I know a lot of us on here have been around racing and going to races for a LOT of years. I am no exception, having attended my first race almost 60 years ago. It is easy to think about the “Good Old Days” of short track racing. A friend and I were having a friendly discussion and he made a pretty compelling case that we are seeing “the Good Old Days” of non wing sprint car racing right now. His argument is based on the following:

HUGE entry lists (ave. for first 3 nights of ISW is 49)
Depth of the fields (53 of 58 cars were within 1 sec. of the FQ @ Gas City)
Field competitiveness (on any given night, there are probably at least 10 feature starters that can win).

I can’t disagree with a lot of his points. I remember the first USAC sprint race I went to in 1967 had (I think) 16 cars and started 14 in the feature. And there is certainly little doubt that fields are tighter than they’ve ever been

There is no argument from him that the cars of the 60’s and 70’s had better lines and were better looking, and we all wish that the USAC circuit still encompassed pavement racing. This is more about the racing and competitive level.

Kind of curious what others thoughts are.