Do you think it's possible with the proper weight break for a 360 to be competitive with a 410? It could would work on the smaller tracks but what about IRP, Winchester or Salem?

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http://www.pavementsprints.com/news/030413_hamilton.htm


The Must See Racing Series opens next weekend at Five Flags Speedway and Mobile International Speedway. Davey Hamliton will be competing in a 360 c.i. car amongst virtually all 410 c.i. engines. Davey will be helping out with a testing experiment to see if given the proper weight advantage, if a 360 c.i. engine can be competitive with a 410 c.i. engine.

"Pavement sprint car racing really needs a big race to help the sport grow. There are so many different groups that either run 360's or 410's. We need to figure out how to get everybody together. The rules should be made for us to be able to get all of us together. That's the purpose of me driving for Lenny (Puglio) at the first two Must See events. I think I get a 100 lb weight break. We'll see how it goes".

The way I see it from an outsiders perspective is this: Let's say that the 360 does succeed. Starts winning a bunch of shows and proves it's the way to go. It might cost an owner 10k to shed that 100 lbs for the weight break, then you're going to have the guys that can afford to do that start to win the shows. The next step is for the other owners to shelve the 410's they own, buy all new aluminum 360's that cost more to build than new 410's to build. Then they go and build new super lightweight cars with carbon fiber and titanium everything. Before long you will have the haves and the have nots and that will hurt your series. I think Sprint car racing is as healthy as it is right now because everything has stayed the same for so many years. Don't fix it if it's not broke!

In my opinion, you need to look at pavement midgets for an example. You might find yourselves running down the same path and that is not good!

Kim and I attended the Pikes Peak International Raceway (paved one-mile oval near Fountain, Colorado) USAC sprint car event which had Western 360s running against restricted 410s. Even with the chosen restricters in place in the 410s injectors, they still dominated the event. I do not remember details, but I think this particular 360 vs 410 experiment died a quick, quiet death.

Those 360's were cast iron block 360's with very little weight break per USAC rules.

HOSS has always had 100 pound weight break for the 360's. In fact when Tom Isch ran a pavement series before HOSS, he paid an extra $100 for the highest finishing 360 and $50 for the next. A few years ago (2008 if I remember correctly) my partner in PDP Racing (the first P, Jim Payne) lead 28 glorious laps at a HOSS race at Illiana speedway in an ASCS legal 360. He made a bad decision going around a lapped car and got passed. Tim Cox, who at the time was in Don Lambert's car and was winning everything in sight, got around him on the white flag lap to regulate Jim to third.

For those that have never been there, Illiana is a big flat half mile. I will admit Jim started on the pole, but I think he put his right foot to the floor at the green and never lifted.

So, can it be done? Yes. And if anyone can, a driver of the caliber of Davey Hamilton can. But give me a big fire breathing 410 over a 100 pound weight break any day.

Tom Paterson
PDP Racing

so is this one

Actually, the USAC West Coast pavement 360 sprint cars were allowed aluminum blocks. There may have been steel blocks there. I never understood this decision as I didn't know of any other aluminum 360s being run in the country.

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The Whole Sprint Car scene has been cut into 87 different ways , split car counts & in my discussions with fans it has drove them away

On the West Coast just in USAC we have had USAC/CRA , Western States, Western Classic , WC360's all running under various rule packages & has fractured the car counts to the point that the Oval Nats/Western World draw car counts in the forty's , with vary few cross over in cars ( if you were under one rule package you would prob had 60-70+ cars @ each event last year )

2 years ago I talked to teams, promoters, Hoosier Tire etc (mostly with positive response) to do some testing to come up with a formula to get 410/360 & dirt & pavement cars to be competitive against each other on both surfaces

Still waiting to hear from USAC (glad I did not go on a hunger strike )

Just for the record, the MSR rules state IRON block 360's get the 100lb weight break not aluminum block. Also, does anyone remember what kind of weight break the V-6's got back in the day with USAC? Or were there no weight rules being enforced then? Those cars were awfully competitive at Salem, Winchester, and IRP!

200 pounds in 1989 I think. Then Vogler got to looking so good and fast, they eventually took the weight break away----which made the Vogler/Hoffman v6 sprinter even faster! Fuel checks came up okay too.


Only thing was , halfway through a few of those features Vogler was fighting the car a bit more than earlier in the night.