After listening to the D.O. show from this past monday....How many of you remember when drivers raced the same sprint car on dirt as they did on pavement, and who was leading the movement toward pavement "only" and dirt "only" ?????

I gathered from my sources that the hoffman team was one of the first to show up at the track with a "pavement" specific sprint car.

Can anyone shed some light on this subject and also give me there thoughts on doing away with pavement sprint cars all together, unless it's a pavement only series. :idea:


Thanks again.... The nameless one :rolling

all through the 60's the teams ran the same car on pavement and dirt. I believe it was about the mid-70's(?) into the 80's that the roadsters began to appear on pavement (Sorry, I'm really foggy on specific years). One that really stands out for me was the red #56 Genesee Beer Wagon that Sheldon Kinser drove. I believe it was Galen Fox's car, or at least he worked on it. Greg Weld also had a pavement roadster for a while. It was a blue car. They even tried them on dirt a few times. A guy who did run his roadster on both dirt and pavement regularly, was Lenny Waldo. The car was pink and I think was a Ford. Also, there was a year, or so, in the 70's when Sneva had an old rear-engined Huffaker indy car converted to a sprinter and a guy by the name of Dave(?) Rorhrig that had a purpose-built rear-engine sprinter. USAC, however, put a stop to the rear-engine stuff pretty quickly. The era of the pavement specific sprint cars was the beginning of the end for USAC's supremecy. Teams began folding and car counts dropped drastically at the pavement shows, especially.

Some of them were pretty cool though.....
David.

USAC allowed rear-engined cars in sprints in 1973. Sneva won, I think, six features. Others also won. They were outlawed for the '74 season.

Duke Cook ran a roadster at New Bremen in July of 1974, but stuck it into the wall qualifying. Jeff Bloom won at Salem in the Lyle Roberts roadster, and I believe Marvin Carman ran a roadster a few times, and won. I believe these were both in 1975.

By 1976 or '77, the Genesee Beer Wagon wheeled by Sheldon Kinser came along followed by the Jet Rod Engineering car driven by Steve Chassey. Among others.

USAC next allowed upright sprinters to run with more of an offset and it all evolved from there.

Pavement racing in USAC was interrupted in the mid-1980s when Dayton Speedway closed and Salem Speedway was hit by a tornado and closed until 1987. A whole new generation of cars developed after that.
Jim Morrison

I remember Late 80s when USAC revived the pavement that it was DIRT sprintcars converted or mulit use cars for both. Some always have but in the early 90s I remember going to Winchester for the first time and seeing Dave Steele in a car that was offset at least 10 inches and a inch of the ground. I don't know much about the pavement. The ORP race I attended was awesome to me mainly because of the wnner and the guy he beat being relative LBurg regulars. The Winchester race to me kinda sucked as Steele lapped up to third.
(I guess it wasn't bad, Just not my idea of sprint car racing)

Chuck, who ballanced some used pavement tires for the guy who won that ORP race to sit in victory lane, be in the photo with a flat right rear

Is the motor in the Jet Rod, pictured 2 posts above, offset to the left?

For purposes of this discussion, what constitutes a roadster (besides suitable for pavement only) ? Eng & drivetrain offset from centerline, thus allowing lower profile ?

That Jet Rod is a great looking car. If asthetics are what they're looking for in a new GoldCrown pavement car - that's the look.(imo)
On a 96" <-> 102" wheelbase, could it be made stable enough to safely race on tracks > 7/8 mi ?

Thanks

more on the Jet Rod Roadster:

http://www.oval.race-cars.com/carsol...8/jet-78ss.htm

http://www.oval.race-cars.com/carsol...8/jet-78pp.htm

USAC car counts are as good today as they ever where. The pavement races rarely had as big of car counts as the dirt, even when the same cars where run.
I'm not saying that I wouldn't like to see more pavement cars at the track, but they aren't that far off of the average car counts of the past.

The reason that the pavement racing was bigger in the late 80's early 90's had everything to do with T.V.

I believe the beginning of the end of USAC'S run at the top is more to do with short sided decision making, resting on their past and the lack of true direction and guidence. Incidents like Union County are a little more common than they should be and they litter USAC'S past no matter the regime.

I love the pavement cars because they produce great racing because they are purpose built.

Guy's it's like I keep saying, the cost of the car isn't the problem. There are enough used cars out there now that if it was just the cost of the car holding people back, they could get a used one and run well if they could drive and set up the car. I have seen nothing that tells me that a car that is 3-5 years old can't win races today.

The biggest problem with pavement racing is the cost of the tires. A first class pavement team will spend more on tires during the year then what their car cost(All three divisions).
For example: For the teams who ran the USAC race before the little 500 and used both the Little 5 practice and USAC practice to get ready and they practiced on new tires everytime(As you have to to stay fast), I estimate they spent around $3,000(Minimum) for the day. That is a crazy number, but I believe I am probably actually low by about $1,200-$2,400. None of this even includes private tests.

To me, the cost of the car is fine, but Hoosier and USAC should be better stewards of the sport and instead of working together to only fatten Hoosier's bottom line(I know,they give to the point fund. Actually I think the teams pay their own point fund), they should work together to help keep the costs in line as well.

Hoosier is a sacred cow in USAC. Unfortunately in this case, it is the cow that does the milking.

What I was referring to was the fact that you needed to have two different cars to be competitive during that period, one for pavement and one for dirt. But, you're right, LEADERS EDGE, tires were and are probably the most prohibitive part of pavement racing, then and now. I remember going to Winchester and Salem a few times when there were less than 20 cars. That saddened me greatly.

As cool as that car looks how the HELL did they get them to turn left with the front end being so long? Almost looks like a sprint car limo!