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

Late models cannot make as much horsepower because they have to be naturally aspirated sprint cars are fuel injected. You think sprint cars cant be tied down with shocks? If laye models are stuck better than sprint cars why are sprint car laps faster??

I will ask Schatz this question next time I see him and revisit, but I can tell you what the answer is going to be.

What?? Naturally aspirated is an engine that relies on atmospheric pressure to provide air intake.... without a super or turbo charger. A fuel injected engine in a sprint car is naturally aspirated. And wide bore late model motors do put out sprint car horsepower numbers. Yes sprint cars can be tied down with shocks, but they do not have the chasssis adjustments available through the j-bar and more  bar angles and cage indexing to induce LR drive and induce more bite. At least to what a LM is capable.  I would suggest if you dont even know what a natural aspirated engine is, not to bother Schatz.

Sorry to break some of your bubbles but although a rolling chassis is more expensive for a late model it is not way more expensive than a sprint car roughly 10 to 12 thousand more and if a late model engine is 40-45 that would even it up since a new sprint car engine is going for in the ballpark of 60gs   

Never say profitable and racecar in the same conversation... without major sponsorship it's not happening 

Port Royal and Selinsgrove get good fields of Late Models and packed grandstands for big late model shows. Winchester, Hagerstown and pretty much all the tracks around that don't run sprints weekly are Late Model tracks and have survived for years on those. A lot of the tracks in Northern PA and tracks like Stateline, and others in the area are also big Late Model tracks along with Ohio which has a few sprint car dominated tracks and is otherwise a hotbed for Late Models. The West Coast has fewer Late Models than sprints no doubt but the point is that Late Models are significantly more widepsread than Sprints, by far.

Even the areas where sprints are most popular the Late Models still exist and usually have a lot of cars. Not to mention the South and Midwest are massive areas compared to basically just Central PA, Ohio, California and Knoxville. The other thing is that if Sprints and Late Models don't exist at a track then its probably a UMP mod track (aside from in NY) and those are very similar to Late Models which results in local drivers from that area also moving up to Late Models (many of the drivers from the area of the country where the USMTS is big have moved on to Late Model racing with huge fan bases from their mod days).

Really only a few late model fans outside ot the south an midwest! I have been to the world 100 many of times and I see plenty of liscense plates from states that are not located in the south or midwest.   I am from PA and I enjoy all kinds of racing and especially the Late Models since they actually make passes before the A main.          

Modifieds & LMs probably run at way more tracks in the Northeast than sprint cars.....

Same is true for the upper plains.

Just check out a copy of this paper some time to see how popular LMs (actually; modifieds a lot more) are in the Northeast: https://aarn.com/

I've sat next to plenty of people at Port Royal who were straight up LM fans. Sprints were just a novelty to them. Grandview is a major hotbeds for Modifieds

Let's take a slm and a 360 sprint car and see what kind of times they turn.  For the dollar amount I'd  put my money on the 360.  For the expense it takes to put one over the other I'm saying the slm costs are much higher.  Talk about drag and downforce to move each one around the track is what gives the sprint car the advantage.  If the slm did not have the elephant ears on the front corners it would slow them down considerable.  It is the same with the 1" wicker bill on the trailing edge of the top wings.   

As for area's of the country. New York and New Jersey are dominated with big block mods. Central pa, sprint cars, but you drive 100 miles south and it was late model territory.  Hagerstown/Winchester at one time had large fields with drivers that could race and win anywhere.  

Times have changed. The NE mods are still strong at many tracks. The sprints still have good fields but there not what they were at one time. The late models are barely getting full fields at Hagerstown and winchester today. 

You're comparing apples and oranges to vaguely support your opinion?

What about:

Limited apples?
360 apples?
Crate apples?
Limited, crate apples?
Claim apples?
Late model street stock apples?
Regional series rules apples?

What about 
410 oranges?
ASCS 360 oranges?
outlaw rules 360 oranges?
305 oranges?
Racesaver oranges?
4-barrel oranges?
limited oranges?
Non-wing oranges?

Seems like it would be difficult to compare the "typical" late model to the 'typical" sprint car because there's nothing typical about them. I think you'd find there's a lot more late models out there than sprint cars.

ps. no one has yet touched on the costs of what it takes to fix either type after a crash. 

Texan Gary Wright ran both late models and sprints in the 80's, when he decided to go the "racing for a living" route, he said he could make more $$ racing the sprint car than the late model, plus he said he hated hanging a new body every week on the late model.

Winchester, and to a lesser extent, Hagerstown, have been hurt by changes in the area.  The population has changed from small town folks to city/suburb folks, not exactly the type who go to local race tracks much less have race teams.  I'm an exception - a small town kid who grew up loving dirt track racing and never stopped, even after I moved to the DC area.  Old Dominion Speedway was a 3/8 mile asphalt track in Manassas, VA that opened in 1939, but died when it could draw neither cars nor fans from the surrounding area.  Hagerstown has also suffered from poor track management.  I used to go there often, but the quality of the racing surface dropped badly and the drivers stopped showing up.  Fans, like me, followed suit.  

Want to make $1 mill in racing, start with $2 mill, betch you won't have the $1 mill left after a couple of seasons at most, regardless of class, engine, chassis or series....

Just curious as to what part of town you're in.  I'm out in Sterling and have all but given up on Hagerstown and Winchester.  Potomac was always a joke.  I'm usually at Lincoln or will make the trip across the bridge to Georgetown to get a LM fix these days.

I'm in the Burke area.  I've given up on Hagerstown; the drive isn't worth the quality of the show.  I really miss the days when they had two divisions of late models and street stocks - all with good fields that produced good racing.  I like the track at Winchester, but you have to work to find a good show on their schedule these days.  My aging bones don't care for the concrete seats on the front stretch, either.  As family schedules allow, I get Lincoln a few times a year and love it.  I've haven't been to Georgetown, but it's on my list.

Bingo.  I can't believe how many people are still trying to pencil out profitability with purses and tow money.  It ain't happening folks!  You either start with money, (and I mean a lot of money) or run well enough that someone wants to throw money at you to be their billboard!  The other option is running 20th every night and eating noodles for 3 meals per day.  

When did it start to become impossible to make money (or breakeven)  as a car owner in sprint cars? Was it ever possible? I feel like somewhere in the late 80s/early 90s car owners started to disappear and kind of morphed into the 'pay to play/I'm going to hire my son to drive my car' model it is today.