Pavement Sprints
 

I know this has been brought up before but I was watching my old race tapes and a race from Winchester came on. It was the Thunder Series from long ago, there was so many cars they had a C-Main. It was pretty full field of cars for a C-main. Good racing I enjoyed it, but my question is what happened to all the cars? I see some new pavement series racing now but where are all the cars at? I know how expensive it is but why let them sit, race them or sell them. Spartan's last race only had 12 cars in the field. I'm missing something :43::

they were prolly runnin the saME CARS ON DIRT AND PAVEMENT BACK IN THE DAy, and hell yes there were lots of em

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Re: Pavement Sprints
 

There are a few groups with decent car counts. The Must See Racing opener at Five Flags had 29 cars and the TBARA opener had 24. I expect the MSR, HOSS and Auto Value series to do well this year. The Little 500 is still strong as ever.

All of these wing groups put on a heck of show.

The non wing groups like Spartan and USSA are new and they are trying to grow. The USSA race at Anderson this year grew to 20 cars (they has 12 last year).

hopefully there'll be 20 plus at chester on the 19th along with a nice field of supers/ i'm not much into pavement or wings, but thats a must see!

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Re: Pavement Sprints
 

The tire companies were the biggest killer of pavement sprint racing...the tires these days are WAY too good when they are brand new and much much worse after they have been heat cycled once...If a small budget team wanted to be competitive with USAC they had to put new tires on the rears and right front a couple times a night..nevermind all the testing that the big budget teams could afford to do to tweak their $4000 shocks just right...

The Must See series has rules in place to limit the amount of new rubber a team can use each night, and the difference in new and used rubber is much less drastic on cars with all that extra aero grip (wings) they have so that makes racing much more affordable in their series...

Seems like a couple years ago Winchester(I think) had a double header with USAC and MustSee on the card the same weekend, and even though there were 30 some sprinters at the track that weekend only 12-14 ran the USAC part of the show...mainly because the MustSee owners couldn't justify buying 8 brand new tires just to run one extra race. Even though all the travel expense was already paid and they were already there it would have been a huge loss for them to enter the USAC portion of the event.

So if you own a pavement car and the racing you have available has no tire purchasing limits you come out money ahead to just let the thing sit in a barn until it rots....and there's not a huge demand for used pavement cars so selling them is hard to do.

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I agree with every word of this. You want to about dead? Pavement midgets.....heading right down the same path, but no winged divisions to go run unless you go northwest to NEMA and who can afford to do that?

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From the USSA Sprint Car Challenge Series Rulebook:
1. A car must compete in the feature and heat races on the same right side tires that it qualifies on. If a right side tire is changed prior to the start of a heat or feature race that car will go to the tail of the original start for all the remaining portions of the event. If a tire is changed during the running of the feature event, the car will restart on the tail of the lead lap, or on the tail of the field if it is not a lead lap car. If more than one car changes tires they will line up for the original start based on their qualifying time. If more than one car changes tires during a red flag, they will line-up at the tail of the lap they were running at the time of the red flag in the order they were running on the last completed green flag lap.

2. In the event a car is required to run a semi-feature, the team may elect to compete with the right side tires the car qualified and ran the heat race on or use another set of USED right side tires. No sticker tires are permitted in the semi-feature. If other used tires are used for the semi, that team must put the qualifying tires back on for the feature event.

USSA also permits Hoosier and American Racer Tires to compete

Re: Pavement Sprints
 

From the USSA Sprint Car Challenge Series Rule Book:

A car must compete in the feature and heat races on the same right side tires that it qualifies on. If a right side tire is changed prior to the start of a heat or feature race that car will go to the tail of the original start for all the remaining portions of the event. If a tire is changed during the running of the feature event, the car will restart on the tail of the lead lap, or on the tail of the field if it is not a lead lap car. If more than one car changes tires they will line up for the original start based on their qualifying time. If more than one car changes tires during a red flag, they will line-up at the tail of the lap they were running at the time of the red flag in the order they were running on the last completed green flag lap.
2. In the event a car is required to run a semi-feature, the team may elect to compete with the right side tires the car qualified and ran the heat race on or use another set of USED right side tires. No sticker tires are permitted in the semi-feature. If other used tires are used for the semi, that team must put the qualifying tires back on for the feature event.

USSA allows both Hoosier and American Racer Tires

Re: Pavement Sprints
 

Looks like USSA did a great job addressing tire expense to help teams compete with them....big "Attaboys" to USSA for considering the car owners instead of the availability of hush money from tire companies...

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Well, let's see, '54. A good topic.

Back in the mid-80s, early 90s, ESPN was just hitting their stride. Early on, when they came on the air back in ....oh.... 1981-ish, they picked up sports that the Big 3 networks never gave much attention to: College basketball, the NHL, and auto racing. With the latter came NASCAR and USAC.

The boys who ran NASCAR realized that this was their segway into the limelight. The boys who ran USAC were the boys who ran USAC and were still smarting from CART leaving them. When compared to NASCAR, they were Muhammad Ali's slow white opponents.

NASCAR played every card right - Sponsors on the sides of the cars, playing up the moonshiner roots but the more modern transition in the 80s, great rivalries like Darrell Waltrip vs. Dale Earnhardt, and in depth coverage like what it means to put in a round of wedge in the right and what stagger is.

USAC had Bob Jenkins and Larry Nuber (two top shelf announcers) calling the shots with two cameras. They had Thursday Night Thunder. A great night to watch racing on TV - no one went to their local tracks but watched ESPN religiously. If you were lucky, you could tape it on your VCR.

Then they moved it to Saturday Night. The downhill slide started.

ESPN got a contract for Major League Baseball in the early 90s. USAC was a goner. I remember they actually cut into a USAC night to give the latest updates on the baseball strike talks back in the spring of 1995. This was the end. ESPN and USAC were not going to go much farther.

Meanwhile, by 1995, NASCAR had parlayed their early ESPN years into a mega hit. Granted, they used professional wrestling tactics and promotions, but all in all, NASCAR was here (up) and USAC was there (down).

All fingers point to USAC for blowing this golden opportunity by going low ball in their production/promotion.

Now, think back to the mid 80s and what were the pavement sprint drivers/owners hoping for: A shot at Indy? Maybe Plan B was NASCAR? Once CART started bringing in the high buck pay-to-drive guys, your Rich Voglers were fighting an uphill battle that they were not going to win. Sure, Jeff Gordon, Kenny Irwin, and Tony Stewart slipped into NASCAR on pure talent and what backing they had, but your average joe was done. To go big time open wheel racing, you needed $$$.

Now, what are the pavement guys racing for? A shot at Indy? NASCAR? Sure...... that's a nice pipe dream. They are racing as more of a hobby. I am not bad mouthing them by any stretch of the imagination, but they just do not have a chance at going up. They are pigeon holed where they are.

And to top it off, no TV coverage. As for sprints, the WoO sprints had it going pretty good there in the early part of the century with SPEED Channel and the Outdoor Network, but that fell off the table. Even that series is starting to look like they have a few dead buds on the branches.

Now the economy has tanked. With the price of fuel and the price of racing compared to the money coming in...... Need I go any further?

So: USAC missed the boat with TV promotions. NASCAR blew everyone out of the water. CART took open wheel racing to the next level and hate him or not, Tony George apparently tried to bring it back to the average joes but his management and structure for the series was a facade and a wash, and what little sprint car action that was left, the WoO swooped it up with Kinser and Swindell. Should I mention pro wrestling again?

Nice topic, though, '54. Thursday Night Thunder at Winchester and IRP (or whatever the hell it is called now - ORP, LOR, A-E-I-O-U and sometimes Y) was absolutely FANTASTIC back then.

Re: Pavement Sprints
 

Spot on Stevensville Mike. Very well written and I agree with all of it. Thank you!

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You can check out the current state of pavement sprint car racing in Indiana for yourselves with a stop at Baer Field Speedway tonight (Saturday) when HOSS opens the track's season.

Re: Pavement Sprints
 

To paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of pavement racing’s demise are greatly exaggerated.

I was going to just let this thread die as I was too busy to comment, but after getting rained out twice (Spartan and Baer Field) this weekend, I decided to take the time.
There are three groups running Winged Pavement Sprint Cars in the mid-west, HOSS, AVSS and Must See.

Spartan (Michigan) runs non winged pavement every other week. And USSA is a non winged group that is starting up. Plus there is the Granddaddy of them all, the Little 500. All these groups, as any track or series, have nights they have full field and they have nights when they are a bit short.

Spartan is mainly a group of working class guys (like me) and sometimes it’s difficult for guys to get their cars done early in the season. The last time I ran Spartan was two years ago and they had a full field of 18 cars.
Must See does a smart thing and makes their first couple of races high paying races that make it more attractive to have your car ready. And yes, they had twenty some cars for both races.

I fumbled around on the various websites and counted over 60 different cars that ran at least one race last year in one of the five series listed above. This does not count any cars that only ran the Little 500. That may not seem like much per series, but remember, many of these cars ran more than one series. Our car ran three different series last year and over the last two years we have run at least one race in all five series as well as the Little 500.

I could fill this website with my thoughts on the tire deal. And it has been discussed many times on this message board. There have been some truths and some great exaggerations. All three of the winged series state that you must run the same right rear in the feature that you qualified on. And I believe that the last year USAC ran pavement, they said you had to run the same right rear all night. But it was probably too little too late.
I am a big believer in a spec tire rule. I think everyone should run the same right rear. But I think that you should only specify the right rear. We never ran USAC because even though they ran Hoosiers, three of the four corners were different then we were running with HOSS. So in order to run, you had to buy at least three tires. And then you didn’t have any spares.

I think if Must See, HOSS and AVSS would only spec the right rear, they would have a lot more cars cross over.
Believe it or not, as far as just a cost saving measure, Spartan probably has the best tire rule. You have to run a Hoosier 55 on the right rear. This is actually a Silver Crown tire. And it is very hard. And Spartan is very slick and not very abrasive. The first time I ran there, it was 2010. I bought a new 55 when I got there. I ran it the whole night. I started 13th in the feature and ran it up to 4th. I was actually trying to pass for third on the white flag lap and got squirreled up behind a lapped car and ended up 5th. And I was never so bored in a race car in my life! I felt we were going so slow! But after the races, when they let the fans down, I was constantly told what a great race it was.

Fast forward to 2011. I did not make it back to Spartan in 2010. But HOSS had an early season race at Auto City Speedway in Michigan. So I decided to run Spartan the night before as kind of a paid test and tune session. Not wanting to buy a new tire for a test session, I pulled the same 55 right rear I ran the year before off the self and put it on. I started 12th in the feature and was running 9th half way through when I got caught up in an incident not of my making. I went to the tail and made it back to 9th by the checkered. Remember this was a year old used tire!

But the problem with any of the wing series running this tire, it would slow the cars down drastically. I’m guessing probably almost a second. If they were going to a new track, nobody would probably notice because they would still be faster than anything else. But if you take them to a track that they run normally, I think the fans would notice.

All three of the winged series have tracks that they put on a better show then other tracks. But again, any traveling series is going to be that way. Must See puts on an awesome show at Winchester. The speed is fantastic and it’s amazing all the slicing and dicing in the feature. The HOSS show at New Paris is usually a fan favorite. It is an egg shaped, flat quarter mile track. The leaders are in traffic from about lap five on. AVSS always puts a good show on at Toledo. Plus it’s a double header with the Supers.

One other note. I have raced dirt (winged and non winged) and pavement (winged and non winged). I’ve enjoyed it all. And I’ve watched races of all types. I’ve seen good pavement races (winged and non winged) and I’ve seen good dirt races (winged and non winged). And I’ve seen a few stinkers in each type also. I also have seen a few good stock car races.

What I’m getting at is I like all types of racing. And I get frustrated with people that have such a narrow mentality when it comes to racing. Especially people that don’t even go to the races or go to just a couple a year. Some of the best races I’ve seen have been the unexpected ones. I remember racing down at Salem a couple of years ago. Since you pit in the infield there, you are held captive until all the races are over. We were watching the stock cars. I think they were just street stocks or maybe a limited late model. Those guys were dicing back and forth and running like they were running for a million dollars. They didn’t have a lot of cautions and it was fun to watch.

I guess the point I’m trying to make about pavement racing is that there are enough races that we can race as much as we want. There are not many conflicting dates between all the series. And I think any fan that comes to a race will be surprised.

Tom Paterson

Well said Tom. Wished racing had more guys like your team!!

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Re: Pavement Sprints
 

I don't ever remember seeing a C main at Winchester.

Re: Pavement Sprints
 

Very well said Tom.

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Thanks for the kind words, team.

I must say, though, that I erred when I mentioned Bob Jenkins and Larry Nuber. They were ESPN's SpeedWeek hosts. The Thunder guys were Gary Lee and and the late, great Larry Rice.

Tom Paterson - Always a pleasure to read what you post on all of the racing forums.

Re: Pavement Sprints
 

They got scared to run em on asphalt cause they're so fast, and a lot of it is they use to just change tires over and make a chassis adjustment.