Originally Posted by team3521:
Jerry,
Thank you for your posts. I will back up my opinion. I am honestly tired of all of it, like I've said, it's beating a dead horse.
A. Midgets are stupid expensive! The money you have to put out for an engine that will compete is ridiculous. It doesn't matter if you're at a 1/4 mile track or IRP. USAC has let the spending eliminate the middle class guy that used to be able to compete. Eliminate them, no car count, no car count, no fans showing up to watch. No fans showing up, no racing. It's pretty simple. $55,000 for a Toyota midget engine is a recipe for failure
B. Tires, I've said it a hundred times. Take away the Hoosier monopoly and open the tires up to all manufacturers. Hoosiers are engineered to last one night. Harden up the tires, take all the HP out of the equation.
It doesn't matter what size tracks you put midgets on.
C. My grudge with Kevin Miller is what he takes and what he's giving back. It's no different than our government of this country.
Pavement midgets have died on his watch after he watched what had happened to pavement sprints. He saw it coming from a long time ago and did nothing proactive to change the course it was on. That is a sign of a leader that shouldn't be leading.
Good luck with ISW Jerry. Thank you for caring!
A. If I had a dollar for every time I heard "$55,000" engine I'd have enough to buy a damn Toyota. Many on here just repeat what has been told to them without facts. I bet you believe a Toyota is well above 400 horsepower also. Pick up the phone and call Stanton sometime and get some real information. Go to a chassis dyno and get some hard data. This horse has been beaten to death, because people want to perpetuate a perception that is not reality. A toyota is not 55,000...at last check you are looking at around $35K. Expensive? Heck yes...stupid in fact. But, IF you run on smaller, slicker tracks that big shiny chunk of metal in the frame rails creates MUCH less of an impact. There are guys running very well without big dollar engines on those tracks - Justin Peck has a pretty garden variety Esslinger if I am correct not built by Esslinger but by Davey Ray's shop. Davey Ray has a Stealth with an Esslinger that I'm sure is not a "55,000" engine...Daniel Robinson does awful well with again, a pretty standard esslinger. Heck Justin Grant and that team is an older Gaerte if I remember correctly. If I had to guess I'd say these engines are in the $20,000 range - barring the Gaerte which Im sure is less. Bargain? No. But show me a big time traveling national level series that has engines that are much less than $30,000 anymore - go take a look at the Late Model stuff sometime. It's not 1995 anymore - I just recently started running a Micro and heck, you can easily put 15K in one of those engines. You can't stop people from spending money; creating smaller, slicker bullring racing mitigates the advantage of opening up your checkbook.
B. Can't say I disagree much there - as a racer I've never seen a tire rule save ME money. Though putting a harder tire on will do nothing more than make teams chemists with tires. Seen that in karting, you see it in IMCA stuff, you see it everywhere really.
C. Also can't say I disagree much in the treatment of the pavement stuff. The past of USAC is a rocky one and I would be the first to rail against some of the decisions - however, as to this article and the quotes that suggest a shift in the thought process and the hiring of Levi...positives in my book.