'Rumble in Fort Wayne' to crown overall champion
 

FORT WAYNE, Ind. – Drivers and car owners will compete for a newly created $1,000 bonus as overall champion of the “Rumble in Fort Wayne” midget division, event organizer Tony Barhorst announced.

“With the expansion of our event to three days, I think it’s fitting that we formally recognize an overall champion,” Barhorst said, looking ahead to the 17th annual indoor racing classic on Dec. 26-28 at the Memorial Coliseum Expo Center.

“This harkens back to the old USAC days, when an indoor champion was crowned. It’s going to make the whole weekend more interesting.”

The champion driver and his car owner will equally split $1,000, said Barhorst, who hopes additional sponsors will step up so the award can grow in coming years. “We’d like to add to this, but this is a good start.”

Drivers and owners will earn points solely on the basis of their feature finishes on Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon in the expanded three-day program. The winning driver and owner each day will earn one point, second place two points, third place three points and so on through the field. The driver and owner with the lowest point total – provided they start all three features – will be crowned “Rumble in Fort Wayne” champion.

Separate standings will be kept for drivers and owners. Owners who field multiple entries will earn points for each car, but the point totals are separate.

In case of a tie, the highest finisher on the final day will win the title.

Grant Galloway would have won last year’s championship on the basis of second- and third-place feature finishes. Russ Gamester and Justin Peck won the features.

Barhorst also issued a rules update for the national midget division. No cockpit shock adjustments of any kind and no remote canister shocks are permitted.

National midgets and non-winged dirt modified midgets will compete all three days of the Rumble, joined by winged outlaw modified midgets on Saturday and Sunday. Karts will be part of the program Friday and Saturday, while quarter midgets are included Saturday and Sunday. Competition is held on a specially constructed 1/6-mile concrete track inside the renovated Expo Center.

Gates open at 11 a.m. each day, with the main portion of the program at 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday.

In addition to the racing, the Evans Toyota Fan Zone will feature race cars and other displays. Fans may purchase pit passes at the event to see drivers up close as teams prepare their cars.

More information, including the event schedule, ticket prices, entry forms and “racer’s rate” hotels, is available at www.rumbleseries.com.

Billy Wease (right), racing side-by-side with teammate Brian Gerster during the 2013 “Rumble in Fort Wayne,” should be a strong contender for the new points championship. He has won four times on the 1/6-mile indoor track, second only to Tony Stewart’s nine victories. The 17th annual indoor classic is Dec. 26-28. Photo by Larry Kellogg

Don't you think it's a little late to be making rule changes?.....what is the point of no canister shocks?.....as long as it's not in the cockpit it shouldn't matter.

Re: 'Rumble in Fort Wayne' to crown overall champion
 

Joe, I did consider the date when adding this. It is a bit late, but I have seen santioning bodies have tech updates far closer to the event.

The reason is that this is an area where costs are getting out of hand. I am going to frown on cutting edge products that escalate costs. I have not made any changes/updates for a couple years. The plan is to keep it that way.

Sorry if this puts you in a bind.

For others that are interested, our rules link is here. http://www.rumbleseries.com/wp-conte...dget-Rules.pdf

Tony Barhorst
www.rumbleseries.com

Cost getting out of hand?....so the people who already have these kind of shocks having to go out and spend more money on different shocks is cost effective?.....

Re: 'Rumble in Fort Wayne' to crown overall champion
 

I determined that very few have these shocks before putting this out. That was a consideration. Doing what is best for reigning in costs in the long run. Our rules are very stable, and don't look for anymore unless we start getting new products that escalate costs.

Re: 'Rumble in Fort Wayne' to crown overall champion
 

Tony

It seems that more and more people are coming down with "Adjustable Shock Anxiety Syndrome". Sure sorry to hear that you ave been diagnosed with the disease.

Many "Progressive" type people are always worrying about the well being of others with no consideration for their own well being and make laws and rules to save people from themselves. Many times these rules are made with a feeling of compassion for others rather than basing their decisions on the real facts that are present. Smart wealthy people buy substantially better products than uninformed poor people tend to buy. The poor person is faced with spending more and more money replacing worn out or defective products while the smart person simply maintains his more expensive investments, thus saving a great deal of expense in the long run and making them richer because they are not throwing good money after bad. I said investment because some purchases are investments while others are only a reoccurring write off.

To a racer good shocks are an investment and pay for themselves many times over. Many things on a race car are an investment and may be changed from chassis to chassis many times over. Why would a racer want to install junk that will cost him in the long run.

We have been racing on a set of ARS adjustable shocks for about 15 year now I guess. They were expensive to purchase, but over the years of racing if one gets damaged we simply send it back and get it fixed at a fraction of the cost of a disposable shock. Cockpit adjustable shock are great for dirt racing. If the track changes and it usually does a knowledgeable driver can adjust to compensate, same thing if your mechanic misses the set up. I would call that racing smart not racing out of budget. I would much prefer my adjustable shocks to a fancy paint job and lettering. Good shocks would also win out over an expensive engine accessory (in our case Mechanical fuel injection or trick air cleaners). That extra horsepower isn't any good if I can't hook it up is it?

Most of us race on a limited budget, spending it on what we think is most important to our success, why limit a racer to his choices for success. Racing is not cheap, if Joe has spent his money on a set of what he considers outstanding shocks that will make him competitive how can it save him money to force him to buy a set of shocks that he would only use in your series.

Were I designing a car to race in doors it would probably be a car with no suspension Ala GoKart, it would have a ton of left side weight and would be able to be carried by two people. For your race shocks should not make that much deference. Adjustable shocks should not be any advantage to racing indoors, but buying $600.00 worth of shocks for one race a year would probably be a big added expense to a shoe string racer trying to race smart and not extravagant.

Honest Dad himself:6::6:

Re: 'Rumble in Fort Wayne' to crown overall champion
 

So if one shock eliminates the need to carry five others of different rates. How is it not cost effective?

Re: 'Rumble in Fort Wayne' to crown overall champion
 

Charles

People are always wanting to make racing less expensive. Many people make decisions that are not based in fact but rather are emotional ones. Five hundred dollars for one shock sounds a bit extravagant when we first learn of the cost, when in fact it is very cost effective. I am sure Tony's reason for outlawing these shocks was made with the best of intentions, perhaps it would be better were he to ban specific built race cars like the "Munchkin". USAC banned that car years ago only to have it resurface as a championship indoor race car in later years. You should have seen that little thing up at Kittly in the 70's. It was like watching a GoKart run all over and around them big old shiny Real Full Size Midget racers (It wasn't very pretty back then, best I can remember it was painted with spray can robin egg blue paint job). So in the best interest of racing USAC banned the darned thing. It would be interesting to imagine what a midget would look like today had they not put their foot down.:);)

Honest Dad himself:6::6:

Re: 'Rumble in Fort Wayne' to crown overall champion
 

It's Tony's Series to manage as he wants, I think we got a little off target on the thread.

I actually like the Overal Champion idea. Wish most multi day shows had it.

Re: 'Rumble in Fort Wayne' to crown overall champion
 

Charles

Amen to that, Tony is a very good promoter, and and I am sure he doesn't make moves without thinking them out. We all have a finite amount of money to spend racing, granted some of us have a larger finite amount of money to work with.

I think the shock people are getting a bad rap. Without a doubt shocks are very important in making a race car fast. Most of us spend more time in the turns than on the straightaways so it only makes sense to make our cars fast as we can in the turns. In racing we don't have cutting edge innovations, we only have warmed up ideas that were used in the past and are brought back to sell to new racers. Shock technology is in fact cutting edge, we up date every year with the same old shocks we have raced on for years. There will always be racers that want to buy a trick piece. How about the DriBar for instance. Racers can decide on their own what is good and what is Hype, that should not be the job of a race promoter, if it works the racer should use it.

Honest Dad himself:6::6:

Re: 'Rumble in Fort Wayne' to crown overall champion
 

Dad is a good car owner, and I just reply here to shine some light on the Munchkin results. We have had 31 features run since 1998. In that span..Tony Stewart has won in a Munckin 7 times, Mike Fedorcak once and Lou Cicconi once. What you describe above has not been happening with all due respect.

Here is a link to our past results. Russ Gamester won last year in a 1977 Grant King chassis, and Justin Peck won in a Beast. http://www.rumbleseries.com/wp-conte...innersList.pdf

I don't mind the feedback.

#respect

:23:

Re: 'Rumble in Fort Wayne' to crown overall champion
 

Tony

From your statistics you are saying that a "Munchkin" a relative Back Yard built one off race car "Special" has won close to 30% of the races run at the Rumble. That is a very impressive number being that there are probably only half a dozen or so in existence and thousands of Beast, Spikes and Stealths in existence today. A few of those wins might be chalked up to driver ability in fact probably all of them are definitely chalked up to some very experienced drivers being in the seat at the time of their wins. The little car has a "Cult Following" and I know banning it would probably cut into your front gate sales. It has always been "The little car that could" since it first hit the race track. Always being the Giant killer.

Using it as an example was only done to drive home the point of how useless and counter productive it is when a series attempts to control what a racer spends on his race car to make them less expensive to race. Usually these decisions are made arbitrarily and little research is actually given to the decision being made or it's consequences, simply a "fuzzy feel good" type of decision.

NASCAR came up with the car of tomorrow to do this, all it did was cause teams to spend millions of dollars in wind tunnels looking for that little bitty edge over their competition. No one has ever come up with an idea that I know of that would or could keep racers from spending their kids lunch money looking for that edge perceived by them that would make them faster.

A little insight into the racer mind set. They are always watching their competition and trying to figure out just what their competition is doing that is beating them. If they spot something new or different they jump on it.

We have a guy on IOW right now. His specialty is Air cleaners and induction systems for Mini Sprints. He is an avid salesman, and builds a quality product. I gave him a bit of advice last year on how to better sell his product. The advice was we have a couple of brothers up here racing that are smoking the competition, get them to race with your air cleaners and you will sell a lot more air cleaners. He did and now he does.

This strategy has been used over and over again thru the years by many very successful racing company's. When John Godfrey first branched out into chassis production he was lucky enough to have Sammy Swindell race in his Sprint Cars and Ralph Potter began racing his Midget cars. At that time Ralph had just hired this teenage kid by the name of Tony Stewart as a driver. Sammy did what Sammy always did and Tony went on to win his first Midget championship. Following this success John never had much trouble selling race cars. That is just the way racers think, all I need to win is a Stealth, not all I need to win is a Tony or Sammy.

As a side note at about this same time Corey and Chet Fillip of Advanced Racing Suspensions had just introduced their new and revolutionary "ARS cockpit adjustable left rear shock". Ralph was one of the first Midget Race teams to try the new innovation and Tony was one of the first drivers to use one in a race. At the time Tony was a brash super smart Teenager that knew everything about everything. He would come in after a race and almost always he would have the shock adjusted in the wrong direction from where he should have had it adjusted. Ralph in his wisdom left the shock and adjustable knob in the race car he just didn't hook it up to the shock saying nothing to Tony. Ralph's son Tracy would set the shock where he thought it should be for the race and sent Tony out to race and adjust his Knob any way he chose.:D

Honest Dad himself:6::6: