Race of States" is still revered today (and it's been nearly 30 years), because he was a low-buck team outrunning the Best driver and team of the day.

Take those stories away from the Nationals and it becomes "just another race" to the fans.

Slight digression: I was reading about "Scrambles" & Mystery Feature" on previous Friday nites. Could somebody explain what they were?

(3) scrambles

Top 10 starters in the A, B and C mains - FULLY INVERTED by POINTS, so theroretically, fastest car at the rear. Paid finishing points and passing points, Points were added to the drivers total from their qualifying night and they could better or worsen their starting position in their respective feature (but still no worse than 10th. Scrambles also paid lots of $$$ for EACH, not just the A scramble.

Race of States and Mystery features were Pre-scrambles, 40 cars were randomly drawn (some were Non-qualifiers running Friday night, some were locked into Saturday. Random draw for starting position. (Race of States only had 1 representative per state (and Australia and Canada were also represented). In 1990, Lasoski won the Race of States from 15th I think it was (without a yellow) and Dave Blaney won the Mystery Feature from way back as well (without a yellow).

Got hard to make the big teams (Kinser) run on Friday, so they went to the scrambles to force them to run.

The Scrambles were enacted in the mid-90s to get more cars to run on Friday night. A lot of teams quit running the Mystery Feature & Race of States so they didn't risk tearing up their car. The top 10 in pts in the A, B, and C features (after Wed/Thurs) - or 1-10, 21-30, and 41-50 in pts ran Scrambles that could "scramble" the starting lineup on Saturday. They paid finishing pts and passing pts to add to your Wed/Thurs total. The scrambles were ok the first year since they were a novelty - but pretty uneventful after that. The only thing I really remember from 15+ years of scrambles is Brazier spinning in front of the field in turn 2 and Kenny Jacobs flipping the Hughes Wheel & Axel #94 pretty hard. I think the Mouse junked it and had to put a new car together the next day.

The Mystery Feature & Race of States were run on Friday nights in the 80s and early 90s and were meaningless races in the grand scheme of things (pts, where you start Sat night, etc) - just paid out some pretty good cash. I think the Mystery Feature drivers were pulled out of a hat (hence the name). The Race of States was a race with each driver being from a different state. I'm not sure how they decided who the driver was if there were multiple drivers from one state (ie, Iowa). All of the states represented had their state flag mounted to the guardrail on the front stretch, and I think the winner got to take a victory lap with their state flag if they wanted to. It was a pretty cool deal, and wouldn't be a bad race to resurrect if they wanted to further shake up Friday night's program.

Friday's new deal actually spreads out money to more teams. Instead of putting money into the A and B scrambles, or some exhibition race, it takes the non-qualifiers deal and expands it, look at the purse:

Friday:
A - Main
1. $4,000.00 2. $4,000.00 3. $4,000.00 4. $4,000.00 5. $3,000.00
6. $3,000 7. $3,000.00 8. $3,000.00 9. $5,000.00 10. $4,000.00
11. $3000.00 12. $2,500.00 13. $2,400.00 14. $2,300.00 15. $2,200.00
16. $2,100.00 17. $2,000.00 18. $1,900.00 19. $1,800.00 20. $1,700.00
21. $1,600.00 22. $1,500.00 23. $1,400.00 24. $1,300.00

B – Main’s (x 3)
1. $800.00 2. $800.00 3. $1,200.00 4. $1,100.00 5. $1,000.00
6. $950 7. $800.00 8. $850.00 9. $825.00 10. $800.00
11. $775.00 12. $750.00 13. $725.00 14. $700.00 15. $675.00
16. $650.00 17. $625.00 18. $600.00 19. $575.00 20. $550.00
21. $525.00 22. $500.00

Total Speed Sport Knoxville World Challenge Purse: $39,525

Total Friday Purse: $152,315

Everyone who races on Friday will make a minimum of $500 and most will make a great deal more (39 will make at least $1,000). If you take the World Challenge out of it, the new Non-Qualifiers format pays those guys $113,000, which is considerably more than the old format.

There will be some that benefit from the 'mulligan' night, and some that will be worse off. I also wish they would've incorporated the Wed/Thurs point totals in the Friday program - but it is what it is. There should be some pretty hard racing in the heats (to get into the top 2) which has been lacking in many a Friday night non-qual show... and the racing for the top 4 spots in the feature should be pretty intense as well. While I love that an underdog won in '90 and there was some cool stuff that happened in the 80's... that was over 20 yrs ago, and things have changed. Not all for the better, but things have changed.

Yes could somebody please explain to me who gets to keep their points and who doesnt, I love the idea of the new format ,just dont completely understand it,

More weight, more regulation, more similarity in the 
cars.... that will ensure plenty of thrills for years 
to come.  Only the most average talent behind the 
wheel will be needed with such awesome equipment on 
the track!
minthess 8.28.14

If you finish 17-20, unless you're Donny Schatz, I think you're staying put. Even 21-22 I stay put. But if you're running well and have some trouble that drops you to what would be the 4th row of the B (23-26), I might chance it. Regardless, it'll be awesome to see 50-60 cars run again on Friday night.

I'll see if I can help...

This is the way it was explained to me.

Drivers in position 17-26 will have the option of starting in the first (10) positions of Saturday night's B Main or throw out their qualifying points and start all over from scratch on Friday night. This gives them the "chance" of finishing in the top (4) of Friday nights A Main and thus making it into the last (4) starting spots of Saturday nights A Main.

My understanding is that these (10) drivers will have a time limit after all the points are calculated from Wednesday and Thursday, (something like 30 minutes) to declare if they want to stand on their points or requalify on Friday. Let's say (6) of them decide to keep their qualifying points and (4) decide to gamble and requalify on Friday. In this case, Knoxville will go to the next (4) drivers in points, 27-30 and give them the same option.

If (5) drivers decide to keep their time and the other (5) decide to requalify on Friday, then drivers 27-31 will be given the offer to requalify. In other words, the number of drivers who choose to requalify, the same amount of the next drivers in points will be given the same option. Regardless of their decisions, the requalifying option will stop at this point and not be offererd to any more drivers. The rest will have to requalify on Friday night.

This is how it was explained to me. If it ends of being different, you have my wife's permission to go ahead and shoot me.

Currently we are planning on (7) heats, (3) B's and an A for the non-quailifiers on Friday night. I'm really looking forward to it...CZ

While I see everyone else's points and they are well taken, I think this post should sum it up for everyone. There seems to be plenty of money on the line for those that run on Friday night. And let's face it, we are talking about 50-60 cars that were going to run anyways and now there are going to be another 20 or so cars thrown in. No powerhouse team that has qualified to start in the B-main in the top 6 or 8 is going to come out Friday night as they will make the A main anyways. I think this night will be made up primarily of middle of the road teams (as far as budgets go) fighting a few remaining powerhoused teams to leapfrog into the A-main. I think it is an absolutely awesome idea and let's see how it plays out. With the payouts shown, I see no reason any low budget team should be steered away next year. They would have had a 60% chance of being in the Friday night show anyway. The non-qualifiers night show is one I have been looking forward to since they announced it. When was the last time you were excited to watch the drama on Friday night?

Agree about the Friday night drama. In the past the non-qualifiers show was sometimes fun to watch but it had little bearing on Sat. When was the last time a car went from Friday to the A main on Sat? I can't remember but there hasn't been many lately. There will be this year!

Another thing that hasn't gotten much attention is the number of cars transferring up the alphabet on Sat. In the past it's been 2 from the E,D,C and 4 from the B. That made it really tough for anyone to start in the E and get to even the B. This year, unless I'm readin the payouts wrong, they're transferring 4 from each. That gives a guy a much better chance. It's almost impossible to start in back of the D or C and get to 2nd. Getting to 4th is much more doable. We may get to see a run like the old days. All you have to do is run 4th in everything and you're there. And 50 laps makes anything possible in the A.

Thanks for pointing out. didn't even notice that little tidbit about the 4 transfer spots.

Saturday:

Saturday Events: E feature, D feature, C feature, B feature, Knoxville
Nationals Championship feature.

The B, C, D, and E feature will take the top four finishers to the tail of the next event (if there are scratches, there may be more taken for a particular event)

You are right, very interesting.