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

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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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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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.

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?

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

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

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...

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.