Originally Posted by Lucky161:
That is correct in that the car Rilat normally races in ASCS is the number 29 and in this race he ran the 50off car. However, the previous times Rilat has run the 50off car it was in regular winged 360 ASCS races. That doesn't mean he didn't have a 410 in it for this race and/or series though. The sponsor of the 50off car is also a sponsor of Cowtown Speedway which does run 360 winged races and does not run any 410 races. Additionally the car Bacon drove to second looked to me to the the exact same car that he runs in the winged 360 ASCS races. Again, it still could have had a 410 for this race.
It is my personal opinion the track/sanctioning body did us fans a dis-service by not making it clear who in fact was and wasn't running 410s. As I said in another post, I think that the end result of having a series running 410s, be it WoO or the Bandits is to reduce the car count.
---------- Post added at 10:54 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:40 AM ----------
Even if all 7 of those cars had 410s, that's only 1/3 of the field. And while I am not saying they didn't have 410s, there are indications that they might not have been.
And if I read what you are saying correctly you indicate that the non winged guys had no experience on these tracks. Who does that leave? Rilat, Bacon and Crawley all have experience on these tracks in winged 360 cars. That would mean that this is a touring series with only 3-4 regular competitors?
To me it would be much easier for a small handful of guys with 410s to come up with 360s than to find twice as many or more of the 360 guys to fund a 410 for a just few races. The WoO is touted as the premier winged sprint car series. But in my experience the ASCS puts on MUCH better races on a regular basis than the WoO and have done so for years. In my opinion a 360 Sprint Bandit series would be much better than the 410 too.
To your first point - All seven of the cars I mentioned had aluminum blocks. I only assumed they were 410"s. Maybe they had 360 aluminum engines.
To your second point - Also Hockett, Chappel, Ray Allen, Johnson (although he was in Jack's car).
To your third point - There are two hot-beds of non-wing sprint car racing in America - Indiana and Arizona/California. Both race predominantly with 410 engines. It would be prohibitively expensive for the cars from these areas to procure a steel block 360 to run only the SB schedule. You, therefore, lose the participation of these folks and rely solely on the existing 360 (ASCS) folks. I believe the weekend spoke for itself as to the desire of most of the marquee ASCS names to participate without the wing, as Jason Johnson, Gary Wright, Shane Stewart, etc. decided to run elsewhere for less money.
Tim Simmons