[donwilshe]

Will there be in 2012 any USAC races for Sprints on Asphalt?

Sue

[usac99]

From what i've been hearing, NO . Usac front office is lacking in leadership!!!

[Dyno Don]

I remember the good old days when they ran Wincester 4 or 5 times a year and 2 of those were double headers with the Midgets. Salem was good also. And I can not forget The Thunder Series from IRP.

What happened to all the good racing?

[Seadog]

Originally Posted by usac99 From what i've been hearing, NO . Usac front office is lacking in leadership!!!

So where will we go to see REAL pavement non-winged sprint car racing in the Midwest? Is the Litttle 500 all we have then?

[duel]

Pat Sullivan has an article about this subject in the latest sprint car & midget mag. I agree with everything he says about usac not having the pavement as a part of the national title for sprints. These other pavement groups seem to be doing well with wings even and paying less than usac did. What is funny to me up here in Michigan is that pavemnet sprints are probably going to be the weekly or main show at Spartan speedway. Springport speedway is also supposed to start running non-wing pavement 410 sprints in 2012.

[thebus79h]

The reason the winged deal works, is generally speaking, those guys don't have a dirt car, and a pavement car to take care of (IE: Spend money on).

And I remember when there was guys that won the USAC title driving for two different people because one owned pavement cars, and the other owned dirt. There isn't any incentive to run a pavement car right now, or even in the last 5 years. Car counts have been terrible, and there isn't enough races to justify the expense.

[darnall]

Would it be completely unreasonable to make rules that forced the teams to use the same car on pavement as dirt? If EVERYBODY had to run a car with torsion rear suspension, a jacobs ladder instead of a panhard bar, left side steering gear, engine & rear end centered in the chassis, 53" front axle max, etc etc nobody would be at a huge disadvantage and it would be like back in the day when you could run a dirt show on Saturday then just change shocks, springs, ride height, wheels and tires and run Winchester on Sunday afternoon. All the parts I just mentioned come off the car after/before every race for maintenance & cleaning anyway so it really wouldn't be lots of extra work... Sure the big budget teams would have a separate car that always had the pavement set up on it but it would still be a dirt car so somebody with less money and more elbow grease could still be on a level playing field....combine this with a reasonable tire rule that kept daddy warbucks from throwin 4 new ones on every time his car hit the track and I think pavement could flourish again.


Would something like this obsolete a few asphalt only cars out there? kind of...it couldn't make em any less valuable than they already are and there are still a handfull of pavement only series to keep those cars on the track with or without a wing...hell Troy Decaire proved last year that a converted obsolete dirt car can be competitive on pavement with the Must See series...



I have been racing something for 28 of my 39 years on this earth and been a huge fan/student of the sport since I was 1 year old. My forst USAC race I saw as a kid was on the pavement at i-70 speedway in Odessa, MO. I loved it. I have seen USAC on some other paved tracks and always enjoyed the show although I do prefer dirt. I totally think there is a place for pavement racing and I agree that the combination is what made USAC special for so many years.


I will end this ramble with a challenge.....Somebody out there with lots of knowledge please explain to me why a plan such as this won't work. And because "that's the way it is" is not a sufficient argument....I need to hear some cold hard technical or logistical reasons this wouldn't work.....and remember, it used to work just fine until people started building cars just for the asphalt.

[Revolution Racing]

The short answer is that it DOES work. Or at the very least, it CAN work. This applies equally to Midgets, by the way. Now, the longer answer (there is ALWAYS a 'longer answer'), is that it would change some things, and if there is one thing that Sprint cars guys - and especially Midget guys - just don't do well with, it's change. Salem and Winchester were mentioned earlier in this thread. If sprinters went to a combo formula, those would be two tracks that would be off the menu for sure. Look at it this way, the reason that the pavement car evolved was so that we could run on larger and larger tracks. Sprinters at Salem, Midgets at Phoenix... man I love watching that stuff but if we went to a combo formula we'd be watching pavement shows on 1/3 mile tracks or smaller.

Don't forget about what has happened in the engine compartment over the last couple of decades - power is way up today compared to the combo car days. This also adds a lot to the equation.

I guess what I'm saying all boils down to this - If our choice is to say goodbye to pavement racing, or just to say goddbye to it on all of those big, beautiful and incredibly dangerous tracks, my vote is to keep pavement alive. One way to do that would be to bring back the combo car, and run short tracks. Its pretty clear that nobody has an appetite for slowing down the engines at the top levels (myself included), so this may be the best option we have.

[are39]

It would be difficult to make it work because it is completely regressive. Every racer that I know, myself included, wants to go as fast as they can go, to be the fastest. Pavement cars are built for exactly that, to go as fast as they possibly can on a pavement track, with the necessary means to adjust them as conditions change. And since a pavement track inherently provides more grip than dirt and doesn't change nearly as drastically, the cars can go to the maximum dimensional limits allowed. There is nothing stopping anyone right now from doing what has been suggested, torsion rear suspension, a jacobs ladder instead of a panhard bar, left side steering gear, engine & rear end centered in the chassis, 53" front axle max, etc etc. Why doesn't anyone? Because the combination doesn't provide the fastest car possible, or at least someone hasn't consistently proven it can be faster. And when you get down to using one car for both, once you convert from dirt to pavement, you might as well have a second car for the amount of things that need changing, unless a ride-height, crank-height, set-back, and almost every single aspect of the car is mandated. And if that happens, you have a spec car which definitely isn't what sprint-car racing was founded on. The last thing racing needs is even more rules to stifle innovation.
Here's a question, there seem to be plenty of dirt-track latemodels and plenty of pavement latemodels. Those cars are completely different, and purpose built for their respective surfaces. So why do both of them seem to co-exist just fine? How many series/sanctioning bodies actually run both surfaces anymore, ASA? Anyone else?
Chad Atkinson

[Colin Casserley]

I haven't seen much pavement racing in the USA, but a USAC show I saw at Winchester about 7 or 8 years ago was one of the best shows I have seen. There was only about 15 cars, but a great feature.

In the UK about 15 years ago we had similar problems where pavement racing seemed to be dying off as drivers had to have a "Special" to compete. We changed the rules allowing a maximum inside weight, minimum ride height and a few other tweaks in the rules which made asphalt and dirt cars almost identical. It saved pavement racing over here and we now have a healthy turn out of cars on pavement.