Last year, WAR sanctioned most of the races in the Heartland area. Valley Speedway ran a non-sanctioned program that raced more or less every other weekend, and there was a new group that came on last year called the Iowa Sprint League that started sanctioning races in Iowa and parts of Missouri.

In a couple of press releases that went unnoticed by most, there are going to be a lot more non-wing racing in the Heartland this year.

First, the Iowa Sprint League now fly's under the POWRi racing banner. This group raced mostly in Iowa, but did sanction some races in northern Missouri last year. http://www.powri.com/news/?i=80197

And a new Wingless group was formed to compete against WAR. This new group is called the Midwest Wingless Racing Association. Soon after it was formed, it formed a partnership with USAC. They already have nine nights sanctioned between Lakeside and I-35. https://www.facebook.com/MidwestWing...type=3&theater

Finally, if you look at Valley's schedule they are once again running non-wing sprints every two weeks. However, this year they are calling themselves the Valley POWRi WAR sprints. They did something similar last year with the midgets and they were a separate POWRi sanction. http://www.valleyspeedway.com/schedule/

On top of these three groups, there should be the traditional WAR sanction. It will be interesting to see how many of the Valley nights are part of the traditional WAR sanction. It will also be interesting to see how many of the dates are going to be on top of each other.

It will either be a great summer for nonwing sprint cars in the Heartland, or it will be a giant source of frustration with split fields every where you go.

Add on non-wing sprints on Wednesdays at Oskaloosa, albeit lower budget engines. Everyone wants a piece of the pie just not sure how big the pie actually is. We'll see.

According to USAC's website they are scheduled to be at Lakeside on May 1st. WAR is scheduled to be at Grain Valley across town on the same night

The next night USAC is at Pevely and WAR is at Wheatland

Hate to see even less shows in Illinois

Looked over the WAR schedule and was again disappointed to see that Illinois will host only 2 (Spoon River & Quincy) of the 46 dates on the schedule. I reckon those of us who have been observer's of racing in the Land O' Lincoln & crooked politicians for any length of time shouldn't be all that surprised. However, it's a disappointment for those of us Illini who are starved for wingless sprint car and USAC National Midget racing, nonetheless. The dirt late models are the 800 lb. gorilla in Illinois and everything else appears to be at it's mercy.

I guess those of us here in dirt late model country who love wingless open wheel racing should be grateful ol' Sarge keeps the only 2 remaining Champ Car dirt mile races alive here in Illinois. But, sometimes even those seem to be in peril given the lack of spectator support those two events receive given their proximity to Indiana, the undisputed national hotbed of wingless racing activity, SMH.

So, this is bigger than WAR sprints versus USAC sprints. USAC is sanctioning against a very successful open when weekend in Missouri. The bigger draw was the POWRi national midgets at Valley with WAR on Friday, and POWRi national midgets at Lucas Oil with WAR and ASCS Sooner sprints. This open wheel double header has been one of POWRi bigger early season shows. It is going to be the ninth year of this show.

I normally argue against the conspiracy theories and vindictive sanctioning bodies, but this really has a feel of payback for POWRi midgets sanctioning against the USAC midgets at the 11th hour at Sweet Springs last year. It would not be the first time USAC and POWRi decided to piss on each others shoes.

And I’m sure it won’t be the last!

Illinois may not have a lot of Usac midgets but you get a ton of PowrI which everytime I see them theres a bunch of the Usac cars racing. Plus IMHO Illinois has some of the best tracks for midgets around like Little Belleville, Macon and one I wish would race more at Wayne City. I"m not sure just how good the sprint cars would be on these little tracks , but the midgets are freakin unreal

The USAC National Midgets ran at Macon, Illinois in July of 2017 and the spectator turnout was dismal, at best. The A-main that night was won by Christopher Bell and stands to this day as one of the best races waged by any division of racecar's we've ever seen. The following night at Lincoln, Illinois Bell won again and put on a show nearly equal to the night before at Macon. The stands at Lincoln were so packed it was close to standing room only. Reason? The USAC Midgets were the under-card for the UMP Summernationals dirt late model tour. Without the late models I dare say the crowd at Lincoln would have been just as desolate as Macon was the night before. Those two nights in 2017 were the last time the USAC midgets were at either track.

POWRi is more than capable of putting on a very good show at Macon but ol' Sarge insists on running 4-5 support classes and as often as not the track is used up by the time the midgets run their A-main. Little Belleville is 4 hours one way so not many of us north of Bloomington-Normal are able to make the trip down there.

Looked like Jacksonville had good success with their Midget nights last year just looking at the results